Hunting the Elusive

Kinkatou is a “full colour” illustration book released by Tohru Adumi during Comiket 77. I put “full colour” in quotes, not as some kind of derisive gesture, because this book actually has enough colour material in it to justify itself, but because technically, not the entire book is full colour, since there is a section at the end (which I consider a “bonus” section) which is printed in monochrome on a different paper type to the coloured part. It has been some time since I looked at Tohru Adumi’s work, and I will honestly say I was pretty surprised when I opened this book and found so much of it consisted of illustrations of guys. That said, Tohru Adumi has always been into the bishounen side of things anyway, and I suppose we should be grateful she does bishoujo at all. [Release?][PNG]

From the start, we can already see that Kinkatou going to be a very good book. It seems Tohru Adumi put a lot of effort into this illustration. We have the photo-realistic lion, and the extremely detailed textures and such on the girl’s kimono, with an overall golden tone which compliments the gold foil embossed kanji for “Kinkatou” (which incidentally turns out all dark in the scan).

Two types of paper are used in Kinkatou. There is the brown, slightly textured card which comprises of the front and back landing pages, as well as the monochrome section at the back, and there is the normal stock for colour illustrations.

We get a fair amount of page spreads in this book, and in contrast with the rich dark colours which greeted us, the majority of the illustrations in the colour section are of light colour themes, and very airy in feel.

There is a good balance between illustrations of girls, and illustrations of guys. Seriously though, some of these, for example, that below, left, are very nice with the details, the flowing hair and the textures.

While I am not really focused on bishounen as such, one can appreciate the work that goes into making them cool, like early-CLAMP’s-proper-drawings cool. Note how different the character designs are between guys and girls, it’s like one artist mastering two styles.

Hmmm more guys.

Seems to be a series with he same character

Some of these spreads, I notice, seem to be rather “unnecessary”. While aesthetically speaking, I do understand the functionality of white space, it can seem somewhat strange to be scanning a page with mostly white.

Wolf and moon? It looks really cool, but I couldn’t help thinking of the meme.

While I kinda like the dark looks, this very subtle and bright one, with an unusual framing does catch the eye.

Yay, more girls, although these aren’t nearly as epic as many of the other illustrations in the book.

One thing to note with Tohru Adumi is that she utilises textures very well, and this really complements the character designs.

The final portion of the coloured section, we return to bishounen, but can anyone really fault the pure artistic magnificence of these illustrations? The textures and patterns return us to the rich golden themes of the cover, calling to mind the brocades of old Japan.

And the colour section ends with a fuller look at the cover illustration.

The monochrome section are basically comments and notes about the various pictures, where they were used, and such.

With Kinkatou, we confirm the status of Tohru Adumi as a master of her craft. A bit of a pity we don’t get more girls in the intricate artworks she does in the book, but keep following this artist and I’m sure more good stuff will turn up.