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Previous Winners
Himitsu no Kin’iro Mosaic (2013)
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While the decreasing value of the Australian Dollar has made it harder for me to acquire Japanese artbooks this year, I have still had the pleasure of checking out several of them. After introducing the award last year, which was won by Himitsu no Kin’iro Mosaic, I am happy to once again issue The Otaku’s Study Japanese Artbook of the Year award again for 2014. As with last year, I am a bit more lenient on release dates than any other category. The requirement is that I must have reviewed the title in 2014 rather than it having to have been released within the last twelve months.
Ultimately, there was only one book that I could clearly justify giving this title to. Coming in at a whopping 512 full-colour pages and still looking incredibly awkward on my bookshelf due to its insane dimensions, I am happy to confirm that Danganronpa 1 & 2 Reload: Official Book has received the award this year. This design compendium, first published in late-December 2013, was released to commemorate Spike Chunsoft’s first two Danganronpa games (Known internationally as Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair) being published on the PlayStation Vita. Both games can now be purchased internationally.
Even though it is completely in Japanese and may not be readable to some fans, if there is anything you want to know about either game, it will likely be found in this books pages. This includes but is in no way limited to every piece of CG artwork, six-pages dedicated to profiling each character, concept artwork, promotional artwork and heck, even multiple pages dedicated to the user interface of each game. It is an incredibly comprehensive book that I would love to see more of. Unfortunately given its size and the amount of text present in it, I don’t see it being localized in the near future.
Potential localization shortcomings aside, Danganronpa 1 & 2 Reload: Official Book is deserving of this award.
