When was announced, I decided to not purchase it because was way too expensive (13,000 yen) for the little extras that offered: an outer case; a cd with the pics of the book; 2 posters of Rei and Asuka; 2 reprint pictures and Sadamoto’s talks with Hosoda Mamoru (director of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars), Tsurumaki Kazuya (director of FLCL and Top Wo Nerae 2) and Anno Hideaki (director of Evangelion).
When I read in EvaGeeks that this limited edition included the contents from the previously released artbooks of Sadamoto, I hurried to order it on Amazon.co.jp.
To afford that step price, I canceled my preorders on Rei & Asuka Maid version by Kotobukiya (;_;) but the worst of it is that Carmine doesn't contains his previous artbooks and was just a misunderstanding from EvaGeeks people...It was odd that the official page didn't said anything about any compilation, but when I read that info I taked it as true because that would explain that extremely pricey tag...
The book itself is nice. Is the 3rd atrbook by Sadamoto and 10 years had passed since the last one was released.
The first one was called Alpha, was released in 1993 and was focused in his main work at the moment, Fushigi no Umi no Nadia. Also it was my first purchase on-line.
The second one was Der Mond, released just in the popularity peak of Shin Seiki Evangelion, in 1999.
This book contains his main illustrations for Evangelion (mostly the DVDs covers and the color pages from the manga from volume 5 onwards), the promotional material for The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars, the covers for the .hack games (both the first series and G.U.) and his works for the rest of Gainax productions (FLCL, Top Wo Nerae 2 and just 2 pics for Fushigi no Umi no Nadia). There's a total of 102 pictures.
Since the artbook came with a CD with the pics, I can upload some of it without taking crappy photos.
I'm happy with the artbook because Sadamoto is my favorite character designer since 1993, but the problem with the book are the "extra" contents. Let's see:-Hard cover and outer case. Pointless addition. And since I have space problems both here and in Spain, I rather prefer a softcover version...
- 30 pages of Sadamoto’s talks. Again pretty much pointless, since I'm buying an artbook and not a magazine. More useless if you don't even understand Japanese
-2 reprint pictures. Sounds cool, but are just 2 illustrations from the book printed on card stock. Again, pointless.
-A cd containing the pics of the book. More useful than the previous ones.
-2 posters of Rei and Asuka. This is the best extra, but even with it, it doesn't explain the over-priced set. I can't take pictures of them because I want to keep sealed until my arrival at Spain (to make sure that they don't bend during the trip) so I put a pic taken from Eva Kinkyuu News blog:
Carmine will be released as a "normal edition" later this year for about 3,000 yen, so I can't recommend this "limited edition" even if you are a hardcore collector like me, because 10,000 yen are wasted...
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