Amazon Japan as opened pre-orders for Transformers Masterpiece Official Guide.

No cover or pics yet.

30 July release. 3,024 yen. 96 pages. In Japanese.

Amazon.co.jp￾F ƒgƒ‰ƒ“ƒXƒtƒH￾[ƒ}￾[ ƒ}ƒXƒ^￾[ƒs￾[ƒX ƒIƒtƒBƒVƒƒƒ‹ƒKƒCƒh: –{

Hopefully it'll have lots of good tidbits from the designers.

UPDATE:

Cover image now available

http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/48649115...QYX&&ref-refURL=http://snakas.blog95.fc2.com/

 

This could be very promising if someone is willing to translate. I'm betting some real mythbusting will lie in the pages of that book.

 

It won't happen but I would love it if this book laid out Takara's plans for the line for the next couple of years. Put pay to the 3rd party companies who are stealing their thunder and give us all something great to look forward to.

Either way I'm sure it'll be interesting.

 

I think an English language version of this would be popular.
If only the people behind this book had decided to do both languages, even in the same book, they would immediately have a much larger audience.

 

Masterpiece official guide? Would love a copy when they complete the line, but what's the point now?

 

Pre-ordered! I hope there are some nice pictures in there since I don't have any grasp on Japanese  

Complete the line? How are they going to do that? At least this way there can be a few volumes.

 

Yes, we know this is coming out before even all the releases for this year and as such, with some future releases still to come afterwards. So on one hand we could speculate that there could well be many more Masterpieces after this book, and multiple guidebooks to compliment them, much as there have been varying numbers of Generations Guidebooks from Japan since 2009 or so.

From this, the other thing that could be speculated over, is that something may be listed, shown or at least as likely to me, teased about Masterpieces we're not yet aware of. Given the manner in which Generations Guidebooks provide collectors with insight into a broad array of the Transformers creative processes while fueling product demand, if an assumption must be made, a reasonable one would be that we might see at least one teaser silhouette in such a book, maybe a prototype.

 

I really love this idea of a TF MP Guide Book. Beside the pictures itself, I hope we get:
- Insight of a short interview/description for each MP figure as to why they design such way, e.g. pros, cons, budgets, etc from the designer.
- Line arts as seen from the Generation Book regarding MP10,21,22. Those detail drawings look amazing.
- Future MP release whether teaser, prototype, etc.
- Some English translation damn it!
- Unused or unapproved design sketch for each MP figure if it applies e.g. Hasui Armor MP UM.

That's for now.... 

 

No English version planned? Depending on quality and price, I may pick this up just for the heck of it. I can always have my wife translate Japanese to English for me.   That and purty pictures of MP figs.

 

Still a neat nod to the complexity and brilliance of the Takaratomy designers. Bought. and FYI Hasbro has nothing to do with the MP line, not one bit.  

 

Where did you order it from? Amazon.jp? Can you order from Amazon Japan to be delivered to the British Isles then?

 

Yeah totally, that's how I got my Generations 2014 book. Didn't you get yours from them? Books are fine to be shipped interationally as far as I know.

 

Hmm, so tempting to order from Amazon.co.jp, but the shipping is half the cost of the book. Grrrr...

EDIT: Who am I kidding, order placed.

Meanwhile (and slightly off-topic), the going rate for our recently released Hasbro MP Grimlock is AMAZEBALLS. If my math is correct, that's $245 USD PLUS shipping (another $5).

 

Eh, I might just order it from Amiami or HLJ.

 

I bought that from CDJapan. But I have just ordered this from Amazon, couldn't resist.  

 

I looked on HLJ and couldn't find it.. searched by name, and tried both of the ISBN numbers. While I usually love Amazon, clearly my US Prime account has no street cred on the JP site, what with the shipping being nuts. :/ If I could get it from someone with a less expensive shipping cost, I'd be more enthusiastic. =)

 

This is an excellent idea, I wish Hasbro and Takara would focus their sights on the Transformers Masterpiece line and noting else.

 

I would buy an English version of this book.

Hope it gets a translation  

 

96 pages doesn't seem enough to get very in-depth with anything, even though it's still a relatively small line.

Maybe not in the design or engineering, but it would still be nice to have the Hasbro variants covered. Like Hasbro's G1 toy-homage Rodimus compared to Takara's animation-accurate version.

If you're going to have a guide, it may as well be complete.

 

I love the masterpiece line.

However, I do not really see the point. I'm sure it will be neat and interesting and all that good stuff, but considering a great deal of these figures were repaints of the same mould...

Just don't see the point, sorry!