"Hardcover Artbook met mooie heldere platen" by Lizzy Claessen (Nederland) on Dec 15, 2004

Ik kreeg dit artbook voor Sinterklaas en het is prachtig.
Mooie hardcover voor- en achterkant met gouden letters, groot formaal, groter dan A-4, het paste zelfs niet in mijn boekenkast.
Veel levendige kleurtjes, de meeste tekeningen beslaan 1 pagina, sommige strekken zich uit over 2 bladzijdes, altijd jammer van die vouw in het midden ^^.
Het enige minpunt vond ik dat ik alle plaatjes al eens eerder ergens heb gezien, er stond niets super exclusiefs in.
Al met al toch een heel mooi artbook, de Franse tekst achterin valt ook nog wel te begrijpen. En voor de prijs hoef je het ook niet te laten, een mooie aanvulling voor je collectie!

"A great edition for this artbook - shame there has never been more." by V. Krätke (Netherlands) on Feb 2, 2004

Glénat were going in the right direction with this solid hardcover artbook. It makes one wonder why they never bothered to release any more Sailor Moon artbooks in French after this really rather good first attempt. It`s possible that they were planning to - it sais'Vol.1' on the cover and the spine quite clearly, but there have never been any further books.

Which is a shame, as this edition pushes all the right buttons to make for a pleasing artbook. In fact, my only beef with this edition is that the cover illustration looks like it was enlarged from its original size to better fit the cover. This makes the cover image look a little too blurry for comfort. But apart from this nitpick, everything fits right into place. The sturdy hard cover with the title in elegant foil-like shiny gold letters is very inviting, and the art within is brought to life on thick, high quality paper. It's the kind of quality treatment I wish would be bestowed upon contemporary manga art more often in translated works. And despite not skimping on the luxury treatment, this book originally retailed for a little under one hundred French francs, which is a very attractive price. Available now at a fraction of that original cost if you look in the right places, this is a solid buy, and one you don't need to hesitate about if you're a fan of Takeuchi's art, or if you like cute shojo art in general.

Content-wise, there are over fifty pages of color illustrations from roughly the first three volumes of the Sailor Moon manga in here. So the illustrations within are from early days, both for Takeuchi's art in general and for her Sailor Moon characters. This is evident in some illustrations that suffer from clumsy anatomy or moments where the art doesn't do a lot to stand out from just a run of the mill shojo look. Takeuchi's art improved a lot and gained a more personal touch as Sailor Moon went on. That's not to say these early efforts are bad by a long stretch, though. Vivid compositions and a wide variety of colors make for some very sweet, lively art, with a lot of more soft-toned, subtle illustrations as well. It's all very pretty and colourful, which makes occasional anatomic goofs easy to overlook. Just enjoy basking in the sweet pastel tones instead.

For the Sailor Moon enthusiast, some glimpses at early concepts for Sailor Moon's design are also pretty interesting (and check out the little comic strips where Takeuchi pokes fun at the anime). The book ends with Takeuchi's notes on each of the drawings within. They seem less informative than her notes in the German artbooks that I've seen, which may be due to the French translation (also note that the characters are referred to by their names as altered for the French manga), but having the artist's notes translated for you is nice all the same.

If you like this sort of art, there can be no harm in picking up this beautifully made book. Loyal Moonies may also want to keep this edition in mind as an alternative to the often more rare and expensive German or Japanese editions of this same artbook. It's a pretty piece, and I really wish Takeuchi's further artbooks could've been published in a similiarly nice hardcover-with-gold-foil French format as well. But since this will probably remain the only one of its kind, lap it up.