Books Star Wars: Chronicles, Episode IV, V, and VI Vehicles - Amazon.jp

It looks like no site has mentioned this yet, but there is a new book coming out in the Chronicles series from Japan. These are those huge, large format picture books that showed all props, weapons,vehicles,character masks, etc. There was one for the classic trilogy and a second for the prequel trilogy. Now amazon.com Japan has listed a new book titled "Star Wars Chronicles Episode IV,V and VI/Vehicles", to be released November 29. At 320 pages and list price of 17,280 yen (around $170.00) this fits the characteristics of the other chronicles books.

You can go to amazon.co.jp and type "star wars chronicles vehicles" in the search box to get an icon to click for the listing. Some of the book description is in English, and it lists all of the vehicles in the classic trilogy as being covered. There's bound to be a lot of detailed model photography and who knows what else.

Amazon.com.jp is accepting pre-orders and it's easy to set up an account and pay with a credit card (I've ordered from them many times from here in the U.S.). The best part of all this is that it looks like the chronicles series is being restarted!

IMHO this is a major book release. I would like to bring this to the attention of theforce.net but I'm not able to contact them because I'm basically internet illiterate. I'd appreciate it if anyone (moderator?) could bring this to their attention. Meanwhile, I'm saving my pennies!

 

The list of ships is VERY interesting:

[EPISODE IV - A NEW HOPE]
Rebel Blockade Runner/Imperial Star Destroyer/Escape Pod/
Sandcrawler/Luke's Landspeeder/Luke's Skyhopper/Lars' Landspeeder/
Back-ground Landspeeder/Millennium Falcon/Death Star/TIE Fighter/
TIE Advanced x1/Yavin4 Secret Rebel Base/X-wing Starfighter/Y-wing Starfighter

[EPISODE V - THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK]
Imperial Star Destroyer/Probot Hyperspace Pod/Hoth Echo Base/
Rebel Snowspeeder/Cannon Sled/Rebel Transport/
All Terrain Armored Transport (AT-AT)/
All Terrain Scout Transport (AT-ST)/Executor/Millennium Falcon/TIE Bomber/
Slave I/Twin-Pod Cloud Car/Rebel Cruiser/Back-ground Spaceships

[EPISODE VI - RETURN OF THE JEDI]
Death Star II/Imperial Shuttle/KHETANNA/Desert Skiff/X-wing Starfighter/
Y-wing Starfighter/Millennium Falcon/HOME ONE/
Mon Calamari MC80 Star Cruiser/Corellian Corvette/
All Terrain Scout Transport (AT-ST)/74-Z Speeder Bike/
All Terrain Armored Transport (AT-AT)/A-wing Starfighter/B-wing Starfighter/
TIE Interceptor/Dornean gunship
and more.

My personal favs- "Back-ground Spaceships" from ESB and the Dornean gunship!

EDIT:

I've tweaked the title, plus reached out to Pablo Hidalgo to get confirmation from him to verify if this is real and what is may contain! Stay tuned!

--Adm. Nick

 

I noticed that I gave two variations of the website address for amazon in Japan. Sorry about that, the correct address is amazon.co.jp

 

Whoa, they're gonna acknowledge the difference between the ESB and ROTJ walkers? Even the ROTJ AT-AT has an inside that doesn't match the ICS/TFA insides. Not to mention the actual hatch Luke and the Stormtroopers come out from.

 

The book is legit and Pablo was unaware of it. He mentioned it's possible that the authors of this book have unearthed previously unseen photos, but we'll only know for sure once the book is published.

I'm REALLY tempted to purchase it... even though I won't be able to read a damned thing in Japanese.

--Adm. Nick

 

Wasn't Star Wars Graphics originally in French (and possibly as a magazine?) before being published in English? Maybe this book will get a general release too.

 

Use Google Translate app. It can translate text with your phone's camera in real time

 

Yeah, and give me a headache trying to decipher the resulting hieroglyphs.

 

Wasn't Star Wars Graphics also the one that copied information wholesale from kriffin' Supershadow? Not a precedent I'd want to repeat.

 

Definitely not.

 

True. Both books had Pablo being unaware of them though.

 

Oh I hope this book gets one of those pretty Japanese NJO-style covers. The vehicles and ships can be all aligned, posing, with colorful explosions somewhere near the center. One can be sort of menacing in the background.

 

Amazon.co.jp now has eleven sample pages from the upcoming vehicles chronicles book in its listing for the tome. It certainly looks like the authors dug deep into the Lucasfilm archives to find previously unpublished photos of vehicle models from every conceivable angle, as well as close-ups of areas of interest. I can't help thinking that there might be more to the book than this, since 320 pages would mean several pages devoted to each classic trilogy vehicle.

 

I love these bts shots of the Hoth AT-ST.

 

I checked out the preview images and i really hope this gets a wider release
Those models look really yummy, what's the Dornean gunship?

 

Dornean gunship has a very similar profile to a c90 corvette just shorter...and its surface is littered with more sensors and instruments and its appearance more alien.

Serves the same purpose as the corellian DP20... anti starfighter.. and was from ROTJ

RE: the book,
It does look beautiful... but aside from the Dornean gunship, I've seen all of those vehicles broken down as blueprints, crosssections etc.. although the pictures and cross sections I've come across were usually not quite as large and beautiful as that book's

 

They boast a lot of background vehicles, the laser-cutter from Hoth, the Rebel ships from ESB etc.

 

I'll be getting my copy of the SW Chronicles--Vehicles book tomorrow. If you have any questions about it, post them here and I'll answer them in the next couple of days. Personally, I'm going to compare it to my Chronicles book for the original trilogy to see if there is a substantial improvement in the photos.

 

I'm really interested in that book, but the price is just too high for me (about 140€ w/o shipping). A pity!

 

I seem to recall reading something, somewhere, about this book possibly having pictures of the elusive TIE Shuttle (Captain Needa's shuttle from ESB). I even saw the pictures once, but I don't remember anymore where I saw them and I can't verify anymore that this book is where they came from. Anything in that book about the TIE Shuttle?

 

This is my review of the Star Wars Chronicles book on vehicles for episodes 4,5, and 6, but please keep in mind my knowledge of SW photos is far from complete so I may say some photos are new to this book when in fact they aren't. First of all, I would say that this is a great book but not a must-have for most. If you have the first Chronicles book (eps 4,5,6) then you already have many photos in the new book. But that still leaves a LOT of new photos. The nicest thing in the book for me is a beautiful double fold-out of the super star destroyer (Executor) from ESB. I had never seen a photo with all of the many details clearly visible until now. Several different perspectives, as is true for almost every vehicle in the book. Also very nice are several photos of the probot pod which I had never seen before.

There are many photos of vehicle interiors--especially nice are complete control panels without people blocking parts of them. A major surprise was a large number of photos of characters, apparently unused production photos, and even rehearsal photos that I've never seen anywhere previously. There was one oddity that seems a bit of overkill. Every X-wing and Y-wing in the space battle at the death star in Ep 4 gets several pages of photos. I guess there are differences between them in battle damage patterns and airbrushed burn areas, but the number of pages seems excessive. A minor complaint. It was nice to see a page with all of the astromech droids that accompanied each rebel fighter in the battle.

A few pages of prototype vehicles (X-wing, Y-wing, rebel blockade runner, Imperial shuttle from ROTJ), some of which I've seen before but others I swear I haven't. It's interesting that the rebel blockade runner had one prototype built (the original proposed design of the Millenium Falcon), then an early prototype almost the same as the design used, then the final design. Building all those models (and others that went through multiple iterations) might explain why ILM started the special effects for ANH so late. Just a thought. The book ends with vehicles designed for the three special editions of the movies.

I can see how a scratch model builder would consider this a must-have book. Every exterior detail is shown with razor sharp clarity, from multiple angles. For other SW collectors, it's a bit of a tough call as to how essential this book is. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I bought it, but I wouldn't feel too bad about not having it. A very nice book, but you've seen smaller versions of some of the photos before.

To answer the question from Positive Fan, no there were no photos of a TIE Shuttle, just the Imperial Shuttle from ROTJ. The only vehicles that were new to me were the Laser Cannon sled from ESB and the Dornean ship from the ROTJ space battle (the book doesn't use the term "Dornean" but I can't remember what name they gave it). I absolutely don't remember seeing that Dornean ship in ROTJ, but the book has a frame grab from the movie that shows it as small blob with appendages in the background of part of the battle.

Any other questions?

 

Any new pics/info on Mon Calamari cruisers? Any chance you could post a few pics too?

--Adm. Nick

 

TIE Fighter interior shots?

 

Bummer. Thanks for checking. I wish I could remember where I saw those pics posted. I thought I grabbed them, but I checked my collection before the holidays and discovered I didn't have them after all.

 

What vehicles from the SE were detailed? The air taxi, the air train, the air bus, other types of cloud cars etc.?