Reading – An Encyclopedia of Kaiju
An Encyclopedia of Kaiju is a 144-page softcover book that anyone interested in the Japanese vinyl toys of the past decade should grab. Produced by Super7 (website, Twitter), I got this book back in February and it has been an extremely useful reference guide since the moment I first cracked the book open.
Page after page of photos of toys, this book covers only toys made in Japan from over 40 different companies. As a photographic reference my only complaint with the book is that the photos are small. As a complete guide my complaint is that the book does not show every colorway produced for each design; instead one colorway is shown and it’s left to the reader to try to track down information on specific colorways.
But those are my only complaints with the book. There isn’t much in the way of text, but the hundreds of photos of toys more than make up for the limited number of words. I’ve posted 25 photos at Flickr if you’d like to see more of the book, but the pages shown here give you a pretty good indication of the book’s interior.
At $30 the book is a little pricey for a softcover, but considering this is the best reference to Japanese vinyl I’ve encountered I certainly can’t complain about the price. I don’t have a lot to say about a book of photos, but I’ll say that if you collect any Japanese designer vinyl toys you need to snag this book. The pages of Space Troopers alone have proven very useful to me, while the entire book has been a source of “ooooo, I want that” far too many times.
I know it’s not a complete guide to the current scene, but it’s the best printed book I’ve found. And at the moment it’s available at the Super7 site. This was $30 well spent, even if it did lead to spending considerably more than $30. Between this book and so many generous people giving me kaiju toys I have slowly accumulated a larger collection than I anticipated; and I know I’m not done yet.
A fun book.
I totally love this book. I absolutely can’t stop looking at it!
Call me a zealot but this book drives me nuts – the layout is crap – the photos are small – the English copy is translated by someone who knows nothing about the toys – there are no checklists. For every artist included there is another glaringly omitted. Not sure what Super 7’s role in this book was but it certainly wasn’t the design. I guess what gets my goat is the opportunity lost – because since this book exists there is no incentive to do another one properly. Since this is all there is you might as well buy one any way.
@Datadub – I can promise that if a better book came out at about the same price (maybe even up to $50) I would grab it. I suspect this book is most useful/fun for guys like me who have almost no experience with this side of toy collecting.