For almost a year now, Toranoana has been having gallery exhibitions of popular artists, and at these events you can buy a large B4-sized 'pamphlet' that includes the artists' works that were on display in a book format. Alpha's (有葉) gallery was the most recent one, having ran from May 19th through the 28th and the amusingly titled Pictures at an Exhibition of Alpha was the companion pamphlet.

The long awaited PRISMTONE Range Murata Anime Works 1998-2006 has been released after more than a year of postponed release dates and delays, collecting Murata's works on Blue Submarine no. 6, Last Exile, and Mardock Scramble. This 344-page art book showcases Range Murata's art works in a variety of different presentation styles; from colored sketches and multiple variable length fold-out posters, to monochrome roughs.

AKABEi SOFT2 Illustration Collection is an art book much in the same vein as previous memorial illustration books to have come out over the past year like MOONSTONE Complete and Circus 10th Visual Album. The major difference with this one is that AKABEi SOFT2 hasn't really been around anywhere near long enough to bring out this kind of memorial collection. I think they just jumped onto the recent trend with this one ^^;

PIECES 2 Phantom Cats is essentially a small and compact version of the popular and rare Galgrease Galhound poster books that Masamune Shirow released circa 2002 and 2003. The illustrations were originally distributed as magazine extras, but you can now have it all in one with PIECES 2, though of course, they're not posters anymore ^^

Even though I bought Tony Taka's T2 Art Gallery months ago (and I think I even mentioned it in passing) I've only just gotten around to reviewing it after being reminded of the Toranoana artist gallery 'pamphlets' due to Alpha's (有葉) recent exhibit. And in retrospect, though I over paid for it, I would have ended up paying even more if I wanted to get it now -_-

Kurogin's newest illustration doujinshi, titled NSXT and published for Comitia 92 is a far cry from the sci-fi illustrations of his Winter Comiket release Archive Illustrations. The mecha and magic girls are replaced for the most part by every day beauties in normal walks of life.

Takigawa Yuu isn't a new artist---I've seen her work in various collection books like Girls Girls Girls! Illustrations and she used to work with Chisato Naruse (hence the style similarities). But on the doujinshi scene, I just wasn't following her until now. Her recent Comitia 92 release, titled Mori (森) really caught my attention with its anthropomorphism of forest creatures, and lovely greenery in general.

Ukke's colorful and polished art work continues to impress in her TRIP LIP Girl's Illustrations Winter 2009 collection, featuring the most recent assembly of her original illustrations. TRIP LIP was one of two releases by Ukke at Comiket 77, with the other being the Vocaloid book, Megpoid Crosslight.