While its latest anime outing “Rozen Maiden: Zurückspulen” by Studio Deen showed some potential given how it is closely tied into Peach-Pit’s manga series, the two previous seasons of the Rozen Maiden anime adaptations from Nomad are in my opinion a complete waste of time. While their storylines are decent and they did score considerably well in my reviews of them…. the plot ultimately led to nowhere and has since been dropped, unlikely never to be completed. It is with a heavy heart that I say this considering it was one of my favourite anime series when I was younger… however as I discussed in my recent review of Kamisama dolls, if you start something you better at least attempt to finish it.
Digressing from that point, like many other anime adaptations there was a considerable amount of promotional artwork released across both TV anime seasons which have over the years been compiled in a few different book collections. Rozen Maiden: Erinnerung is one such collection, with its heavier focus on the artwork and nicer cover artwork standing out from the others on the market… okay…. maybe it was just the cover. Within the 112 page artbook is a plethora of artwork released for both series, featuring all seven of the Rozen Maiden dolls present in the adaptations in addition to a few other goodies.
While it may not be as refined as the artwork recently published for Zurückspulen that like the storyline was also closer in design to the manga, the quality of everything included in this book is of an above average standard and is reminiscent of the artwork style used by Nomad in the anime adaptations.
Much of the artwork is given a dedicated single-page and commentary from the artist, however smaller pieces such as cover and CD artwork samples are clumped together in sets on a single page. Nothing feels cluttered with plenty of white space on each page, however in doing this I feel that they missed an opportunity to showcase the art in the biggest size possible. While they were evidently going for all pages to be portrait rather than landscape in page orientation, several pieces of artwork were landscape which when clumped onto a single page left a lot of empty unused space that could have been better spent rotating the art 90 degrees. Double-page spreads were less troubling in this regard, but still could have used more space for the artwork and less for the white space with a couple of lines of commentary.
Most of the book is taken up by the aforementioned artwork, more specifically pages 2 to 27 for the first season and pages 29 – 89 for Träumend. With no artwork included for the two-episode OVA series Ouvertüre, the remainder of the book is dedicated to a small collection of smaller art pieces such as cover artwork, a look at promotional trinkets released to coincide with the anime release, interviews and rough sketches of artwork included in the previous pages. For those who unlike myself would never take a poster out of an artbook, there is a bonus small poster featuring Suiseiseki and Souseiseki included at the front of the book.
Overall, this is a fairly nice artwork collection and should appeal to those who have enjoyed the TV anime series. As I personally preferred to look primarily at the artwork this was the optimal choice for me in my opinion, however a number of different artbooks are available on the market which also include a look at the episodes, character profiles and more. Aside from a few moderate layout qualms, I had very little issue with this book overall.
Review Score
Content: B+
Design: B-
Extras: B
Personal Opinion: B+
Final Score: B
This review is currently being transitioned over to the new review system.