Kurehito Misaki - REW – artbooks.me

Reading Time: 3 minutes

REW, read as ‘Rewind’, is a 5-year collection of Kurehito Misaki’s illustrations. It includes a lot of original works as well as fan arts and Touhou illustrations. Sold exclusively through Toranoana, this compilation released during Tora Festival 2010.

REW is Kurehito Misaki’s first art book, and it’s A4-size and 100 pages. The cover art is new for the book, but the character is one he has illustrated many times. There are four illustrations of the eyepatch girl in this book. Also, the front cover folds out, revealing the full illustration of the cover girl.

Many of the art works are covers from when Kurehito Misaki and Kuroya Shinobu were known as Cradle. I think now Puffsleeve is Kuroya Shinobu, and Kurehito Misaki alone is Cradle. Since that’s a recent change, if you’ve collected older Cradle doujins, then you’d still have a lot of Kuroya Shinobu illustrations that aren’t really anywhere else.

The book divides into three sections: original, other fan art, and Project Shrine Maiden. The original section is 32 pages, with several spreads. The cover arts for Piece of Cradle 01, 03, and 04 also appear. There’s an illustration of POP’s character, Flower, that was in the Kowarekake no Orgel Visual Fan Book. Kurehito Misaki’s rendition of KEI’s mascot character Nakano also appears. I would consider those to be “fan arts” but technically they are original characters.

The art work in the other fan art section includes characters from Idolmaster, Vocaloid, Air Gear, Little Busters! and To Heart. Some of the illustrations share a page, and there are only 13 pages in this short section.

I feel that some of Kurehito Misaki’s best works are his illustrations for Touhou, which is the final section in this art book. They take up about 32 pages. His creativity in the costume designs and coloring of the characters still make them stand out, even in a sea of Touhou illustrations.

The only thing I didn’t like about the book was the paper. It’s the kind of paper that sucks in all the dark blue and black inks. It makes them blend together unless you’re looking at them straight on. On the plus side, it does create a high quality print where you can’t see the DPI.

REW ends with a postscript from Kurehito Misaki, and a thanks for the past five years. All in all, it’s a really nice book, though you’ve probably seen most of the illustrations.