Book Review: 背景画集 草薙

草薙 (Kusanagi) is a Japanese artist group that creates background art for animation and computer games. This is their first portfolio art book.

Right at the start is a short background story of how 草薙 (Kusanagi) was started, written in Japanese. The rest of the books are full coloured illustrations coming from the following titles:

• 鋼の錬金術師 (Fullmetal Alchemist), the movie and series
• おねがい☆ティーチャ (Onegai Teacher)
• 神秘の世界エルハザード (El-Hazard)
• フタコイ オルタナティブ (Futakoi Alternative)
• ノエイン もうひとりの君へ (Noein)
• サクラ大戦 (Sakura Taisen)
• アバタール・チューナー (Digital Devil Saga)
• アークザラッド (Arc The Lad)
• フロントミッション (Front Mission Online)
• Bokura No Kazoku
• みんなのGOLF (Everybody's Golf)
• Ganbare Goemon
• Quiz Magic Academy 2
• Suteradeus
• ファイナルファンタジーIX (Final Fantasy IX)
• ファイナルファンタジーX (Final Fantasy X)
• ファイナルファンタジーXII (Final Fantasy XII)
• Codename FS

All are captioned, in Japanese, but the art speaks for itself. These are mainly background paintings for animation and computer games. For game art, they are actually the plane characters walk on. If you've watched or played any, most of the images will be nostalgic.

The book contains much more art for animation than for the games. There are bits of everything, from rural landscapes, cityscapes and fantasy settings. There is nothing on character design.

Some of the art shown here are reused in the later volumes of the book, but luckily not too much.

This book is recommended to background or video game artists.

This book is available at:
Amazon Japan | YesAsia USA

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