Hunting the Elusive

Also known as the Headphones Catalogue and Guidebook, this 1800 yen volume is in many ways an official book follow-up to the original Headphone Guide for Autumn 2007, which was supposedly a doujin release. It includes many (possibly all) of the illustrations from that book, plus a whole lot more. For those who are unfamiliar with what the concept is, the Headphone Reader is basically a collection of illustrations of girls wearing various RL headphones. The more serious content is non-pictorial: detailed reviews and information about each headphone, which has been tested and analysed by the author, and a variety of music, anime, and eroge industry insiders, along with help from Stax and Sony. [Download: PNG Full Size Archive]

This makes the Headphone Reader an invaluable resource for the audiophiles – but only if they can read Japanese.

Like the previous edition, the two sides of the book are endowed with a headphone-wearing girl, seen from both the front and the back. The jacket illustration conceals the actual cover, which has the same illustration as the original illustration.

I am pretty happy they decided to release this book to the wider audience, especially since I missed out on buying the original, because it covers so much of the original material.

Here are all the headphones featured in the book, alongside the names of the illustrators.

To evaluate the headphones, testers must listen to a variety of music on them. Note how a lot of the music is from anime and games and jpop artists, although there are some “Western” music as well. I also noticed some recent stuff, such as the Macross Frontier music, which is win.

There are 45 illustrations of girls with headphones (along with a detailed page of information and review), as opposed to the 26 of the original. Included are reviews of a number of amplifiers which are at the end of the book.

I have compared the scans from the two books and can conclude that all the previous pictures are in this new volume, although one or two pictures exhibit differences.

I am pretty chuffed by the amount and quality of the new material. KEI for example is one of the new artists in this volume.

The guy on the left is a STRANGER! No seriously, he has no eyes.

And yesh, it’s Konoe Ototsugu from CLOSET child, modelling the AKG K172HD, which from the looks of it is the second generation of the K172. My preferred portable phones, the K171, does not make an appearance here. I love the rocker look.

The Nia-like look cannot be missed. I haven’t done research for this, but is that the same artist as the one who did that particular character in Gurren Lagann?

ABe Yoshitoshi – I’m not a fan, but it’s a fairly big name they got in for this book.

The Tsurusaki Takahiro illustration might have been changed. From what I could see, the original had a green summer dress. Wonder why they changed it.

Rich person listening to classical music with big headphones \o/

Amplifiers!

A little comments section at the end of the book with stuff from the artists. Actually, before this section there were interviews with the staff who were involved in the book, but too much text for me.

I must say, other than the pictures, I really liked the style of how the book is laid out. The almost minimalist/digital use of fonts and blocks and lines give it a very clean and elegant look.

So is this book a good buy? I say YES, for a few reasons.

1) Piss off those elite people who bought the first book and flaunted it before us.

2) Piss off those bastards on Yahoo Auctions flogging the first book for princely ransoms.

3) A very wide variety of artists and styles – though not all the styles were really to my taste, I must say there has been a lot of moe, so it works. Especially effective if you have a girls-with-headphones fetish.

4) An insightful look into the variety of headphones out there, some of which have outlandish prices. Get used to it.

5) If you can read Japanese, the audiophile information would come in useful. They also have a simplified ratings system on how the headphones sound and how they deal with various elements of music.