Jump to content

Question regarding Robotech Visual Archive books


ulvdemon

Recommended Posts

I am looking into getting the Robotech Visual Archive Books.  Has anyone picked up these books?  Any idea how these compare to the older Robotech Art Books?  I've looked over some reviews, but I figured some people here have purchased the book and have a better idea in regards to how the book is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, ulvdemon said:

I am looking into getting the Robotech Visual Archive Books.  Has anyone picked up these books?  Any idea how these compare to the older Robotech Art Books?  I've looked over some reviews, but I figured some people here have purchased the book and have a better idea in regards to how the book is.

Hm... well, the new Robotech Visual Archive books are kind of a mixed bag.

The Visual Archive books share a lot of the same issues with the The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles book.  The layouts are poor and the content is sparse and padded pretty heavily to disguise the fact that a fair portion of what you're buying for your $40 is a print version of the old official website's Infopedia section.  "Better than the Robotech Art books" is a pretty low hurdle to clear, and IMO the Visual Archive books do clear that particular hurdle, but in terms of content and quality they're still frustratingly short of the mark set by a lot of the nearly forty year old Japanese artbooks for Macross and MOSPEADA.  The Masters Saga book is better than This is Animation 10, but that's a bar so low it's a trip hazard in Satan's wine cellar.

The Masters Saga book includes a lot of concept art from the show's development, but if you have the Imai Files .pdf you've already seen all of it for free and that free .pdf does more to put the art in its historical context than the Visual Archive book does.  As a history buff, I found it supremely frustrating that the book included all the Science Fiction Sengoku Saga concept art but didn't bother to explain any of it.  It's all just sort of glossed over as "hey look at these weird samurai designs".  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • azrael locked this topic
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...