Forum member @Lilu has brought to our attention that earlier this week, Key announced an item that would be made available for sale at the Key 15th Fes: an A4 size artbook by Na-Ga titled ~rindou~ Na-Ga Art Works. The book will feature artwork of the cast of Little Busters!, Kud Wafter, Angel Beats! and Charlotte. The book will likely be made available for purchase to the general public at a later date, but a special 'Luxury Binding Edition' will be selling exclusively at Key 15th Fes, valued at „8000. They seem to be strongly emphasizing the quality of the binding, so you can expect it to be very high quality at that price. While that price may sound exorbitant to some, it may interest you to know that this edition will be packaged with an English & French commentary booklet. What exactly the booklet may contain remains yet to be known, but it's very humbling as international fans to finally be receiving some acknowledgement from Key! Who knows, this may be a sign that the luxury binding edition may be made available for purchase at Key's international event appearances: Chara Expo in Singapore, Japan Expo Paris and Anime Expo in Los Angeles. For more information about the slew of events Key will be attending in the coming months, view this post.
Hm, yeah, it never occurred to me that the French and English commentary are very likely because they plan to sell it overseas. I always thought it was kind of weird for them to choose French instead of something like Spanish, but considering the state-of-events, it makes a lot of sense now!
Finally, waited for a Na-Ga artbook, heâs my favorite artist. And it contains the image of Kud and Rin wearing garterbelts, which is one of the last pictures I still need to add to my art collection. Canât wait to see that picture finally in good resolution.
To bad Paris is still quite far away for me to buy the bookâŠmaybe if Jun Maeda is coming in person Iâll go there and buy the book.
They just posted the industrial stuff about the copying of said books. It seems like it will have basically everything na-ga drew. You can see the ABOW drawings as well. And the quality on the paper just seems so neat. RIP emergency fundsâŠ
Key will be releasing an illustration book called ç«èïœrindouïœNa-Ga Art Works for Key 15th Fes which will feature Na-Gaâs works for Angel Beats!, Charlotte, Little Busters!, and Kud Wafter. The book will be somewhere around 8,000 yen and apparently there might be an English and French commentary booklet included with it (?).
You can find more detailed info with some preview pages for this here.
The version being sold here is the âlimited luxury editionâ, similar to how the original first edition of Itaru Hinoueâs âWhite Cloverâ art book was sold. If the releases of that book are any indication, the initial release will be sold in limited quantities at the event and will ultimately be sold out. A few months down the road, a subsequent edition will likely be released with potentially limited release specialty sub-volumes coming after that. The releases of âWhite Cloverâ were as follows:
Limited first edition release, serially numbered hardcover in display packaging
Replacement edition for first edition books with bad binding (First edition books with binding problems could be swapped out for a replacement hardcover book)
Softcover retail edition (w/ Komari on cover)
Name changed to âWhite Clover: Itaru Hinoue Art Works 1â (white cover background)
Limited âArt Studioâ event release of IHAW1 featuring a fully illustrated cover background
Note that the âItaru Hinoue Art Worksâ releases should not be confused with the âItaru Hinoue Art Collectionâ book released in 2006. Long story short, even if you donât get a copy of the original edition at the event, my bet would be that you should be able to get a re-release sometime over the next year or so.
While cheaper versions are likely to be released, this is sure to be a popular piece for collectors. Like White Clover, most of the 150 illustrations should take up full pages, so there will be a lot of content in the book, likely including interviews and some other bonus material as well.
Did you just say 150 illustrations?? And if most of them take up full pages⊠that means over 100 pages⊠Oh man that is super tempting :/. Also I donât imagine the regular edition being much cheaper than like 1k or 2k yen since the luxurious edition is 8k with only fancy bindings to the book.
I would expect any subsequent releases to be priced about „4,000 - „5,000. For reference, the early editions of Hinoueâs White Clover were 168 pages with the later ones having a couple more.
Yeah I like Na-ga but 8k is waaaaay too much XD I donât like Na-ga that much. I personally will wait for the cheaper regular edition if I ever do buy it haha
Wait a minute⊠Maybe Jun Maeda was cruel and abusive towards Na-Ga in the fact that Jun didnât let him draw Matsushita. Thus causing his audience and fan base to feel bad for the poor drawer. Then Jun saw the perfect opportunity to milk the empathetic fan base and release an overprice art book, knowing that people would buy it just because it was Na-Ga. ITS A CONSPIRACY!
