Last month we were delighted to bring the announcement of Wild Flower, the second artbook collection of Yamashita Shunya’s illustration works (following Sweet Dreams, released almost three years ago). It arrived on store shelves today, and we managed to track down a copy before it disappeared and bring you this look inside. Needless to say, this is something Shunya fans aren’t going to want to miss:

Product Title: WILD FLOWER 山下しゅんや作品集Ⅱ – Wild Flower: Yamashita Shunya Sakuhin-shuu II
Source: original, various
Release Date: June 10th, 2008
Publisher: Kotobukiya
Page Count: 116 A4 pages (112 with illustrations), full color
Price: 2,900 JPY (tax included)
Availability: Amazon, Mangaoh
Support HD!: J-List, Play-Asia

In terms of content, the book is divided into the following sections:

• Unpublished Works (16 pages)
• Original Works – Figure (22 pages)
• Original Works – Video Game (39 pages)
• Original Works – Card Game (23 pages)
• Original Works – Web & T-shirt (4 pages)
• Original Works – Magazine & Book (5 pages)
• Monochrome Illustrations (3 pages)

In addition to the main illustration content there are two pages at the end of the book of comments from Yamashita on many of the pieces present. The remaining pages are used to bracket the content as dividers with descriptive headings; there is no table of contents.

As a fan of Yamashita’s work I came away from this book very favorably impressed. In addition to the “unpublished” work much of the content was new to me, and while the figure designs and some of the game art was familiar, having it collected in an archival format like this in high resolution, high fidelity printing (often larger format than the original) is a clear advantage over previous presentations.

Another nice aspect of the book are the notes and rough sketches present that show some of the thought process behind his figure and game designs. There’s a full page of discarded preliminary designs for Shuraki’s Nida, design works for Aoshima’s Petra and Rudy, and a fully rendered alternate design for Ayanami Rei that I’d love to see produced in PVC some day.

I could describe the content in further detail but I think the pictures do a decent job by themselves. Suffice to say, if you’re at all a fan of Yamashita Shunya’s work this is an indispensable item. Highly recommended!

You can support HD by purchasing Wild Flower at J-List or Play-Asia; other retail options are listed at the top of this post.