Akasa Ai – Red Queen (Kadokawa, 2022) – My Comment

The artbook named Red Queen published by Kadokawa is a collection of original illustrations by Akasa Ai. It counts 128 A4-size pages printed in full color on excellent quality paper. Print quality is impressive – especially when viewing the whole thing live. The publication is divided into eight chapters. The penultimate one shows the author’s creative process, while the last two pages show thumbnails of all the pages.

I’ve been following the creator himself on pixiv for quite some time. As soon as I saw that an artbook featuring his work was to be released, I immediately pre-ordered. Red Queen is the first official publication by this creator in artbook form. All others were available in the form of doujins sold at Comiket – most depicted girls from the Kantai Collection.

The content definitely did not disappoint me. Most of the illustrations fill almost full pages. More than half is devoted to the theme of girls dressed in sailor outfits, especially the red-haired Houshou Marin in various poses and outfits showing off her charms. Houshou Marin is one of the Virtual YouTubers included in Holo Live, for which Akasa Ai is responsible for the design. Unfortunately, I don’t sit in the topic of VTubers at all, so I can’t say more about the character herself. However, I must admit that the design of this character is simply sensational.

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Before we move to the gallery, where you can see some photos of the artbook’s contents, let me show you how it looks from the outside.

This is how it looks in the wrapper:

And without:

Photos