What artbook should I get?

[Tryhard]

So I've been looking at the two recent artbooks that have come out for the series: the 20th Anniversary Artbook or the FE 11 + 12 Memorial Book. So I wanted to get one of them, because I don't have the monies to get both.

From what I understand the 20th Anniversary artbook obviously covers the entire series, where the memorial book (also called Akaneia Chronicles, apparently) just covers 1, 3, 11 and 12. From the standpoint of someone who doesn't know any sort of japanese, which one would be "better" to have a collectors item, do you think? I've heard that their is exclusive artwork in the memorial book, so I'm thinking that one at the moment, but I figured I'd ask anyway. I haven't looked into either of them very much, so I'm hoping there's someone on here who has a better idea what's in both of them. Remember, more writing = pretty useless for me. xD

The 20th Anniversary artbook is gonna cost me £33 while the memorial book will set me back £37, though I don't mind paying the extra £4. A little more worrying is that the memorial book says it will ship "usually ships within 7 - 14 days" while the anniversary book will ship "usually ships within 1 -2 days". I can wait, but Y SO FAR APART IN DELIVERY TIMES.

So, ya. Thanks in advance.

[VincentASM]

Of the two books, I only have the encyclopedia, so I can't really comment on the memorial book side of things.

Before I mention anything, I think it might be a good idea to hit ebay and see if anybody has uploaded any sample pages from the books, so you can better judge the contents for yourself. I know a seller who specialises in selling Japanese books uploaded dozens of sample pages from the memorial book.

From experience, the encyclopedia is probably the better collector's item, since, as you mentioned, it covers the whole series and features a lot of artwork. A word of warning, almost none of these artwork are new nor do they cover any significant space.

So with this book, you're kind of getting quantity over quality. The encyclopedia also has some of these "exclusive artworks" that you mentioned, which are basically full page fanart from professional illustrators (including people who worked on previous FE games), but less than the memorial book (maybe about 5-7 versus 10-12).

On the other hand, looking at the sample images, the memorial book might be the more interesting book since it includes the TCG, FE11 and FE12 artwork in high resolution (about 2 a page). The TCG artwork, as you might suspect, have previously been largely limited to really tiny trading cards, so it's definitely nice to see them bigger. Additionally, none of the FE12 character artwork has been released in high res either, as well as the concept artwork for the FE11 newcomers (eg. Athena, Horace).

If you don't care about the better resolution, I should mention that, besides the "exclusive artworks", AFAIK (and despite what the book advertises) none of the artworks are new. There's also a pretty pointless script dump of the game.

[Tryhard]

Good stuff. I was really looking for the one that was the better collector's item. Gonna order the 20th anniversary encyclopedia, then~

Thanks for the help. Maybe once I get a little more money I'll see about the other one.