Beautiful Scenes from a Fantasy World (PIE Background Illustration Series)

This book is one of a number of excellent art books from the Japanese publisher PIE International. It features background illustrations and scenes from anime and manga works. From the title I expected mostly rural fantasy landscapes, but in fact a majority of the pictures are closer to science fiction, with lots of futuristic cities (including ruined ones) and machines. The pictures are extremely detailed, so they benefit from the book’s large format and bright color.The pictures are given titles in English as well as Japanese; very brief sketches of the 32 featured artists (all Japanese) appear at the end of the book; and the steps in creating one of the pictures are described in detail, also near the end. That’s pretty much all there is in the way of text… but text isn’t really necessary, though descriptions of what is shown in the pictures and how they related to the stories they came from might have been nice. Just lean back and enjoy the illustrations!