#if any of you have ever seen my character art for keika

[milf-harrington]

AWW YEEAAA I FOUND MY VAMPIRE SHIRT

[hisazuki]

I read you are getting the new AnY fanbook! I received mine today and it is beautiful! I like everything Yona related. But I really liked the book. I still don’t understand the whole thing, since I’ve been only studying japanese for a year. But someday I will! You were the reason I find the courage to start studying this amazing language so thanks a lot!!!!! And I wanted to ask you since you usually know all the kind of info. How many AnY artbooks exists? I want to try and find one

Thank you! Reading your message makes me very happy

I’ll take this opportunity to answer about all Kusanagi artbooks and not necessarily only the AnY ones, since I’ve been asked this often in private asks and never took the chance to post everything on this blog.

There are only 3 books that are officially labeled as “artbooks” or “illustration books”, but I believe anything with a significant amount of color illustrations can be counted as an “artbook” too.

0. Self-published (doujinshi) fanart artbook - August 18th, 2007

This doujin artbook was published under Kusanagi’s pseudonym Keika and contains color fanarts from the following series: Detective Conan, One Piece, The 12 Kingdoms and Laputa the Castle in the Sky. You can find more information and a few scans on my doujin blog.

1. NG Life booklets for signing events (Yokohama, then Fukuoka on June 28th, 2009)

The first illustration book Kusanagi ever released about one of her professional works was a mini NG Life artbook she made (and printed herself, I believe) for an autograph session in Yokohama. She mentions it on her blog but doesn’t give a specific date for the event (it happened before she opened her blog). She mentions making another booklet with rough pencil sketches for the June 28th autograph session in Fukuoka. The post she made about it has a picture of sketches that weren’t included in the booklet. Both booklets are extremely rare and I couldn’t find any information about them apart from what Kusanagi has written on her blog. I believe, though I have no proof, that some of the sketches on her webclap are from those booklets.

2. First Collection artbook - freebie from The Hana to Yume 3/1 2014

This artbook was included as a gift in the 3/1 2014 issue of The Hana to Yume magazine. It includes color illustrations from the series Mugen Spiral, Yoiko no Kokoroe, NG Life, Game x Rush and Akatsuki no Yona. They’re mostly clean versions of titles pages published in Hana to Yume magazine, and there are also a clean cover illustration as well as a calendar illustration. A preview of the artbook can be seen here.

3. Mini AnY fanbook - freebie from The Hana to Yume 3/1 2015

This AnY fanbook has information about the characters and reprints of some anime key illustrations, manga title pages, twitter sketches and fanart by Berserk mangaka Kentaro Miura. I’ve posted complete scans on this blog.

4. AnY postcard book - freebie from The Hana to Yume 3/1 2016

The freebie has 8 postcards made from clean reprints of cover and title page illustrations from both Hana to Yume and The Hana to Yume magazines. I’ve scanned them all: first part & second part.

5. AnY sketchbook - freebie from Hana to Yume issue 8/2016

It has 7 pages of exclusive color illustrations, 5 pages of promotional B&W illustrations/comics reprints and 4 pages of pencil sketches of the cast as baseball players. I’ve scanned it in two parts.

6. AnY “Secret sketchbook” - included in the limited edition of volume 20, out on March 18th, 2016

This sketchbook has 5 pages of color illustrations, 46 pages of rough pencil sketches from Kusanagi’s twitter or blog (including new ones) and 2 pages of promotional B&W illustrations reprints. I haven’t scanned it yet.

7. AnY message cards collection - freebie from The Hana to Yume 3/1 2017

This mini booklet has 4 postcards made from title page illustrations, with chibi characters at the back. They’re not clean art but all include friendly messages. You can see preview pictures here.

8. AnY illustrations - included in the limited edition of volume 23, out on April 20th, 2017

This artbook has 58 pages of AnY color illustrations, including title pages, volume and magazine covers, promotional art, calendar and freebie illustrations, and bluray covers & postcards. I’ve posted a complete preview here.

9. AnY rough sketch collection - lottery prize in Hana to Yume magazine issue 18/2017

There isn’t much information about this lottery prize. It’s a B5 booklet that has rough pen(cil) sketches inside. Kusanagi tweeted about it and posted its cover. According to the magazine, it has 30 pages of preparatory sketches for the Xing arc chapters (including failed sketches of color illustrations) and 2 pages of bonus comic pages. 

10. Debut 15th anniversary artbook - freebie from Hana to Yume issue 12/2018

It has 26 pages of color illustrations from the following series: Akatsuki no Yona, Yoiko no Kokoroe, NG Life and Boku no Kotori-san. They’re clean illustrations from title pages, magazine and manga volume or sketchbook cover art, freebie art (calendars, clear files) and twitter art. I’ve scanned it here: part 1 - part 2 - part 3.

11. AnY fanbook - out on November 20th, 2018

The fanbook includes 16 pages of color illustrations from Kusanagi’s twitter or blog (birthday illustrations mostly), special events (signing sessions, AnY cafe, bookstore promotional art) and magazine exclusive art like New Year cards or lottery shikishi prizes. It also has 6 pages of rough pencil sketches, new 4koma shorts, reprints of B&W promotional art, and 2 new bonus short comics. I haven’t scanned them yet but you can find a translation of the table of contents here.

I haven’t mentioned the B&W doujinshi compilations of rough sketches Kusanagi drew for her favorite series under her doujinka pseudonyms. You’ll find more information about them here & here on my doujin blog.