Koto was a relatively new artist to me when I first decided to pick up Marchen Original Illustrations. My previous exposure to her art work was from the first Pixiv Girls Collection art book, where she had one piece showcased and the Pixiv 2009 Year Book with six of her illustrations . In fact, many of the illustrations in Marchen can be found on her Pixiv account and on her website, but as usual they look better in print ^^;

Marchen was released at the Pixiv Market, which took place in November of last year. It's a staple-bound, B5 sized full color doujinshi that's 24-pages when counting the covers. But the inside and outside covers are used for artwork, so in this case all those pages should count.

The art is definitely cute-girl centric, but the coloring along with the unique settings and more finished backgrounds does help to set Koto's art work apart from other artists. The pictures of the girl on the flower swing was the sample image in particular that really sold me on buying Marchen.

Like I mentioned earlier, nearly every page is used for the illustrations (expect for the index page), but the book also contains 5 two-page spread illustrations, including the cover art work (which isn't reprinted in the inside). All the other illustrations are printed on full pages, so it really is the best presentation for the art works. There is one page with a guest artist contribution of one of Koto's characters (which are all named in the index) but it's pretty average.

I quite like Koto's art work as she really has a cute style that considers background design elements. This is definitely an artist I'll be keeping an eye on. Although she didn't release anything for C77, her website is already updated for a C78 full color Vocaloid doujinshi. And I'm pretty sure we're already seeing some of what will be in it on her Pixiv account!

• Title: Marchen Original Illustrations by Colorcube
• タイトル: Marchen Original Illustrations by Colorcube
• Pages: 24
• Release date: 11/15/2009
• Buy: None