Nanao Naru – Rainbow-colored IceCream (Kadokawa, 2005) – My Comment

Nanao Naru is an illustrator whose character designs have been used in many visual novels and their adaptations. These include Ef: A Fairy Tale of the Two (and both Shaft studio adaptations), Sola, Da Capo, Canvas 2: Niji-iro no Sketch, Shuffle! and Wind -A Breath of Heart-. Rainbow-colored IceCream contains quite a few original illustrations that have appeared in various magazines or doujin circle publications founded by the author, Ice to Choco, but also some of the titles mentioned above. Sources for each drawing are given on the final pages.

Rainbow-colored IceCream is nearly 110 pages in A4 format. It has no fold-out pages. The quality of the printing as well as the paper itself is exemplary. Many illustrations fill the full pages. The content is divided into several sections called ice cream flavors (referring to the title). The artbook consists of 95% of the author’s work. There are no interviews in it, and the text is kept to a minimum.

What charms me personally in Nanao Naru’s style? I’d say everything, but if I really had to pay attention to something, it would definitely be the eyes. I really miss something like that in the general character design used nowadays. Very detailed drawn hair and the unearthly good, strongly contrasted shading which perfectly shows two pages in the picture below:

Is it worth making a purchase? If you’re a fan of Nanao Naru’s style, there’s no need to even think about it. The artbook is an excellent compilation of the artist’s works from those years, the print quality is superb and the A4 format does the job well.

Nanao Naru – Rainbow-colored IceCream (Kadokawa, 2005) – Show off

Before I show a dozen photos of the artbook contents, a quick glance at the outside page rolled up in a high quality wrapper, which was further protected by a printed foil cover to protect the wrapper.

And this is how the artbook looks like without the wrapper:

Photos