everything you never needed to know about Roman Albums

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Drew_Sutton
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Re: everything you never needed to know about Roman Albums

Post by Drew_Sutton »

Awesome write up - I've heard you and others talk about Roman Albums but I don't have any myself or have I seen any but I feel like that Layzner album is calling my name!
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Re: everything you never needed to know about Roman Albums

Post by danth »

I have a ton of art books so I bet I have at least a couple of these! They're by the same company that put out Animage right? I wonder if all the different art book types are associated with a magazine.

I have something like six Entertainment Bibles which are obviously a different thing but I really like them. I have two I think on Studio Nue, two on Macross, two on Artmic stuff, and maybe one other. I treasure them! I think they're by Bandai.

I also have some of those Newtype 100 Collection books, two Tenchi Muyo and one for Lunar (Sega CD game) and probably others.

Then there's the B Club Specials and Gakken Mooks. I never could keep track of all this stuff. Any other series like these? I wish there was a definitive guide.
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Re: everything you never needed to know about Roman Albums

Post by danth »

These are two that I've always wanted but can't find anywhere. For one thing it's just hard to search for them by title.
mospeada1.jpg
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mospeada2.jpg
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danth
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Re: everything you never needed to know about Roman Albums

Post by danth »

Drew_Sutton wrote: Thu Oct 11, 2018 7:28 pm Awesome write up - I've heard you and others talk about Roman Albums but I don't have any myself or have I seen any but I feel like that Layzner album is calling my name!
So now that I've actually READ Dave's write up, which was great by the way, I know I don't have any Roman Albums, and I feel exactly the same. As an 80s guy only the last 10 Roman Albums interest me at all, and as mecha guy that SPT Layzner one would be the highest on my list.
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Re: everything you never needed to know about Roman Albums

Post by danth »

Not to spam the thread but apparently Dave's list is just the first 70 Roman Albums? Looks like they kept going after that unless Mandarake is lying to me.

If anyone wants to go nuts by the way...Roman Albums at Mandarake.
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Re: everything you never needed to know about Roman Albums

Post by davemerrill »

danth wrote: Fri Oct 12, 2018 7:13 am Not to spam the thread but apparently Dave's list is just the first 70 Roman Albums? Looks like they kept going after that unless Mandarake is lying to me.

If anyone wants to go nuts by the way...Roman Albums at Mandarake.
Yeah, I only covered the first seventy. I was going to go to 69 just so everybody could say "nice," but I figured, why not go to #70. My copy of the Kiki's Delivery Service RA doesn't have the dust jacket, so I had to cobble that image together from two partial images I found on the internets.

the later ones aren't numbered? I don't know. They aren't covering anything I'm that interested in.
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Re: everything you never needed to know about Roman Albums

Post by davemerrill »

SteveH wrote: Thu Oct 11, 2018 4:30 pm
What *I* want to know is:

When did the RA start using dust jackets, which completely elevated the book from 'children's literature' to SERIOUS BUSINESS? I really think it had to do with Arrivederci, Yamato but I have no proof.
Did the 'sub heads' have anything to do with price or page count or pack-in extras? In other words what did 'RA Extra' or 'RA Deluxe' mean?
What about the un-numbered Roman Albums?
The earliest one I have with a dust jacket is 11 (Arrivederci Yamato), but I have some later ones that DON'T have dust jackets, so it seems that their production specs were kind of whimsical in terms of dust jackets as well as page sizes. At some point they all started getting dust jackets, somewhere in the 30s.

It seems like the "Deluxe" and "Extra" tags did denote something special about the RAs - 11 is the first dust jacket and is the first "deluxe" label, and the "Extras" seem to have more pages than the norm. But in the 40s they all started being either "Extra" or "Deluxe," so who knows.

One thing that really stood out to me is the absolutely terrible cover design for 60 - Little Norse Prince. There's this big whack of white space with tiny English type, it's really ugly, and when I first saw it, I was like, this has to be some cheap reprint, but as far as I can tell, that is the cover they went with. I guess they knew the people that really wanted it would buy it no matter what the cover looked like.
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Re: everything you never needed to know about Roman Albums

Post by Drew_Sutton »

danth wrote: Thu Oct 11, 2018 9:30 pm I also have some of those Newtype 100 Collection books, two Tenchi Muyo and one for Lunar (Sega CD game) and probably others.
I also have a small collection of the NewType 100% books, mostly Gundam related ones - at one point I thought about collecting all of them until I realized how wide that collection would be. They're published by Kadokawa though (because I think they publish NewType magazine, too).

Dave, are you familiar with these books at all? They sound very similar to Roman Albums, probably as a result of Tokuma pulling back the RA line. The first four or so are all post-0079 Gundam and the line gets really diverse in the nineties.
danth wrote:So now that I've actually READ Dave's write up, which was great by the way, I know I don't have any Roman Albums, and I feel exactly the same. As an 80s guy only the last 10 Roman Albums interest me at all, and as mecha guy that SPT Layzner one would be the highest on my list.
Yeah, I'm curious as to bits and pieces of other ones (like, do the Mospeada ones cover models since it indicates it's for Hobby fans, too?) but over all, I'd be really jazzed about the Layzner one. That show is just so slick. Shame it's been relegated to the background in mecha fandom for various reasons, most of which are probably related to not being mecha of the year 1985...
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Re: everything you never needed to know about Roman Albums

Post by davemerrill »

I'm familiar with the New Type 100% books, but have never owned any. The publication range of the 100% books seemed to be about 90% Gundam and 10% other shows I wasn't interested in.

I was never that big a fan of New Type, and I can't tell if it's because the magazine was focused on shows I wasn't that interested in, or if I wasn't interested in the anime that was being made at the time, and New Type just happened to focus on what was being made at the time. The magazine was very stylish, lots of white space, big illustrations, a little more upscale than Animage, I guess.

Most of the other anime books I have are from a wide range of publishers and series: I have several of Shogakkukan's "This Is Animation" books on shows like Macross and Final Yamato and the first three, which covered general anime from 1963-1983. Of the Akita Shoten "Best Hit Series" books I have Dancougar and Prowes Sanshiro, and I also have Akita Shoten's Terebi Magazine Specials for Phoenix 2772 and Galaxy Express and the Shueisha Roadshow books for Galaxy Express and Adieu GE. Gakken published Animedia Magazine and they also published the "Gakken Mook Deluxe", I have the Dancougar edition of that. Rapport published Animec magazine, which I don't think I've ever seen a copy of in the wild, but they also published a series of "Rapport Deluxe" books; I have Yamato and a My Youth In Arcadia books from that series. And I have a bunch of other anime books that I can't haul off the shelf right now and look up, of course.

Apart from Roman Albums I haven't been trying to buy every book in a particular series; most of my book buying will be the result of seeing, say, a Vifam book, realizing I don't have any Vifam books, and buying that Vifam book.
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Re: everything you never needed to know about Roman Albums

Post by davemerrill »

and now I'm asking myself, do I need to start shelving these by publisher, instead of by series?
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