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1. The "Archives..." Series
   
2. The "Art of..." Series
   
3. Available Studio Ghibli-related (and pre-Ghibli) Books
   
4. Film Comics
   
5. Roman Albums
   
6. Sheet Music
   
7. Where to Buy These Books
   

The "Archives..." Series

There are five volumes in the Archives of Studio Ghibli series. These books contain photos of movie advertisement materials, movie production, proposals, production reports, and newspaper review articles. The books are very beautiful and a good buy if you want an in-depth look at the production side. Some of them are out of print.
 

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The "Art of..." Series

There is one each for following movies: Nausicaä, Laputa, Totoro, Kiki, Only Yesterday, Porco Rosso, Mononoke Hime, and Yamada-kun. They cost ¥2600-2800 each, and each is around 200 pages. They are paperbound but printed on high quality glossy paper, and include a very nice dust jacket. Edited by the staff of Animage magazine, they contain a variety of sketches, storyboards, background information, and cel reproductions (with backgrounds). From Kiki onward, the books contained a full script (not just dialog, but also action cues, etc.). The books are quite beautiful and a good buy. Some of them are out of print.
 

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Film Comics

Film comics are basically color manga made entirely of cel setups from the corresponding anime (i.e., there's no additional art beyond that in the film or video), with the complete dialog for the film (sometimes minus an occasional background line) in the word balloons for the manga, as well as overlays of the usual manga sound effect words. They usually have full furigana (pronunciation hints) for kanji, so if you know some Japanese and can read kana, you may well be able to read it (if your Japanese can handle the dialog, of course). They generally run around ¥700 per volume, and they usually come in sets of four for feature films, so that's 2800 for the set. Perhaps not worth it unless you have no other source of art (film comics do seem to stay in print), or you want to translate on your own.
 

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Roman Albums

Roman Albums contain a lot of postage-stamp-sized stills from the movies, and they generally cost about ¥1500. They also contain some production art and sketches as well as interviews with the animators and voice actors (in Japanese, of course). "Roman" means "novel" in French. There are Roman Albums on Nausicaa, Totoro, Laputa, Kiki, Only Yesterday, Porco Rosso, and Mononoke Hime. However, most of them are out of print and rather hard to find.
 

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Sheet Music

For detailed information, please see the comprehensive Sheet Music Book List. Piano scores for the pieces from the soundtracks and image albums are available in several degrees of difficulty. Also available are a few music books for violin and flute.
 

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