Annindofu Illustration Works Brilliant Idol

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Annindofu Illustration Works Brilliant Idol is a definitive collection of official art work from THE iDOLM@STER, covering illustrations from the games, CDs, telecards and the plethora of other merchandise. Even if you’ve never played the games, the glamour of the idols will win you over!

My favorite aspect of the THE iDOLM@STER characters is their fashion. While most characters in games wear only a few outfits, the fashion showcase never ends with the THE iDOLM@STER girls, which we can attribute to Annindofu’s creativity, and it provides much of the appeal of the characters. It’s kind of remarkable how these illustrations project a sense of the character’s self-image through her style.

Brilliant Idol is A4-sized and hard cover. It opens landscape style, making for a longer presentation of the art work. The cover illustration and two other works at the front of this 152 page book are new. The index of illustrations is also at the front of the book, listing where all the art work first appeared.

There is also a visual index at the beginning of each section, presenting the artworks you will see over the next few pages as they first appeared on CD jackets and the like. It’s quite useful as a reference for people who are collecting the actual merchandise.

The first section of Brilliant Idol focuses on the art for the CD jackets, and runs from pages 10 to 67. In this section, one page features the finished illustration and the adjacent page features sketch versions of the same illustration. Some of the sketches even make it to the coloring stage.

This pretty much means you’re getting half as many illustrations on those first 60 pages. Still, the art work is beautiful, and it’s nice to see the creative process in visual form. I also think the rest of the book more than makes up for it!

The second section in the book features the art from the Weiβ Schwarz anime card game, where anime characters from a variety of series battle. All of the illustrations in this section have the girls in their concert costumes, surrounded by lights and sparkles. This section covers pages 70 through 85, with each page featuring an illustration.

The third section is “Editorial Series” and features many of the illustrations that appeared in magazines and other publications. Some of the works in this section are a little rough. They use a lot of filtered photos for the character backgrounds, and considering how well-drawn other backgrounds are, it just doesn’t fit. This section runs from page 88 to 125 and has an illustration on each page. This is the only section that includes black and white illustrations, but only on a few pages. They were from the novel series that came out for THE iDOLM@STER.

The final section is “Official Item” and features the art work found on released merchandise like calendars and downloadable content. This portion runs from pages 128 to 151. The calendar illustrations are especially nice. The illustrations for The IDOLMaSTER Mobile really show off everyone’s fashion sense.

Though Annindofu Illustration Works Brilliant Idol starts off a little weak, it really makes up for it in the latter half with page after page of colorful illustrations, along with Annindofu’s commentary on each piece. You really can’t go wrong with this one if you like the art!