VIVID COLOR Tatsuki Amaduyu Illustrations

Reading Time: 4 minutes

VIVID COLOR Tatsuki Amaduyu Illustrations 1995-2010 is the newest solo collection from the well-known BLAZER ONE and LEAF artist. This full color collection showcases Tatsuki Amaduyu’s non-commercial art work, with lots of original characters as well as fan art works from Macross Frontier, Neon Genesis Evangelion and more.

This book is made the same way as LEAF Illustrations Tatsuki Amaduyu Edition, from the slip-on plastic cover to the dimensions of the art book. They do differ in length though, with VIVID COLOR coming in at 146 pages. To be more accurate, the index starts on page 127, and much like the other book, artist comments are included with each illustration in the index which contributes to the length.

For the most part, if you’ve kept up with the CUT A DASH! and BLAZER ONE circle releases, you will have seen the majority of these illustrations before, as they’ve appeared in Comiket doujins as well as in their yearly desktop calendars. But one thing that is really consistent with CUT A DASH! and BLAZER ONE releases is the use of textured paper, which thankfully, this art book does not use. As a result, the colors and overall presentation are a lot better than they tend to be in the doujinshi.

The art work spans 15 years, so there are a few works that look completely amateur in comparison to Tatsuki Amaduyu’s more recent work. The older illustrations were done at lower resolutions that weren’t meant to be printed at all, so there are a couple of illustrations with signs of upscaling for print. But these pre-2000 works only appear on about 12 pages, so it’s not a significant amount.

There were several video game fan art illustrations, most of them from one of the many Final Fantasy series, though there was also Momohime from Muramasa. The Original art section runs from pages 3 to 51, while the Fanart section spans from pages 52 to 103. There really are a significant number of works in each section.

Though there are only two illustrations from Macross Frontier, I think I would have bought the book for these alone. Tatsuki Amaduyu does an amazing job on coloring and styling for Ranka and Sheryl, going with a more dynamic pose than you see with most fan art, and it really suits the series. The Asuka illustration above was drawn new for this collection. I should also mention, there are a lot of up-angle illustrations along with heavy fanservice, but nothing too extreme.

The final section is titled Calendar, and runs from pages 104 through 126. It includes the calendar illustrations up through 2009, and they’re generally presented with one larger, full page illustration next to a page of smaller tiled works. VIVID COLOR Tatsuki Amaduyu Illustrations 1995-2010 is a great collection, and if they’re following the pattern of their LEAF Illustrations art books, then I guess we can be expecting a Mitsumi Misato version next year!