CNBlue: Re:Blue Special Limited Edition Album Review

I ordered CNBlue's latest album, Re:Blue Limited Edition Yonghwa Version, through kpoptown.com.  CNBlue was the first kpop band/group I listened to (besides fictional You're Beautiful band ANJell), and I have been faithfully listening to them since July 2010.  I've never purchased a kpop album, let alone a limited edition version, so my first purchase had to be of CNBlue!  Note, this post will be very photo-heavy because I was just so excited to share my happiness with the world!

First off, I must admit the photo book smells like a school yearbook fresh off of the press!  Holding this album before my eyes has made me so happy, I can't stop smiling stupidly just thinking about its arrival.  Here are the front and back covers of this hardbound photo book.  The front cover is specialized for the Yonghwa version while the back displays all four members of CNBlue.  I like the artistic approach of having the sepia-like lens in these images!

Like CNBlue's other limited edition album Ear Fun, Re:Blue has four versions, one for each member.  Each version comes with the same, beautifully created and abundant photo book of the album's creation in London.  While each version has the same exact content inside the book, the front cover differs with a photo of that version's member. The photo book has 4 parts, and each member designed his own part.

I love how each member even hand wrote commentary and labels throughout his own section, making it more personalized and showing us a bit of their personality in penmanship.  Here is the cover page of part 2, which Lee Jung Shin designed.

I never had a particular interest in Lee Jung Shin, but I loved the creative little touches he added to his part of the photo book!  His penmanship is very interesting, mixing up various fonts and styles.  Jung Shin also expressed his artistic side, with simplistic yet cute doodles throughout his section.  The umbrella just adds a nice touch to the photos of CNBlue strolling the streets of London :)

And here is Part 4: Stage behind!  Jonghwa's snake is adorable.

Yonghwa also added cute little doodles to some of his pages!

 Each version contains 3 postcards.  Mine came with 2 of Yonghwa and 1 of CNBlue.  I really like the quality of these postcards.  They're not typical images printed on printer paper, but instead the paper is a thick, sturdy paper that feels almost like it's for watercolor painting.

As a pre-order gift, kpoptown offered 5 back-to-back photo cards of CNBlue as well.  Honestly kpoptown had said "5 sheets" so I was expected larger photos, but these photo cards are still nice to have.  These photos are mostly from a commercial shoot I believe, with one photo (top left) being Re:Blue's album cover.

In the very back is the CD and DVD, firmly wedged by foam in the center of the discs.

Below is a closeup of the back cover, which shows the tracklist along with the shiny hologram of authenticity. Listening to Re:Blue's tracklist, I've noticed how CNBlue's been experiencing various genres within rock. The main song in this album is "I'm Sorry," though honestly this song didn't stand out when I listened to the entire tracklist.  My favorites are "Coffee Shop" and "The Guy Like Me" (track 4) for their catchy and upbeat notes.  I loved every part of both of these songs!

I watched the DVD, which is a 20 minute long video about the making of CNBlue's music video "I'm Sorry." I originally didn't really like that song, but by the end of this video I started falling in love with this song! There are no subtitles, but they really aren't needed to get the gist of the video.  It was mostly visual, with clips of CNBlue's photoshoot throughout London, CNBlue strolling the streets and lastly CNBlue rocking on the rooftop.  Despite how cool CNBlue looked while walking on the streets in the actual music video, it was interesting to see how silly they looked while the cameramen were giving cues and shooting the footage. Lots of times the members of CNBlue also had random dialogues in English and spoke English interjections out of the blue, making the vibe of the video more casual and fun.  

In some of these photos, you can get a sense of just how big this book is.  It really is kind of big, which surprised me!  This is like a thin textbook.  I also really like the texture of both the book and the 3 postcards: they're matte with 3-D horizontal waves.  The quality of this limited edition album is well worth its price and I'm very satisfied with it!