Kimishima Ao – Bloomin’ (Kadokawa, 2022) – My Comment
Kimishima Ao is the artist responsible for character designs for many visual novels. Both the more famous ones and the lesser known ones. He has also designed several covers for CD singles. The publication contains a lot of original artwork, but also graphics from, for example, Rewrite (Key), Summer Pockets (Key), Koi x Shin Ai Kanojo and Einstein Yori Ai o Komete. Almost every page is filled to the brim with prints. Many pages feature Kimishima Ao’s artwork on two full A4 (or A3) pages – as in the photo below. The print quality is (as usual) phenomenal, the colors are very vibrant, and Kimishima Ao’s artwork in Bloomin’ itself is really a joy to look at.
The release featured in this review is a limited edition. Artbook is packaged in a cardboard box here and comes with a bonus sketch book. The whole thing is 144 A4-size pages and is priced at ¥5,000. At the very end you’ll find an interesting interview with the author Bloomin’ (entirely in Japanese) and pages of footnotes about each illustration. Among other things, there are brief comments from the author and who the illustration depicts. There is also information about the origin of the graphic and possibly where the artwork was originally published.
Bloomin’ is, in my opinion, an important item in the collection of any fan of Kimishima Ao’s style and the visual novels for which he created the character designs.
Kimishima Ao – Bloomin (Kadokawa, 2022) – Show Off
Before I show a dozen photos of the artbook’s contents, a quick glance at the exterior. Since a separate book with sketches is also included, the whole thing is enclosed in a cardboard box.
The artbook is rolled in a high-quality wrapper and obi. The cover differs slightly from the illustration on the outer package.
After removing the wrapper from the obi, again the same illustration, only without color.
This is how the add-on with sketches looks like.
Gallery
Artbook
A Book of Sketches
