iDOLM@STER 2 Official Guide Book

Keeping with the delayed reviews, next is THE iDOLM@STER 2 Official Guide Book, released in March.

Despite the overly nice picture in the cover, this guidebook is awful, and the worst of it is that is the "official" one. I expected a book like iDOLM@STER SP Producer's Guide, but this is lacking all the aspects of a guidebook and is mostly a very bad photobook of sorts.

The first part is centered in each of the nine playable girls:

Basic profile with the official art. The quality of the pictures included is pretty bad (especially the Master Artist 2 one in the top left) with visible compression artifact.

Probably the best part of the book are the interviews with the voice actress, along a nice photo of each. In the picture Hara Yumi (Takane).

The last part consists in some screenshots from the game, a chart of how characters call each others and a bunch of random outfits displayed (changes for each idol). The screenshots from the outfits are taken directly from the game, with awful quality and badly jagged edges.

Ritsuko gets a summarized version, with only two pages...

...but Ryuugu Komachi girls doesn't have as much luck and all three are covered in only two pages.

The outfit and accesory gallery is a complete joke, badly organized, incomplete and again with jagged edges and compression artifact.

The last part that explains the game mechanics is pretty much the same information that appears in the instruction booklet from the game, using even the same graphics.

Overall a guidebook to avoid because not only is useless as a guide but also fails as artbook, character reference and pretty much anything.

Fate/EXTRA Perfect Guide

With pages like GameFAQs or the thousand of wikis, a guidebook for a videogame is unnecessary, so most of them are more an artbook rather than a guidebook, featuring character art, endings, rough sketches...
Sadly, Fate/EXTRA Perfect Guide is a guidebook in the more strict sense.

I expected a gallery section with early design and sketches, or at least the screenshots of each Servant when they explain their lives, but this guidebook doesn't include any "Gallery" section, all the screen shots are in thumbnail format and most of the characters portraits are the same that appears in the user's manual.

The first part shows the characters with a brief explanation for each.

The stats page for each of the 3 playable Servants.

Most of the guide is like this: a "what to do" list, a map, and the info about the regular enemies.

The "exciting" page to the right is all the info available in the guidebook about the final boss.

The last part, called "Extra", is the in-game info about each Servant... without including their real names or they backgrounds.

Melty Blood Actress Again Koushiki Complete Guide

Melty Blood Actress Again Koushiki Complete Guide is the last guidebook for Melty Blood. It was released in September but I received it a couple of days ago. HobbyLink Japan had it on back-ordered status all this time...


I pretty much purchased every single guidebook for this series until now, even if most of the time the contents are almost identical...

All the Melty Blood Guidebooks that I have.

The previously released one was for the arcade version and didn't even included the bio for Dust of Osiris, but is included in this guidebook:

Of course includes all the info for the PS2 port extra characters:

Princess Arcueid (Archetype-Earth) moveset. Too bad that is just a buffed Arcueid and only uses the dress and the long hair at the beggining of the round and in the victory pose.

Ryougi Shiki and school uniform Akiha story script.

G Akiha in Boss Rush mode. Her moveset was really improved, now is not an Apocalypse clone anymore.

To tell the truth, I didn't played the PS2 version of Melty Blood Actress Again that much, and I really feel that Melty Blood series is now somewhat burnout... Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code, right now in arcade location test phase, most likely will be the last installment in the series (and most likely ported to PC).

THE iDOLM@STER SP Producer's Guide

Today is April Fools' but I'm not going to do any joke, because is not a tradition in the Spanish speaking countries (our "prank day" is December 28).

Yesterday I bought THE iDOLM@STER SP Producer's Guide (Enterbrain, 1995 yen).

Since this is my first iM@S guidebook, I can't compare with the previously released ones, but I feel that the contents are a bit lacking...

The first part consist in character profiles, with a nice pic of each girl.

Lovely Takane.

After the description of the game mechanics, the book is divided into each idol.

"Idol upbringing" and "Tension management" sections are only a brief advice for each.

And each girl have a complete list of the Communication events. It doesn't give the correct answers but an explanation of the event. Includes if the event gives an e-mail or not.

For each girl is included a photo with every costume, and includes an accesory list:


At the end there's a couple of interviews, one with iM@S staff and the other with the voice actresses Imai Asami (Chihaya), Nakamura Eriko (Haruka), Shimoda Asami (Ami-Mami), Numakura Manami (Hibiki), Hara Yumi (Takane) and Hasegawa Akiko (Miki).

Chara☆Mel 8 & MELTY BLOOD Guidebook

Yesterday I purchased Chara☆Mel magazine and MELTY BLOOD Actress Again Kouryaku Guide.


I purchased Chara☆Mel because the extra dvd contained a CANAAN preview, but it just contains a few seconds of previously unseen material. I uploaded it on YouTube:

The magazine contains a few pages with info about it. Is scheduled to air this summer.

There's also a few pages for Idolmaster SP, specifically Hibiki.


Until today, I bought every single MELTY BLOOD Guide Book released, mostly for the in-game cuts than the strategic/movelist part.
I was hoping for Dust of Osiris (the new final boss) full body pics and dialogue portraits, but her cuts are missing. I supose they are waiting to release in another guidebook (Ichijinsha released 3 different guidebooks for Act Cadenza...)

At least it have all the endings: