December 13th, 2010, 8:51PM by nat | 38 comments
Ayami Kojima is probably best known as the artist for the last decade of Castlevania video games. Unlike many artists nowadays, she still works with real media, meaning the art works contained in Santa Lilio Sangre were all originally stroked and etched onto canvases with acrylics, pens, and pencils before they ever made their way into this art book.
The cover art work is quite beautiful if not a bit dark, with the skeletal remains of a baby in the angelic woman's arms. The way her lower body melds into nature, with roots and fruits along with the wings suggests the baby wasn't the only one to pass away... This along with several other illustrations in the back share a macabre theme, but do so with surprising elegance. The front half of the book consists of more commercial works that mesh better with the Castlevania style.
Santa Lilio Sangre is hardcover and an oversized version of the traditional A4-size. The printing is excellent quality making it easy to see every brush stoke in the paintings, on thick, smooth pages. The majority of the illustrations feature men, though Ayami Kojima's designs tend to feature a sometimes androgynous look, with pale skin, full lips and flowing hair.
There's also a solitary illustration from Rahxephon, which I'd seen several times but never attributed to Ayami Kojima ^^;
Throughout the book are spaced two large sections of black and white inked illustrations. The first portion is about 20 pages and runs from page 59 through 80 after which color illustrations resume for another 40 pages. The second monochrome art section runs from pages 125 through 151. But considering Santa Lilio Sangre is a hearty 200 pages in length, you're still getting plenty of color works. It also helps that the majority of color illustrations are presented on a full page, giving you plenty of eye candy.
I had thought originally that there would be more illustrations from the Castelvania series, but I would say that it was featured in no more than a quarter of the book. The art works themselves are scattered throughout the book, some of which are even in the monochrome works section.
Overall, these pictures are fairly representative of the art work in Santa Lilio Sangre, though I did omit taking photos of pages with excessive gore and nudity although can be found in a lot of the illustrations. Fair warning to the faint of heart: just because you don't see it here, doesn't mean it's not in the book ^^; Even if I'm not a fan of some of her works, it's hard not to be impressed by the talent shown by Ayami Kojima in this collection.
- Title: Santa Lilio Sangre Ayami Kojima Art Works
- タイトル: 緋いユリ―小島文美画集
- Pages: 200
- Release date: 12/05/2010
- Buy: Amazon Japan
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13 years, 11 months ago
Any example on how gore it can be? I'm not a fan of gore so I wanted to know if I could tolerate it or not before buying. :,(
13 years, 11 months ago
Think.... adults with umbilical cords and open innards along with mutilated pregnant women. Those are the extreme cases, and everything else falls somewhere between that and Castlevania.
13 years, 11 months ago
Thanks, I'll wait to toughen myself up before trying to get it. The description you made is way too scary to me. :(
13 years, 11 months ago
Lol, that's how I felt when I went looking for examples ;_; I can't unsee them o_o
13 years, 11 months ago
This one is really interesting for a japanese artbook! Doesn't look very japanese!!
13 years, 11 months ago
I'm a huge fan of Kojima's Castlevania works. I always said to myself if she ever came out with an art book I'd totally get it. What timing when I have no money. :( There's a picture I've been dying to get. Can you tell me if there's a Castlevania image of Leon on a chandelier?
How many pages does gore show up in?
13 years, 11 months ago
Yeah, that picture gets a full page in the book. If we're both talking about the Leon Belmont 07 on this page. It's not cut off either in the book.
I would say about 25 to 30 pages feature gore (insides or mutilation), though about half of that is monochrome gore and depending on your tolerance it may or may not be as bad. There's a good amount of human decomposition too, but I didn't count that. Not sure how that ranks on the disturb-o-meter.
13 years, 11 months ago
Aw yeah, that's the picture. :D Full page, too? I'm in heaven! Again.
On my site I have a banner with the first picture on this page, coincidentally. It's just so apropos to have it up now.
Are the Castlevania artworks mainly from the PS2 era of games or is the distribution fairly even between PS2 and handheld games?
Gore isn't really my thang, but it's good to know it's not totally prevalent. Decomposition I can probably stomach better, though that sure sounds funny!
13 years, 11 months ago
Hehe, sounds unintentionally gross ~-~ I don't know about the handhelds vs. PS2, I'd need visual examples to give an answer ^^;
13 years, 11 months ago
From what I can tell it looks like Kojima's Castlevania works are from the console games since she drew for them the most. Looking at her other works is kind of nostalgic for me because I remember seeing some of them during my art hunts years ago.
I see there are portraits of side characters from the games. Ooh, is there a portrait of Trevor? He's the guy on the bottom right of your picture #23.
13 years, 11 months ago
Yeah, there's a Trevor picture done with markers like the Leon one I linked to earlier :3
13 years, 11 months ago
flails like a psycho Sweet! I like his character design.
Are there many two-page spreads? Hardcovers have that notorious gulf in the middle that cuts off chunks of the art and it'd be shame if that happens a lot.
13 years, 11 months ago
Surprisingly, there are hardly any page spreads. On a quick glance through I only counted 10, mostly in the black and whites. So it looks like the publishers considered the hardcover tragedy too XD
13 years, 11 months ago
I've been looking for this artbook! Didn't know it was released. A must buy in all it's goreious beauti! :D
13 years, 11 months ago
Great review! I just bought it because the art looks so beautiful. I can't stand gore and seeing your comments about what kind of gore is in it almost made me puke. Bleh. -_-" I hope it's not so bad when I see it for real! XD
13 years, 11 months ago
Heh, well at least you know it's coming, it'll be easier to skip ~-~
13 years, 11 months ago
Got the artbook today! The artwork that was gore were mostly in black and white so they weren't that bad. But then again, I didn't look at them for too long. XD It's a top-notch artbook for sure. Worth every penny. I wouldn't have known about it if not for your review. Now I'm going to go look at it some more. XD
13 years, 10 months ago
What is the ISBN of this book. I really want to purchase it locally at Kinokuniya.
13 years, 10 months ago
Hello, sorry to be a bother but I was just wondering if this artbook happened to have any pictures of Kojima's Simon Belmont or Juste Belmont? I was specifically wondering if it had these pics that I'm linking to. Also thanks for a great blog, and I will probably buy this artbook when I have the money for it.
http://www.chapelofresonance.com/wiki/images/b/b8/Dracula-belmont.jpg
http://img692.imageshack.us/i/ariaofsorrowartbook04.jpg/sr=1
http://www.castlevaniacrypt.com/games/sotn/images/wallpaper/sotn-003.jpg
13 years, 10 months ago
I didn't see the first picture.
Second picture is in here, and it's fit to half a page, but it's the full picture and not cropped like in the example.
Third picture is featured on a two page spread, with a more golden coloring finish than the one you linked to.
13 years, 10 months ago
Thank you for the fast answer and it's a real shame that the first picture is not in it since it's one of my favorite Ayami Kojima pieces. I assume there are no other Simon Belmont artwork in the artbook then? I'm also going to assume the Castlevania manga by Kojima is not present either.
13 years, 10 months ago
This Simon Belmont illustration is in there. I don't think there are others though, unless I missed something. I don't know what's in the manga, so I couldn't answer that.
13 years, 10 months ago
The manga part is from SOTN and is just a black and white epilogue mostly with Alucard waking up and some stuff, I also think there's one with Hector. Is there any concept art or is there only finished pieces in it?
I also saw that there was a Black Jack piece among your photos of the artbook and was wondering if there's anything more like it. Something great would have been an Ayami Kojima version of Dorian Gray, but I guess a man can keep dreaming.
13 years, 10 months ago
There's some Castlevania concept art, but the illustrations are very small and spread over two pages. Not much else. There is a monochrome illustration for Castlevania, but I don't know that it's from the manga.
The Black Jack piece was unique I think, I didn't recognize any other outside series works, but I can't always recognize everything ^^;
13 years, 10 months ago
Hello again. I'm here to brighten your day with more annoying questions about this artbook. Are there any pictures of Matthias Cronqvist from Lament of Innocence in this artbook I notices there seemed to be quite a lot from that game so I'm hoping for some good news here hahaha. Also hoping to hear some good things about the other art I posted but you can tell me if I'm being to much of a bother about this.
http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/assets/6/2511f5d27f2b26e747b0667ff5db4d76305f61bc_m.jpg
13 years, 10 months ago
No need to delete my messages... I thought I made it clear that you could just tell me if I was asking too much, it would have been nice to have my questions answered and it might have answered other peoples questions too, but oh well.
13 years, 10 months ago
Your message is directly above what you've just posted, so nothing has been deleted. But thanks for accusing me of that after I've done nothing but help you. It takes me time to reply to questions about art books, especially when I'm not even with my art books.
But honestly, after this I don't feel like helping. What's the point when a two day delay in response somehow makes me the bad guy?
13 years, 10 months ago
Well I'm sorry if it seems like I made you out to be the bad guy which you are certainly not. I just jumped to the conclusions since I can't seem to see my older messages...
And how am I supposed to know that you're not with your artbooks? So I apologize for this misunderstanding, So yeah I guess that's it. So now I guess I'm the bad guy for not seeing my older messages and jumping to a conclusion and writing about it and for that I'm sorry.
13 years, 10 months ago
Wait just to be clear here, you can see a post where I linked to like 6 pictures, before I posted the one asking about Mathias Cronqvist? The latest message before that I can see is the one with Black Jack. Just to be sure I didn't delete it by mistake(not even sure if I CAN delete my messages here) And again I'm sorry for this mistake.
13 years, 10 months ago
This is the one asking about Mathias Cronqvist, right above your accusation. Just one link though. And the picture linked is in the art book.
Hello again. I'm here to brighten your day with more annoying questions about this artbook. Are there any pictures of Matthias Cronqvist from Lament of Innocence in this artbook I notices there seemed to be quite a lot from that game so I'm hoping for some good news here hahaha. Also hoping to hear some good things about the other art I posted but you can tell me if I'm being to much of a bother about this.
http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/assets/6/2511f5d27f2b26e747b0667ff5db4d76305f61bc_m.jpg
13 years, 10 months ago
Then the one I posted is gone for some unexplained reason. I was asking about for example this picture and some others. I guess I might have accused you for something you did not do, but yeah I apologize again.
http://img.listal.com/image/199607/600full-castlevania%3A-lament-of-innocence--slash--slash--castlevania-cover.jpg
13 years, 10 months ago
Regardless of your perceived problem, you carefully chose your words.
You could have asked, "I don't see my previous message, did you get my questions about Mathias Cronqvist?" You could have said, "My previous reply did not appear." You could have asked "Did you delete my messages?" Even then, that's not a forgone conclusion. Instead you said "No need to delete my messages..." which means you've already decided that was what had been done and that I had wronged you, despite the fact that I'd answered everything else from you.
I'm done with this now. Don't expect any further replies.
13 years, 8 months ago
Great review! I just bought the book today at the Kinokuniya store in New York. I think they just got it in stock too. Anyway... to the people worried about the gore (assuming you like the artist's work and would like to get the book....and you can afford it...): most of the gory pictures are in the back of the book, and some of them are small, so unless you're carefully studying each and every picture, you shouldn't have a problem ignoring it. Furthermore the gore is drawn "elegantly" (which is an interesting juxtaposition), so it isn't scary looking as an actual crime scene for instance. I have artbooks that contain some questionable material , so I've learned to tune out the things that I really don't want to see. It's a skill set to develop when you like an artist's work, but said artist has some strange tastes. :)
13 years, 8 months ago
Ayami Kojima has been a great inspiration to me since I was 14 (ten years ago!) and it's awesome she finaaaaally has a proper monograph published. The Black Jack painting you showed in your post pretty much sold me solid. I know she used to make Black Jack doujinshi before she went professional. Will be getting this with my next paycheck. Thank you for the great preview!
13 years, 7 months ago
Hi,
Do you know of any USA store I can buy this at? Also, I was wondering if you know that if a Chinese version of this artbook was released in China? I ask this bc I saw one on ebay but it was Chinese & the seller is from China. I asked the seller if it was bootleg & the seller said it wasn't. It was a Chinese released version.
Thank you.
13 years, 7 months ago
I don't really know any places to buy in real life aside from Kinokuniyas, but Googling the book title can give you plenty online, the majority of which ship to the U.S.. I personally just use Amazon Japan.
Also, the China version sounds dubious. I've bought a few for experience points in my time, and while they are still (unfortunately) well-made books, they're not official releases and they don't benefit the artists.
13 years, 7 months ago
jadore le travaux d'ayami
13 years, 1 month ago
God, I love Kojima! Does anyone know if this book encompasses ALL of her work, or just most of it? Fantastic scans, by the way!