Customer Reviews

Sumi (Vagabond Illustration Collection)

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Length:: 0:26 Mins

The edition published by Viz Media is soft cover with a dust jacket. But the cover is actually quick thick and hardy. There are 164 pages to give this book a nice thickness.

This is the art book by Inoue Takehiko. It's based off the manga Vagabond. If you like the manga and the line art, this book is definitely for you. It contains many black and white full page illustrations, some of which comes from panels in the comic book.

The illustrations, when blown up to full page, show an incredible amount of detail. I'm talking about details in brush strokes, textures, line art and cross hatching. It's a showcase of technical prowess with manga ink. Every page is a delight.

At the end of the book are two very interesting pages. One is a full page photo of his workplace. The other is a collage of photos on his tools. There is a Stevie Wonder CD among his collection of CDs.

This book has no captions. It doesn't need them.

Fans of Inoue Takehiko or his comic should find this book very satisfying.

There are two art books released based on the Vagabond comic. This is one of them. The other is called Water: Vagabond Illustration Collection which contains water colour illustrations. Check out the my review for that too.

(More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

Before having this set of artbooks in my sweaty, trembling hands, I used to think that Takehiko Inoue was one of the greatest comic artist of the last couple of decades. Now I see what a fool I was: Inoue is in fact the best comic artist of all time.

No Katsuhiro Otomo, no Moebius, no Manara, no Frank Miller (in the good old days), no Bradstreet, no Kirby, no Breccia (Sr), no Tezuka, no Lee, no Hitch, no Cassaday or Quitely can top this unleashed beast of pencils, inks and brushes that Takehiko Inoue is.

This man is the Leonardo Da Vinci of comics.


Now let's talk about the editions, and let's talk about the set of them, because it's nonsense to only buy one, you have to have both.

These editions are from another planet. And that's it. Never before have I seen such a printing quality in my life. The definition and sharpness of those images will just cut you to the very bone, just as deep Musashi would. The effort that the people of Viz put in these books is really commendable: the moment I opened them I was struck by an intensity of black so pure and strong that I felt I was looking at the fu**ing originals.

And the COLORS... I won't even talk about the colors, because there is no point in describing them: I could waste an entire dictionary of adjectives and never get close to make justice to this palette and the quality of its impression. These color, you have to see them for yourself.

I know I may sound excessive, but I repeat you, the quiality of this printings is superior to anything I've seen before (not even in Taschen deluxe editions can beat The Water and The Sumi).

The paper, of course, is beautiful, as white as it gets. And the smells is splendid, too.

Oh, one last thing... these books are not hardcovers. However, the sleeves -of very nice quality- are much more thick than any given paperback. So all in all, it's a perfect edition and this should not frighten you away from getting them. The price is more than fair, believe me, now that I've seen it for myself, I'd be willing to pay for this set with my very own internal organs.

Although there are few originals, the book is awesome in that it has lots of cool drawings from the series. I love Inoue-sensei's art so much. The details, landscapes and general stuff is simply amazing. I recommend it for an artist who can appreciate Inoue or looking for reference, it is great in that way. Although I prefer the "Water" to it, both are really different and incomparable, but I think this is worth the money as well.

The art of Inoue is truely marvelous. I would say he is the master of line art - the crosshatching and delicate and elegant use of strokes is second to none. I enjoy Sumi more than Water, but that's just me. I have both. Everytime I look at it, my jaw just drops even though I've opened it a gazillion times already.

On the other hand, I think they could've done better with the design of the book. It's difficult to appreciate the double page spreads w/o destroying the book. I think something like this deserve a hard-cover. The print of each page is amazing though. They used very high quality ink and paper. I am tempted to remove all the pages and glue them onto my wall.

I'd recommend this to anyone, even if you dont read the manga (Vagabond) or know about it. BTW, it is a really engaging and interesting manga.

Any inspiring young or veteran artist will appreciate this book.

Oh, my. This is expensive for a book that isn't a hardcover, but if you love ink drawings, manga or if you've enjoyed Eiji Yoshikawa 's fictional account of Miyamoto Musashi, or if you've read "Vagabond," drop some coin for this volume of truly astonishing drawings. I'm reading Inoue's Takehiko's manga ( "Vagabond" ) based on MUSASHI right now, and that alone convinced me he's one of the greatest manga artists out there. But this book took my breath away. I don't know much about the process of ink drawings, but every piece seems to be a mixture of techniques: bold brush strokes, delicate cross-hatching, and washes. The sweep and life and brutality of these drawings really can't be written about, they have to be seen. Though it's a soft cover the book is beautifully bound, and it's a pleasure to just run your fingers over the cover. Worth every penny. I'm going to get his other volume, "Water." Get it, treasure it.

I knew vaguely of Slam Dunk, but had avoided it because I could not think of anything less interesting than a basketball manga, but after seeing how beautiful the artist's work is in this book, I'm definitely going to check it out.

This book features standalone drawings - no comics or stories here. But the drawings are incredible, and stand on their own. I have to resist the temptation to cut the drawings from the book and scan them in so I can have them on my mac desktop.

Check out his English web site here: [...]