Book Review: ヴァンパイア アートワークス (Vampire Artworks)

Here's another Darkstalkers artbook. This is one of of the artbooks celebrating the 30th anniversary of Capcom, and the 20th anniversary of Darkstalkers.

You might remember that there are other Darkstalkers artbooks around, such as ヴァンパイア グラフィック ファイル (the English version is Darkstalkers Graphic File) and Darkstalkers Tribute.

Vampire Artworks features a collection of wonderful Darkstalkers character artworks. Unlike Darkstalkers Graphic File, there are no character profiles.

This book is just artworks all the way with the latest game included being Vampire Resurrection (2013).

There's quite a bit of duplicated artworks mostly from Darkstalkers Graphic File and a small handful from Darkstalkers Tribute.

There are of course new artworks, some of them from あきまん Akiman, 剛田チーズ(BENGUS), Ikeno イケノ(Capcom カプコン), Tatsuya Yoshikawa 吉川達哉, Toru Nakayama 中山徹, Tamio たみお and more. You'll notice that some of these artists have also created a lot of work for Capcom's Street Fighter.

The artworks are fantastic. There are coloured illustrations, character sketches, colour penciled stage designs, promotional materials, and artworks of Darkstalkers characters as appear crossover illustrations with other game titles. It's a 224-page paperback.

At the back are interviews (Japanese) with the staff Haruo Murata (story and world concept), Hidetoshi Ishizawa, Ryota Suzuki, Hideki Okugawa (music), Takeshi Kitamura (music), Akira Yasuda, BENGUS, Ikeno, Mizuho Kageyama, Tohru Takaoka, Shinji Kaminaguchi, Mizue Morimoto, Eri Nakamura, Norihide Fujii, Kaname Fujioka and for backgrounds Yuki Yokoyama, Kenichi Ueda, Hiroshi Sugiyama and Chie Nakayama. Yup. That's quite a lot of interviews.

Here comes the dilemma. Should you get this book if you already have the other two books? I'm not too sure what to recommend.

If you already have Darkstalkers Graphic File, I would recommend getting Darkstalkers Tribute (if you haven't) and skip this book unless you want the new artworks.

If you only have Darkstalkers Tribute, definitely get Vampire Artworks.

If you don't have any Darkstalkers artbooks before? Get this book and Darkstalkers Tribute.

Note: There's an English edition available called Darkstalkers: Official Complete Works, translated by Udon.

On the left is the cover for Darkstalkers Graphic File

Many of these photos are actually of images that have appeared in Darkstalkers Graphic File.

Artworks from Darkstalkers Tribute

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ヴァンパイア アートワークス (Vampire Artworks) is available at:
Amazon.com | Amazon.co.jp | CDJapan.co.jp

Here's the Amazon Japan buying guide for your reference.