Hunting the Elusive

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Artbook Review: Hiro Suzuhira Artworks Chronicle

April 23rd, 2008 | Category: Japanese Artists,Merchandise,Reviews

ava I actually didn't know about this until the day it was released, when I saw pictures of it on Akibablog (or Moeyo, I keep mixing them up). I bundled it as quickly as I could to the Amazon order and so it arrived yesterday with the rest of my stuff. Chronicles is exactly what its name says it is: it contains 124 illustrations by the goddess of moe, Hiro Suzuhira, from 1999 to 2007. It is made of awesome.

I know I keep saying this about various things, but this is a MUST BUY artbook. It's simply gorgeous. The front cover is an entire spanned illustration, with a palette of pinks that at the same time give the book an elegant and minimalist look. Unlike many other artbooks out there, this one (which is notably the FIRST artbook for this artist) is hardcover with a soft jacket.

[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_01 [pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_02

Take off the jacket and it's hot-pink with white line art of the front illustration.

[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_03[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_04

A long folded poster is included in the beginning of the artbook. Believe it or not, it is consisted of four pages, making for a length double the usual "bonus poster" feature on artbooks. It is also double-sided: the other side has a landscape orientation and is an awesome dark-themed illustration. The scan above just shows the normal side which is "dakimakura-pose character".

There are also a few illustrations preluding the start of the sections. There's a good page-spread of Suzuhira's rendition of Alice (in Wonderland) for example, and the one I have scanned above.

The first section (1999) is happily the shortest, spanning only two pages and featuring 8 illustrations from the early work of this artist.

[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_05

Like Aoi Nanase, this artist's style gradually matured and this progression is actually very noticeable in this artbook. 1999 saw retro-looking characters and a notable lack of the subtleties afforded by computer-aided shading.

The next section is 2000 to 2002, and is a rather long section. The style of the characters have solidified, but the colouring, while refined, has still some ways to go.

[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_06[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_07
It is near the middle of this section that one realises that this book is *gasp* NSFW. I haven't scanned any of those NSFW pictures, but suffice it to say, there is some gratuitous exhibitionism in there. Unlike Aoi Nanase (with whom I cannot help but make comparisons), Suzuhira Hiro has no qualms about claiming credit for both the SFW and NSFW stuff.

[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_08[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_09 [pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_10[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_11

We also realise in this section that this artbook is not skimping on the pages. Most of the illustrations are given a full page by themselves, with none of that "let's save trees and print thumbnailed-size pictures amidst plenty of black ink" crap that some other artbooks engage in.

At the end of each section is a catalogue thumbnail thing that provides details about the pictures. This is useful because it acts as a nice divider and can also lessen the amount of flipping someone would need to do to match up the picture with the information, unlike traditional artbooks which just have the thumbnail catalogue at the very back of the entire book.

2003-2006 is a huge section, which I think might have been better off being split into two parts. Still, this period represents the body of Suzuhira Hiro's career, and saw the adoption of a more complex and "shiny" style.

This section starts off with a bang, by slapping in three page-spread illustrations right at the beginning.

[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_12[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_13

1) That looks so Touhou-esque, but I think it's not. Reimu~...if only.

[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_14[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_15

1) Kallen cloned her pose from this picture. 2) Pop Art style?

There is an almost noticeable transition towards the middle-end of this section where the artwork becomes sublime.

[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_16[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_17

1) Companion to the gothic girl illustration 2) That's like a Victorian-era monarch ordering war or something. YES, MY LORD!

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1) Nothing grabs me like music-themed illustrations 2) Small illustrations, but sweet.

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The 2007 section is the last, and is also pretty short. But it contains a higher proportion of quality images, some of which many people have not seen before. I'm sure they were all published here and there in various magazines and stuff, which is why an artbook is often the Holy Tome, or central reference library piece for particular illustrators: you don't have to go around hunting down magazines to collect their stuff.

[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_21[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_22 [pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_23[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_24 [pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_25[pireze]Suzuhira_Hiro_Chronicle_26

As you can see, this artist has branched out into a variety of styles. That winged magical girl one at the top for example, is a breakout in terms of genre, as is the Jigoku-Shoujo-esque last illustration.

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The last pages are a blurb by the illustrator and you can clearly see she has black nails. That's pretty cool.

Conclusion:

I will admit I do not actively follow the career of Suzuhira Hiro. This artbook is by no means complete -- for example, it ignores the body of work this artist did for NAVEL, such as Shuffle! and its associated counterparts. But Shuffle! et al have their own abundance of illustration resource. It's great that this artbook focuses on the artist's timeline as opposed to sorting the pictures by series or whatever. A sturdy hardcover with brilliant colours, at 2800 yen, it's a steal.

Wow, you read all the way down here? Well, here's a disclaimer. This post is not a digital release, and with the exception of descreening, I did not clean the scans at all. The pictures were scanned in at 300dpi (half the usual 600dpi), but the pictures in this post are 50% resized. Full resolution PNGs. Again, I take no responsibility for your wasting 240MB of bandwidth, and cannot guarantee release-level quality.

23 comments

23 Comments so far

  1. 言风剑 April 23rd, 2008 1:06 pm

    Thanks for so many Moe girls

  2. Zeroblade April 24th, 2008 2:37 am

    Awesome. If I remember correctly, dovac got this artbook too.

  3. Youko April 24th, 2008 8:01 am

    Wow, it really does seem like a worthwhile artbook! I’ve always loved her works and her style. Thanks for the images!

  4. dovac April 24th, 2008 3:32 pm

    Yeah I got the artbook, lack of time is hampering me from doing much with it……

  5. icie April 25th, 2008 1:46 am

    Don’t you just love it when people repack your stuff and then torrent it like it’s the complete artbook? I noticed it on Tokyo Toshokan and followed it here:
    http://www.nyaatorrents.org/?page=torrentinfo&tid=16838

    dmhy.net…that’s some Chinese place isn’t it? And yeah, those are the scans from this review. I checked.

    Meh.

  6. John April 25th, 2008 7:31 pm

    I want to get this art book, however I looked on Amazon and could not find it.

    If it is not too much hassle could you give me the link to Amazon where it is located?

  7. icie April 25th, 2008 7:44 pm

    http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/404853999X

  8. John April 25th, 2008 8:01 pm

    まいど　ありがとう　ございます

  9. Serene April 25th, 2008 11:28 pm

    *Starts aiming at the artbook*

  10. michael April 27th, 2008 3:39 am

    I know that there are two other artbooks sold recently, see if you are interested in it. (But I haven’t bought them yet due to insufficient amount of money)

    http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4840242364

    http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4840122008

    By the way, I have bought Chronicle also, it is really awesome.

  11. icie April 27th, 2008 4:04 pm

    michael: heh, yeah I got both of them. I got est from kinokuniya and also the other one I might be reviewing soon.

  12. aoie_emesai May 22nd, 2008 7:52 am

    Mutsumi Sasaki’s Est was good but the last 1/3 of the book is from her 1999-2005 Illustration book. Was sorta hoping for some new illustration, but I’m not disappointed from this book or Hiro’s book.

  13. Lucas June 8th, 2008 7:27 am

    There is any forme to dowload this complete ? Thanks

  14. icie June 8th, 2008 7:46 am

    I’m afraid you might have to buy the book.

  15. Kevin June 13th, 2008 1:26 pm

    Based on your review and pix, I picked this book up. Very nice. Thanks. BTW, since you seem to a lot of artists, I saw this pix on another forum. Do you happen to know the artist. I like his/her style.

    http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b231/JKLimage/Random/1204036264856.jpg

  16. icie June 13th, 2008 1:50 pm

    That’s a great picture but unfortunately I’ve never seen it before and I can’t pick the style and artist. *sigh* There are so many artists that I got a nosebleed going through my bookmarks the other day.

  17. Natsume July 7th, 2008 7:56 am

    I love this artbook *-*
    i buy it in duesseldorf at the japanday
    suzuhira hiro is my idol and my favorite mangaka
    the only thing that is very stupid for me is that here in germany are not so much drawings of her q.q
    the wingend girl in the white kimono is my favorite drawing…i make a cosplay of her…^^

  18. raito August 20th, 2008 12:59 am

    Hello again.

    I’m really confused either I must thank to God or curse my bandwidth. Your site is truly BANG for scan collector for me(Buying from Amazon is definitely pain for my pocket). But again the bandwidth here very-very limited. Looks like it will need more than 3 months to collect what I need.

    Anyway I just wanna give my thank to you.

  19. When I was in Sakura Media yesterday, I saw… « Calamitous Intent September 2nd, 2008 2:44 pm

    [...] Suzuhira’s Chronicle, Aoi Nanase’s 7 colors of the wind, Ito Noizi’s Guren (by the way, I actually bought [...]

  20. tivaro27 aka asri October 10th, 2008 3:20 pm

    Moe …. I luv it! A new artworks of him huh???

  21. Zeb March 28th, 2009 3:32 pm

    I am not a huge fan of the moe style, but I think this is an artbook I will be getting. Thanks for the awesome review!

  22. Hunting the Elusive » Review: Murakami Suigun’s Lily White September 20th, 2009 2:27 pm

    [...] the frills and flying hair and soft colours in the tradition of Aoi Nanase’s Angel Flavor and Hiro Suzuhira’s Chronicle. If you don’t get the similarities in cover illustrations, don’t worry. It’s just I have a [...]

  23. Petit Jeuness 1/6 PVC figure Pink ver. by Petit Jeuness December 19th, 2009 7:33 pm

    [...] Takeshi Miyagawa, which is from Clayz manufacture. Sculpted base on Suzuhira Hiro art book – Chronicle. This figure will be release by Petit Jeuness, 1/6 scaled, PVC & ABS (including the display [...]

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