One Voice: Shunya Yamashita Works III

More familiar faces finally
After mentioning it in the review of "Wild Flower: Shunya Yamashita Works II" in early January, I think I have been holding back on the third book's introduction long enough till now. ^^;



Called "One Voice", this third compilation art book of Shunya Yamashita's work is really of no difference than "Wild Flower" in terms of its publication details: it's A4-sized, with 128 pages in total featuring full colors illustrations, black-and-white line arts and certain sections showing the combination of line arts with some simple colors applied. Released in July 2010, two years after "Wild Flower", the price of 2,940 Yen (inclusive of tax) is 40 Yen more than the second book, but that's hardly a major difference worth screaming about I believe. ^^



Even the girl's pose in holding her weapon on the front cover is very similar between the two books. ^^

As before, all the illustrations are categorized into different sections. Due to merchandising of Shunya Yamashita's illustrated characters, certain sections in "Wild Flower" like "The Original Works for Card Games" and "The Original Works for Web & T-Shirt" are no longer included in this book. To be fair, they are very minor sections in that book anyway. Replacing the missing sections is the single "The Original Works for Books & the Other", which pretty much encompasses all "miscellaneous" work of Shunya Yamashita selected for this book. ^^ As a result of fewer segments in total, the number of art work included for the major segments of unpublished work and figurine illustrations is higher than those respective segments in "Wild Flower". ^^

























Yoko from "Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann" is a nice surprise in the "miscellaneous" section. ^^

Overall, there are a lot more illustrations that I know of in this book as compared to "Wild Flower", most which are in the "The Original Works for Figure" segment. Kotobukiya launched the Marvel Bishoujo series with in May 2009, about a year before this book was published. All the figurine illustrations of the characters included in that series, starting with the pilot Black Widow up till Phoenix (released just one month before the book was published) are included. So the book is pretty "up-to-date" with the releases from Kotobukiya's Marvel Bishoujo series. ^^ Then again, Shunya Yamashita's image of Soryu Asuka Langley, which was released by Yamato as a resin kit in the same month as this book is also included. So the merchandises' release dates are not too important for consideration here I guess. The illustrations were most likely with the figurine departments of the different companies already when the editorial work on the work first began.

Interestingly, Hattori Kiriko Ninja Ver. which was given a large scale figurine treatment was categorized under both "The Unpublished Works" and "The Original Works for Figure". The figurine was released in late March 2010, just a few months before this art book came out. Shunya Yamashita was most likely still working on the character and related illustrations when the the selection of his work for the book had finished. The editorial work was perhaps been concluded at that time as well, and the book was ready for printing. ^^


Rear cover
The same tagline of "Wanna see me more?" is repeated from "Wild Flower". Unfortunately, even though I do want to see more, this third book is so far the last one in the series and there's no news on a fourth one coming in soon. ^^; I certainly hope there's some editorial work going on all this while in preparing the release of the fourth book. Shunya Yamashita's illustrated girls, ahem, I mean work in general deserves all the appreciation it can get and needs to see more publication. ^o^