I've always wondered what an artist does when she has reached the pinnacle of her style. Does she start over, perfecting a new and unique style, or continue on that same path? Is it about challenging oneself and experimentation or more about guaranteed success? I can't help but think that while looking at Kaori Minakami's newest release, Caprice, which while it is beautiful certainly feels like it lacks inspiration even in comparison to her slim Comiket 78 release.

Caprice is B5-sized, full-color and 28-pages including the covers. The cover is gorgeous, featuring a butterfly winged girl on a magenta theme, and that illustration is also repeated inside without the title text. After that though, the art work is more of a standard fare, with some commercial illustrations from how-to book series like Let's Make ★ Character.

As most of these illustrations came from Kaori Minakami's participation in others' compilation and tutorial books, there isn't an intentional theme to the works, although there are a lot of wings. And to put things in perspective, a lot of the illustrations in this book are older than her works from Corsetier meets the Fairy Tales, which was newly drawn for the convention.

Though most of the illustrations receive a full page, there are some smaller and rougher illustrations fit to half a pages. There are also a couple of Moyashimon fan arts of the bacteria, which are pretty cute. Though ultimately, there's nothing really wrong with Caprice, I'm just feeling a little tired of seeing what I'd expect, and hoping to see Kaori Minakami return to pushing the creative limits, like she did in her Mixture Vocaloid Fan Book.

• Title: Caprice
• タイトル: Caprice
• Pages: 28 (including covers)
• Release date: 2010/12/31
• Buy: eBay, Toranoana