For COMITIA 96, which was held at the beginning of May, Shirabii released a full-color original illustration collection titled L.i.F. Life is Free. Though it's a shorter doujinshi, all of the illustrations are featured on a full page or spreads, and have the lovely overall theme of being school girls in uniforms ^^

L.i.F. Life is Free is B5-sized, staple-bound and 16-pages including the covers. The inside front and back covers are both used for the intro and the index respectively. In all there are eleven illustrations, and only one of those is a two-page spread.

Outside of light novels, I've only ever seen Shirabii's works in the pictorial books, like Moeru iPhone Reader. To be honest though, his illustration in that book wasn't particularly memorable. It was actually Shirabii's work in The Sneaker for Yoake no Shinigami (夜明けの死神-優しい嘘-) that made me want to pick up L.i.F. Life is Free. Even though the school girl theme has been done to death, Shirabii really sets up his scenes, giving the girls non-standard poses and angles with brilliant coloring, like with the sword-wielding girl in the opening picture.

Though I didn't expect much out of COMITIA 96, this was one of those releases that made me glad I was paying attention ^^; Shirabii is participating in C80, and hoping to do Steins;Gate illustrations, so that might be one to look out for as well. Till then, L.i.F. Life is Free is still available on Melonbooks for anyone interested.

• Title: L.i.F. Life is Free Illustrations
• タイトル: L.i.F.
• Pages: 16 (including covers)
• Release date: 05/05/2011
• Buy: eBay, Melonbooks