Also, I am aware there is such a thing as an anime spring season, which I couldn't care about for a variety of reasons: first of all, the last anime I legitimately enjoyed came out around 2011 or something, and I can't even remember what it was; then, as I no longer have unlimited internet connection, streaming is out of the question. No big deal really, as Man-Ga channel is currently airing two favorites of mine - Lodoss and Vampire Princess Miyu; and Every Witch Way easily tops any comedy show I have seen in the past two years. And and, that gigantic trainwreck that is Shannara is finally over, so we can bury its charred remains along with its Xena level looks, and forget it ever existed. I had half an idea of picking up the Shannara novels I had never read - Ilse Witch onward - but nope, not going to happen.
Also, one of the few things in which Shannara topped Tolkien is that the protagonists actually had the sense to use the bloody giant bird to save the day. Why didn't they use the bloody Roc in the adaptation? the cut makes the whole scene of rescuing the Elf rider literally useless.
Aaaanyway, enough ranting, and let's get back to the dōjinshi. One of my many impulse buys while I was over in Japan (three years ago? feels like a eternity) was this little A5 size, black and white dōjinshi from a circle I knew only in passing by name: LOVE MARS by あびゅうきょ工房 (Abyukyo Studio). I knew that the circle mostly dealt in gunji ota (military otaku), which I could care less for; and futanari, which is even worse not for the transgender angle, but because I find the idea of a cock and no balls very, very creepy. Fortunately I perused the dōjinshi (which, unusually, was actually unwrapped) and saw there was none of either, so I gave it a chance.
So why did I buy this thing in the first place, you ask? the absence of stuff I dislike usually would't be enough to shell my very hard-earned cash. Well, one thing that really struck me the first time I came across Abyukyo's web site was his very distinctive art stlye. It surely is... an acquired taste, to put it mildly: his grasp of human anatomy is fairly tenuous, and his girls hardly look like your average moe blob. Still, his incredibily detailed signature style is characterized by the visual accumulation of one particular after the other, and the result are rich and vivid panels that you could literally spend hours exploring for every tiny detail. His style actually reminds me a lot of early Riichi Ueshiba, Discommunication era.
Published in 2012, LOVE MARS is a fairly weird mock-up scientific record of the deployment of girl-shaped robots on Mars, so to fight phallic looking autoctonous fauna. No, Im'm not lying, this is actually what the dōjinshi is about. To be fair, I'm kind of hazy on the details, as I could only read excepts of this work: some images take up a whole page, while sometimes they will share space with verbose block of texts featuring very difficult kanji. Which makes sense, as it's supposed to have a 'science report' feel to it; still, reading wise it had to be relegated to the 'some day soon' pile.
The book itself is fairly well constructed. Sporting glued spine and a color cover (see above), it's printed on nice and sturdy paper with a pleasant yellowish shade; there are no visible printing defects, and the small format actually doesn't impair Abyukyo's taste for detail to any extent. I am actually starting to enjoy these smaller formats: I have some A3 dōjinshi that are currently collapsing under their own weight.
Overall, a lucky fortuitous purchase. It might not be for everyone, but it has that indie, edgy feel I sometimes need in order to compensate for all that redjuice stylishness.
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