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Language:

Japanese

Publisher:

Shogakukan

Date of Publication:

8 August, 2012

Where I Got It:

Japanese Seller on American Amazon, for about 30USD

Publicly Available Scans:

Imgur Upload by Meteorz Repost on the Internet Archive

I originally got this book for myself back in 2017 for my 16th birthday, and it was my first time buying a Japanese import on Amazon, of all places. Frankly, I consider myself lucky that I managed to get away with not getting scammed... is there even a scam market for Japanese Kirby media?

Regardless, this has been one of my favorite books on my shelf ever since. Kirby has always been on the top in terms of my favorite video game franchises, with my very first personal video game being Kirby Super Star Ultra for the Nintendo DS, which I got for my 7th birthday way back in 2008. I still have my original save file 19 years later, completely 100%-ed! Ever since then, I've been a ride or die Kirby fan, playing almost every game, watching the anime front to back multiple times (even in the regretful English dub), consuming as much Kirby media as I possibly can, and drawing many, many Kirbys (Kirbies? Kirbi?) in as many places as possible.

Prior to this book, the only Kirby book on my shelf used to be the small art book packaged with the Special Edition of the Kirby 20th Anniversary Collection for the Wii, but that somehow got lost, and most likely discarded, as our house was renovated and reorganized over the years. I would love to get my hands on a copy of that again, but I'm content with what I have now, of course! And, thankfully, I do still have the music CD bundled with the Wii game, as well as the game itself, so I truly have nothing to be complaining about.

As is publicly available, the Kirby 20th Anniversary Encyclopedia has 240 pages documenting the 20 years of Kirby games and media up to 2012, with the final game documented within the book being Kirby's Return to Dreamland for the Wii. The book is split up into well-organized sections, starting with main character introductions before transitioning into segments about each game up to 2012. Each section features key art, concept designs, game renders, screenshots, trivia, and commentary about each one's development. Around halfway through the book are sketches directly from the development room, featuring my favorite pieces of Kirby art on page 120, where his poses are sketched next to a drawn human model to get the dynamics of his movement down.

Following the games, there's a very generous section of the book dedicated to the Kirby Right Back At Ya! anime, with the same assortment of content- concepts, keys, still frames, screenshots, and developer and artist commentary about the show. I'm not entirely sure about the general consensus of the Kirby anime, but I personally enjoyed it quite a bit on my first few watches, and certainly prefer the original Japanese dub over the English one, so being able to see glimpses into how the show came about through this book was a wonderful read!

The final section of the book is dedicated to Kirby's various manga spinoffs, including "Kirby of the Stars" by Sakuma Yoshiko, "Kirby Manga Mania" by Hirokazu Hikawa, and "Kirby of the Stars! Moretsu Pupupu Hour!" by Asami Taniguchi, these artists of which, among others, also provided celebratory illustrations for Kirby's 20th birthday at the start of the book. Segments of the manga are available for each, as well as artist commentary and notes!

Overall, I truly feel like Kirby's 20th Anniversary Encyclopedia is the best piece of Kirby media that stands today, with just how much information is packaged into such a small book. But 240 pages is really nothing to sneeze at! It's one of those books that you notice something new from every time you flip through it, and it takes multiple reads to truly digest everything... at least for me. But I cannot state enough just how much I love this book and how much it means to me.

It is a mild shame that this was never localized in English, and it doesn't seem like there's any intention to bring this to western audiences now that so much time has passed. Just a bare minimum amount of research brought me to a Reddit thread from 10 years ago about a translation project for this book on Kirby's Rainbow Resort, but it doesn't seem like any further development on that project has taken place, nor did the thread get much overall attention. Which does suck, at least to me. I'm very happy that scans exist of this book, but if anyone has any current progress or wants to kickstart another attempt at mass translating this wonderful book, I would love to have a part in helping out!