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I got Carmine in the mail today. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s latest art book arrived in a hefty limited edition box. Paying for art is one thing, but at 13,000 Yen you had better be sure you really like Sadamoto’s work.

It’s been a while since I last bought any anime related merchandise, but being a fan of Sadamoto’s art, I couldn’t pass this one up. I’m a fan of physical merchandise, and having Sadamoto’s works collected in this volume is very appealing to me despite the price.

This package contains the book itself in a keep case, a CD with digital reproductions of the artwork, 2 posters (Rei and Asuka), and 2 prints of Sadamoto’s art (Rei and Diebuster’s Nono). Having bought Der Mond and Die Sterne, the contents of Carmine were about what I expected—very Evangelion-centric.

This is certainly not a comprehensive collection of Sadamoto’s art, but it does contain newer works that don’t show up in his other art books. .Hack is well represented here, and Toki Wo Kakeru Shoujo is present but I would have liked to see more. Sadamoto is also working on Mamoru Hosoda’s (Toki Wo Kakeru Shoujo) Summer Wars, and a brief glimpse of that is shown.

Yoshiyuki Sadamoto is one of my favorite anime-related artists. His style is distinctive, and has a certain solidity and corporealness—as if his subjects were sculpted onto the page. His compositions are vibrant in hue and his varied perspectives keep the images interesting. If I had to single out one quality I like most, it would be that his art seems to lie somewhere between traditional painting and CGI. You can feel the weight of brush strokes in his lines and coloring job, but the way the colors mix and flow into one another are hallmarks of CGI.

This limited edition of Carmine is probably only going to get more expensive with time. It is certainly more of a collector’s item than a collection of fine art. Sitting on the shelf, next to Die Sterne and Der Mond, Carmine is looking pretty good.

Tags: Yoshiyuki Sadamoto