Artbook: Review Starry☆Sky Art Book vol.1 (Kazuaki, Honeybee)

Gorgeous Starry Sky boys beckon! And they -GLOW- in the dark too!

Lots of pics after the cut! ( ^_^)/

Update March 2013:

Title: Starry☆Sky Art Book vol.2 Limited edition with Calendar and Regular edition.
Price: 3,500 Yen (w/tax) and 2,980 (w/tax)
Release Date: Late March 2013

Vol.2 has 150 full-colour pages. The limited edition comes with a box to hold both vol.1 and vol.2 together.

CDJapan (ships international) is charging 1,000 Yen more for the limited edition with calendar (that is available only if you ordered from Animate Japan or Stellaworth)

I ordered the limited edition with calendar from CDJapan. Will do a review when I receive it :)

Now, back to the review below:

Title: Starry☆Sky Art Book vol.1
Price: 2,600 Yen (w/o tax)
Release Date: 25 May 2012
Rating: No 18+ pics. Safe for general viewing.
Size: 29.4 x 21 x 1.6 cm
Total pages: 152

This is a recently released artbook that compiles artworks created for Honeybee’s Starry Sky series. In this book, images are compiled from the various CD jackets (星座彼氏ジャケット), line art of game stills, Dengeki Girl’s Style magazine exclusive and short story artworks, magazine cover illustrations of various otome game magazines, etc. Vol. 2 is planned for release in the coming months.

The most awesome thing about this artbook is that… golly, the cover jacket GLOWS in the dark! I didn’t have time to go through the book when I first received it so I left it on my desk and went about my business. That evening when I was about to go to sleep, I switched off the room lights and saw the book glow! :D I didn’t read about it so I was really pleasantly surprised. Fabulous detail.

If you bought the artbook from Animate Japan (which unfortunately doesn’t ship international), you would have received a box to house the artbooks. I decided I should not overspend, so I ordered it from CDJapan ^^;; how I wished I had more moolah. Anyway, now on to the review!

Front of the artbook with the jacket on.

Back of the artbook.

Removed the jacket. Notice the special glow in the dark ink?

Detail of the special inked jacket.

Gives us a better idea of how it would look when it glows. The inked areas show night sky constellations. Looks really pretty in the dark but I can’t get a decent photo with my camera when all the lights are off. You just have to imagine the effect ^^;;

Pretty and embossed thick cover.

Front and back of the jacket spread out.

Shiny silver treatment for the title text. Gorgeous!

Same lovely treatment for the text on the spine too.

Held up against the light. Can you see the pattern? I’m planning to find a frame to put it up :D

Back of the jacket, also held up to the light.

Front of the book cover.

And the back.

More silver shiny text!

I love the big images but having faces of the boys eaten up by the gutter saddens me orz;;

Same thing happened for some of the other artwork included. What a no-no!

(;_;) poor Mizushima got split in half. Anyway the artbook is really simple and doesn’t have a lot of text. This is great in a way cos they focus a lot on artwork only.

There is lineart of the game stills which gives a nice insight to how the artwork was created.

Now that’s more like it… one big and beautiful illustration per page.

Gorgeous! I didn’t buy all the magazines, games and cds, only selected ones. So some of these artwork are new to me.

Azusa and Ryunosuke <3

Lol~ at the prank XD

Have you seen these artwork before?

Illustration used for Animate’s box (front) The design layout looks similar to Blackbutterfly’s Shukan Soine tokuten boxes.

Illustration used for Animate’s box (Back)

Intro text for each season’s boys.

And the related line artworks.

Can print out and colour lol~

Lovely pics!

Yay for no gutters.

Would have been great if it was on one page.

Love to have a poster of this too.

The faceless heroine artwork from the earlier games before the anime was broadcast.

More cuteness :)

Credits.

Additional manga style artwork.

Couple more.

And another…

RPG Starry Sky! :D

Comments:
Definitely recommended for fans, especially when we don’t have all the magazines/CDs, etc. I’m looking forward to Vol. 2! I wonder if they’ll do a glow-in-the-dark treatment for the next volume too?