Tag Archives: carnelian

Artbook Review: Jewel – CARNELIAN ARTWORKS

9 Aug

Carnelian was the very first eroge/doujin artist I fell in love with, so I’m beyond thrilled to have the opportunity to review this new book. If you follow Carnelian’s work, you’ll know that until now, she never really had a real commercial artbook release. There’s been a fair share of visual books, along with Carnelian Collection and Carnelian Museum – Orbit Works, but the vast majority of the content has been event CGs from the various games she’s worked on. I’m very glad to say that Jewel is the book Carnelian fans have been waiting for.

Jewel follows the trend of having both a limited edition and regular edition. As far as Amazon.co.jp is concerned, I seem to remember the limited edition having actually sold out during the preorder period. I have not seen the regular edition in person, so I cannot say how similar they are. The limited edition, however, comes with a monochrome bonus book  of sketches and rough work called “Ore”. (Get it? Jewel and Ore? Yeah. Ok.) This is the edition I will be presenting.

Cover

Limited Edition Cover

The book jacket is printed on thick paper with a rough sort of texture, and the title, “Jewel” has a holographic foil embossing treatment.

Black & White Alice

There are tons of newer illustrations within, as well as older ones. Remember Carnelian’s hand-drawn color doujinshi “The Sanctuary Knocker”? The entire thing is actually inside of “Jewel”, along with some her full color BENIGYOKUZUI books from the past few years.

Kao no nai Tsuki

There is actually a refreshingly small amount of the same old game artwork we see from Carnelian in this book. Some of her best Kao no nai Tsuki illustrations are highlighted, and they’re well deserving of being presented alongside the other promotional pieces of art.

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Doujinshi Review: BENIGYOKUZUI Remix by Carnelian

2 Mar

Carnelian has released a couple of “remix” doujinshi so far, and this particular one is the first, released in the summer of 2008. BENIGYOKUZUI 再録集 (Sairokushuu, which means “remix”) contains various illustrations and comics from previous Benigyokuzui releases, but unlike the more recent BENIGYOKUZUI Remix 20-21-22, it isn’t a very thick book. It is about average doujin size at 36 pages. As far as I can tell, it contains images from Benigyokuzui volumes 17 through 19.

Cover

The Cover image is a sexy bunny girl.

You dropped your pen.

Page 1: Sexy office lady!

Pages 2 & 3

The image on the right I recognized as the cover of Benigyokuzui 17.

Pages 4 & 5

The Devil May Cry art on the right has previously appeared in Ura-Benigyokuzui vol. 2 Full Color, which I reviewed earlier…

Some lovely maidens...

The Aquarian Age image on the left (as well as just about any elf drawing by her) is one of my personal favorite Carnelian illustrations!

Pages 8 & 9

Touka and Seika of Fairy Factory make their cameo on the right; a lovely girl with cherries and blonde ringlets on the left.

Miku!

I was most excited for the Hatsune Miku illustration, which I believe was used for a pillow cover. Previously, I’d only been able to see a small resolution of said image on Carnelian’s blog.

Pages 12 & 13

The pointy-eared gal is from Carnelian’s full-color “Gin-iro no Shiina” comic published in “Comic RUSH!”. The miko on the left was used on her homepage for awhile.

2-Page Spread

The only 2-page spread in the book is this gothic lolita-styled illustration of a girl falling amidst black feathers.

The last color page.

The last colored page features a boy/girl(?!) with a sword and then the monochrome section begins, which is primarily a hentai comic which I didn’t photograph (sorry!).

It’s pretty excited to be able to own books that are a collection of Carnelian’s doujinshi. While this first remix book isn’t quite the must-have that Benigyokuzui Remix 20-21-22 is (make sure you check out Nattoli’s review of that one), it’s still pretty darn nice to have in my collection. (Especially since nobody seems to scan Carnelian’s Benigyokuzui doujins anymore!)

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Doujinshi Review: Ura-Benigyokuzui VOL.2 Full Color by Carnelian

18 Jan

Carnelian’s “Ura-Benigyokuzui” doujinshi contain Carnelian’s illustrations of male characters. There are 3 volumes of Ura-Benigyokuzui that I know of, one of which is this one, that is in full color. You may find it somewhat confusing that “Vol. 2 full color” is a completely different doujinshi than “Vol. 2“. I’ve no idea of the reasoning behind it. If there exists a full color volume 1, I do not know anything about it. In case you’ve ever wondered, “BENIGYOKUZUI” or 紅玉髓 is the Chinese writing for “Carnelian”. The use of “Ura” in front of it denotes that is the opposite or underside of something. In this case, it refers to the illustrations being of boys rather than of girls.

This was one of my most sought after doujinshi for 3 reasons:
1. It’s Carnelian’s work.
2. It is in color.
3. It’s GUYS!

Not that I don’t love Carnelian’s gorgeous girl illustrations. It’s just that I’m a girl and I like boys. It happens, okay?

Onto the photographs!

Ura-Benigyokuzui

The cover is a shounen ai illustration of Gundam SEED characters, and is my favorite image in the book.

Inside the front cover.

The first page is monochrome. I’m guessing this is also Gundam SEED fanart.

With a ZOOM LAYER!

The cover image is so hot, it’s also the first color image in the book… and the second. Gratuitous zoom layer: ON!

Are those Jelly Bellies?!

The next page is some guys with jelly beans. It reminds me of Kyou Kara Maoh!

Cloud and Zack

If nothing else, I would have purchased this book for the opportunity to see a drawing of Cloud by Carnelian. I’ve always been a Cloud fan. I don’t particularly care either way for the Cloud x Zack pairing though. I liked him with Aerith. ;p

REBORN!

The next page is Katekyo Hitman Reborn! fanart. If you really like this one, the premier self-titled doujinshi “Chrysoprase” is full of these guys. (Chrysoprase is a doujinshi circle consisting of Carnelian and Amamiya Polan.)

BL Novel Illustration

The next page’s illustration (and character design sketches) were done for the cover of a BL novel entitled 社交界艶戯. It seems to be out of print, but you can still get it used.

Devil May Cry

Fanart for “Devil May Cry”, which I’ve never played. Hey, there’s that zoom layer again!

Messiah

Takuto from “Messiah”, looking beautiful as ever, and forlorn because his face is stuck in the book binding. Poor Takuto.

Trick or Treat

The last page is a Halloween themed sketch. I think that these are original characters.

URA-Ura-Benigyokuzui

The End!

This book was particularly difficult to photograph. I had to hold the book open with one hand and photograph it with the other. ^^; I ended up taking the photos so that you don’t see any of my hand that is holding the book open, but you also don’t see any of the page margins which have writing on them. Each page says “CARNELIAN” on it somewhere as well as an image description. At least you know what’s inside now, right?

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Doujinshi Review: “Recipe” by Carnelian

15 Jan

Carnelian’s original doujinshi “Recipe” is a colorful collection of dessert-themed fairies or sprites. Each sprite is presented in the form of a colored sketch and a fully CG’ed super-deformed version of them swimming among the culinary treat of her choice. The cover is printed on sturdy textured paper and the pages on the inside are thick and glossy.

"recipe" cover

The cover girl herself is nameless, as far as I know, although you may have seen her before on the front of Carnelian’s 2008 calendar. You can view Carnelian’s CG of this image on Pixiv, too.

Inside the front cover.

The first page of the doujinshi introduces each of the characters in chibi form on a light purple checkered pattern.

Anne

The first food fairy is Anne. In her chibi portrait, she is sitting among dumplings and traditional Japanese wagashi. (和菓子) (View on Pixiv.)

Sugar

The second girl is named “Sugar”, and she is most appropriately the fairy of sugary sweet doughnuts! Notice that she has cute little glazed doughnuts in her hair. XD (View on Pixiv.)

Ginger

Ginger is knocking on the door of a rather delicious looking gingerbread house, complete with gingerbread cookies and… almond pocky! She looks rather like Kogami Akira from Lucky Star. She even has the ahoge. o_O (View on Pixiv.)

Limone

Limone is the mascot for Jelly desserts. Bill Cosby would be proud. She must be sitting in a glass of mint jelly because her chibi form appears to be holding mint leaves. (View on Pixiv.)

Chocolat

No list of desserts would be complete without Chocolate! Miss “Chocolat” presents to you here a luxurious box of truffles and chocolate-dipped fruits. (View on Pixiv.)

Cream

Cream

Our final dessert girl is “Cream”. Standing with a candle atop a cake with chocolate snowflakes and cream puff snowmen, this illustration is somewhat Christmas-themed. (View on Pixiv.)

Recipe

Recipe Girl

Once again our pastry chef is showcased, without the sprites shown on the cover. Just in case you missed anything, there’s a handy ZOOM LAYER version of the picture as well. It’s kind of a filler, but I’m not complaining!

Chibi backs!

Chibi backs!

The last of the colored pages shows the back of the chibi image you saw inside the front cover. Cute! It’s followed by the introduction to the monochrome section, which is printed in chocolate brown.

Monochrome Intro

Monochrome Section

The monochrome section starts off with the sketch of the cover girl and an introduction that I can’t read (sorry. :p)

Monochrome Pages

Sketches of the Girls

For the sake of not becoming too redundant, I compiled the photos of the sketch section into one image.

The back!

The end!

There you have it. I hope you’ll forgive the quality of my photographs. I use a point and shoot with bad lighting, but the important thing is that now you know what this doujinshi contains! After waiting a couple of years to find scans of this book with no luck whatsoever, I finally gave in and bought it, and I’m certainly glad that I did so.

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