CLAMP no Kiseki is a celebration of CLAMP’s 15th anniversary. Each magazine in this 12 volume set contains artwork and information about a featured series, interviews, and a short full-color manga. The quality of the magazines was on par with any other artbook, and the cover art of each is unique. I love the high-contrast solid-color style!

Each volume also came with 3 beautiful chess piece figures with different characters. In the end you end up with more than a full set (White side has 2 queens and 3 bishops — Black side has 2 kings and 3 bishops). The pieces are as expected of CLAMP merchandise…very high quality. I’ll be honest, I really bought these sets just to get the pieces.

The disappointing things?
1. Every black Mokona and every white Mokona were the same. I wish they had been slightly different for each pawn piece.

2. My queen Sakura piece has a discolored base.

3. The display box and extra king Kero and Spinel pieces were not released in the USA…and I am not paying $300+ on eBay to get them.

4. No Kobato piece, even though it was featured in the last volume. The white bishop could have been her instead of Subaru since they also have Seishiro from Tokyo Babylon, and the fact that Akira’s piece is so similar.

5. The first 6 volumes came with a very nice box that matched the book. Starting at Vol.7, they started coming in stupid plastic cut-self-trying-to-open packaging. For something collectible like this you shouldn’t change the packaging half way through. DUMB.

In any case, if you can still get your hands on these, I would highly recommend them. They are a CLAMP collector’s dream. I am surprised they actually became available in the US (now for CLAMP in 3D Land, CLAMP in Cardland, and anything else they haven’t released here).

Anyway, here’s a picture of the pieces! I’ll also stick the cover art up on the gallery page since it’s just so nice.

The Art of Fushigi Yuugi contains 97 pages of beautiful color art, an interview with Yuu Watase, a short comic strip, and some background information on the world of Fushigi Yuugi. Each illustration has a note which says what the illustration is from. Many of them have been made specifically for the art book. One of them is a beautiful fold-out illustration featuring all of the main characters of both the Suzaku and Seiryu sides. There is also a character section showing early sketches of some of the main characters.

The book is very nice quality and is hardback. I own the English version, so I can’t say anything about the production quality of the Japanese one. I’m sure it’s just as nice…or nicer.

Here’s a couple beautiful illustrations from the book.

The Cardcaptor Sakura Memorial Book is more than just an art book. Along side the 71 color illustrations + comments, there is a concept artwork/sketch section, character highlights from the manga, a several page interview, and an index of some of the Cardcaptor Sakura merchandise that has been available. The book is very nice quality, but similar to the third illustration collection the art inside is a lot of the same type (i.e. artwork from the dvd covers). Still, a great book that every collector should add to their shelves.

Part three of the CCS Illustration is a little different than the first two. It features 86 more random illustrations, even a few of the more minor characters. Many of the images are of Sakura’s outfits, or are chibi-like illustrations. I was disappointed that there were still only a couple Sakura + Syaoran pics even in this one. I feel like the variation of the type of images in this one was also not very good. There was no poster, nor a manga extra in this book. However I still enjoy looking at it, and I think any collector of CCS items should definitely own all three of these books.

Part two of the CCS Illustration is much like the first collection. It features 78 illustrations from the second part of the series, so characters such as Eriol, Spinel, and Ruby appear in some images. There are also a couple nice Sakura + Syaoran illustrations. Just like the first book, there is another 16 page manga chapter, this time featuring Sakura and Syaoran, and a double sided poster.

One more part to go…

Part one of the CCS Illustration collection features 73 full color manga-style illustrations with an index including comments for each image. The book also has a 16 page exclusive manga chapter featuring Toya and Sakura. A small double sided poster is included as well. The pages are nice quality coated paper, except for the index and manga sections.

The illustrations are from the first part of the series, so you will only see characters from the Clow Card arc. Of course, most of the illustrations are of Sakura and Kero-chan, but there are some beautiful pieces for other characters as well.

Not much else to say…there are two more parts to the collection, and all are simply stunning.