"Blow" by ぴぃたぁそると

 This is another one I discovered through Twitter. I'm not a huge JRPG player - not, at least, until very recently - so I simply followed ぴぃたぁそると (Peter Salt) out of mere curiosity for their colorful, dynamic illustrations of cute, sporty girls. Little did I know they they actually have quite the pedigree, having worked on pixel art for Secret of Mana 3, Final Fantasy tactics, and a number of other JRPG titles before seemingly switching to mostly dōjin works.

Blow is a collection of illustrations dating all the way back to 2018 (full color, 24 pages). They showcase, more or less, the same graphic and thematic style ぴぃたぁそるとcarries on to this very day: full body pinups of girls that would feel right at home as characters of a JRPG or ligthhearted fighting game. There are no backgrounds at all, the figure (mostly that of a young girl, occasionally accompanied by a mascot) being instead the sole center of attention. One of the artist's trademark are their characters' extremely plastic, dramatic poses; and the vivid color, which stand out all the more because of the lack of backgrounds. Traits that, overall, belie the artist's origins as a pixel / character designer. While the illustrations often have a fantasy touch to them, more realistic depictions of sporty girls are also included. Each  illustration comes with a short commentary, providing general background info. 

So yeah, a charming collection of simple, to the point, but effective characters designs, that catch the eye with their liveliness and vivid colors. Recommended, and you can look at the artist's Twitter for more - they're very active to this day. 

"Shiny Ad Catalogue" by estroitia

I must admit I am almost entirely unfamiliar with the Idolmaster thing - as much of a weeb as I am, I also am entirely uninterested in the world of Japanese idols; a trait I apparently don't share with many dōjin creators, as Idolmaster paraphernalia is pretty much everywhere.

I occasionally grumble when (mostly by fault of my poor observation skills) I buy a dōjinshi which turns out to be Idolmaster crap, but there is a silver lining to the cloud, as I have already happened twice upon works that, in spite of belonging to this dreadful fandom, actually happened to be excellent on their own merit. Shiny Ad Catalogue (dating 2021) is one such cases (the other I might review at some point in the future).

 
The first, curious feature of Shiny Ad Catalogue is that the circle that produced it, "estroitia", does not seem to be entirely Japanese. While the dōjinshi itself is in Japanese, according to their website estroitia is in fact a Chinese circle, which operates and distributes through both Chinese and Japanese channels and conventions. Biographies are rather succinct, so I can't really say whether the circle's members, 夕語 and ホシノフラワー, are both Chinese using aliases, or otherwise. Pretty cool stuff either way.

 

The dōjinshi illustration book itself is pretty cool too. At 24 pages full color and A4 format, it uses one of those pseudo-meta conceits I love so much in dōjin works: it presents its illustrations as a collection of ads for fictional products, endorsed by a variety of Idolmaster chicks. The book is a collaborative work, coordinated by the circle's two main members: it actually features illustrations by nineteen different artists, both Chinese and Japanese.


First of all, let's get out of the way that the pin-ups might as well be no Idolmaster idols at all, for allthat it matters: I'm sure some series nerd could identify each one of them based on hairstyle and such; but, to the ends of the collection, the could just be any pretty bishoujo really. Fidelity to the ad format is uneven: while some illustrations are basically just pinups, barely featuring the product, some could easily pass for actual anime-styled ads as I often saw in my time in Tokyo and Kyoto. Standouts, in this sense, are KRR's ad for a fictional job search website, or reguai's moody ad for fictional brand of candy "Kujira". To be honest, the quality of the featured work is pretty high in general, even when the meta conceit is just an excuse for drawing a pretty girl (ie エビフライ眼鏡P's sneaker ad).




Overall a very nice collection, not exceedingly tarnished by the Idolmaster connection. It also happens to be the second in a series, so I'll definitely have to get my hands on the next one.

"Useless beauty" by OKAMA

 I was really hoping to get more than one review in for November, especially since I have some backlog now, but technical difficulties prevented that. So, here we are in December...

But a good one it is. Some of you might still be familiar with the name OKAMA - he is not exclusively a dōjin artist, but has in fact authored a number of mainstream manga series, to some success and varying degrees of subjective quality. I read Cloth Road a long time ago and found it quite enjoyable as a take on the tournament-battle manga theme; I tried Mukan no Kishi and it was middling. 

He has a couple other minor series under his belt, but honestly with OKAMA story and worldbuilding is not where it's at. His strength, in my opinion, lies fair and square in the realm of character design, where he excels and then some. I think a cursory look at his personal site, linked above, will make that pretty clear.

What we have here today is Useless Beauty, a full-color collection dating all the way back to 2007 (17 years ago!), a bygone era in which OKAMA still dabbled almost entirely into pinups and, occasionally, ecchi and hentai. None of that here, as usual, but there are a couple slightly risqué phisiques here and there. 

What's really on display, even this early in OKAMA's career, is his eye for composition, color usage, and design. Sure, he almost entirely focuses on the usual bishoujo we have seen a thousand times before, but he does so with an imaginative flair we don't see everyday: his girls explore the Pole, commandeer ships in space, improvise tropical banquets and play with each other (more or less innocently) in a sort of virtual harem which puts on display, as the title suggests, the inherently useless - and therefore worthy of treasuring - quality of beauty. 

His eye for color is amazing and, frankly, very daring: there is something almost Murakami-like in the pop appeal of OKAMA's lime greens, neon pinks, often pitted against stark white. His figures, dramatically lithe yet always anatomically appropriate (occasionally breasts aside), bend and curve as if they were pieces of design themselves. JP pop art meets art nouveau.

OKAMA has published a couple other very good dōjinshi, some of which were translated ages ago by a long-dead scanlation group (shoutout to The Rabbit Reich): personally I recommend Fruit Girls and Okamarble. He also appeared in a couple issues of Murata's ROBOT. 

 

TRIP by Ukke

Autumn has come, and with it fog so thick you can cut it with a knife. It's also cold; like, real cold. We need some color around here...

    Just a few weeks ago I have reviewed  a dōjinshi by artist Ukke - in fact, a photobook /illustration hybrid, which left such a good impression I definitely had to snag something else by them with my next shipment. And so I got my dirty paws on Trip, this time a illustrations-only publication from 2008, entirely the work of Ukke themselves. Full color, A4, at 20 pages it's substantially smaller than Bouquet, but still an excellent addition to my collection.

    There is no specific theme, this time around. What we have is a collection of cutesy pinups, a 'best of the year' or so in the best dōjin tradition. One thing that immediately leaps to the eye is how masterful Ukke's handling of color contrasts is. As usual, my pics don't do it justice (for those who don't know, I'm philosophically against bending or unbinding stuff): each page is laden in vivid colors, complemented by a clean digital tract, and an eye for pattern design. This one is definitely a dōjinshi that would only make sense in full color. As mentioned, there is no specific theme, though Ukke seems to have a preference for almost-but-not-quite chibi bishoujo; no surprise, considering Bouquet started as a series of drawings, before becoming a picturebook. 

    If anything, its only fault is that it's a bit too short. Will definitely be on the hunt for more: in the meantime, if you want to see more of Ukke's work you can check out their Twitter or Instagram, where they post regular updates. 

ひつじ雲の帰り道 by Itodome

 Another purchase entirely made on the cover alone. I was entirely unfamiliar with Itodome (いとどめ), though there is some pretty good stuff to be found on their skeb profile.  It's a sort of slightly unpolished style, the anatomy is occasionally a bit shaky but I really dig the painterly, almost watercolor feel most of their (digital, I assume) works have. Subject is, for the most part, the usual fare; consisting of fanart, chicks, and... umm, planes? Cool stuff nonetheless.

ひつじ雲の帰り道  (literally, "the cumulonimbus' return home") is a nice little yuri manga from 2021's Winter Comiket, 24 pages in black and white - which, in this case, fits the overall sepia aesthetics of the cover art. The story is a well worn yuri trope: teacher and pupil fall in love, omg scandalous, they reunite once the student is no longer jailbait. We are fully within the canon, with no real risks taken with the story, but Itodome's drawing style, flowy as the genre commands (to the point of abstraction at times) really carries this one. Some facial expressions are a bit shaky at times, and it's not always super easy to read the action given how abstract the tract can get, but overall it's a style I still like a lot.

Not much more to say about this one. A nice little thing, definitely worth a look if you can snag a copy (good luck lol). 

"Frame" by Syo5

 Yeah, very few and sort of grungy pictures for this one. Reason: it's printed on a glossy paper that, for some reason, is very resistant to being photographed well; and, as you know, I'm vehemently against unbiding stuff. Weird, because the cover - and the cover only - is on matte paper... well, one more reason to actually check out the provided links, isn't it?

Frame is a short, full color, square format 2018 collection of works by illustrator / animatory syo5. Apparently, they're sort of a big deal, working mostly as a freelance artist for book covers, and as a director /animator for music videos. This last bit is actually unsurprising, as the illustrations collected in Frame have a cinematic quality, in the literal sense: we are often presented with a sequence of images, as if we were looking at still frames of an animation. Colors are rather somber in general, and the grain has a sort of faded quality, as if looking through a hazy glass -- a visual style you can see in their video works as well, see for example Minami's Ame Wo Matsu, for which Syo5 directed and animated. 

The dōjinshi is super short, 16 pages total, so one could argue there isn't much meat to it, considering that the collection lacks any sort of textual contextualization, from which I assume it to be a crop of personal works or practice pieces. Not the kind of stuff I usually enjoy - it's a bit too mainstream and polished for my taste - but, judging from their Twitter and Instagram following, I'd definitely in the minority. You might enjoy it! 

"NKR80 vol.2" by Narume

 While it might not be apparent from the stutt I review, I am a big fan of pixel art. I am, after all, also a Doom and Strife modder, and making custom graphics for those games pretty much means creating pixel art. It seems to me as if there are two main "school" of pixel art nowadays: one one hand, those who adopt the nostalgia angle, and lean more on the simple, blocky nature of the style; on the other, a lot of pixel artist who choose instead to focus on 'realism', so to speak, creating images that, while still generated pixel by pixel, could easily pass for non-pixel illustrations.

"NKR80 vol.2" (2019) is an illustration collection by pixel artist Narume, whose work for the most part falls into the latter category: their illustrations, usually bishoujo with a modern edge, reveal their pixely nature only upon close inspection, a fact that is well exemplified in this 16 pages, full color, square format collection: almost all images are presented along with a detail close up, which clearly show how Narume created them pixel by pixel. Neon tinges are predominant, leaning into that waporwave-ish aesthetics which seems to be very popular among modern pixel artists. Subjects, as mentioned, don't vary much, being all essentially pinups.

Upon comparison of the full image and the closeup, one can't help but marvel at Narume's artistry. The restrained color palette, and its greatly simplified monochrome backgrounds, really lends a vector-like clarity to each image, which greatly helps preserving definition and cleanliness. It's overall a very summery collection, basking in aqua tones to complement the abundant helpings of purple and pink neon lights. 

A short but pleasant treat, not much to say except enjoying Narume's skill with the pixels. They also have a pixel manga series, if you're interested, and a store full of cute stuff. 

"Bouquet" by Ukketori et al.

 As you might notice if you've been reading my reviews for a while, I often end up writing about stuff made by people who... don't really make stuff anymore. I guess since (with many exceptions) dōjin work falls under the rubric of "amateur work", it is something that more often than not either turns into actual professional work; or becomes one of those "yeah, when I was young I used to sell my stuff at Comiket" moments a mom or dad with two kids and a mortgage will reminesce about in their middle-age. Sometimes they also go pro, and simply try and hide their dōjin past (ahemShigeoHamashimaahem).

Hence, a lot of the circles whose works I cover are no longer active, and all of their ephemera (websites, blogs etc) are lost forever in the ether. Again, there are dozens exceptions on this blog alone, but it's pretty normal for me to check the links provided in a dōjinshi's credit page, and get a bunch of 404s. 

This is why I get particularly excited when, on the other hand, I manage to find leads who take me back to more info about the author of a work I enjoyed, and who might be working at a reduced capacity or no longer at all. Especially nice when this didn't happen for tragic reasons, but because they're simply living their best life. 

"Bouquet" is a 2012, 60 full color pages hybrid photobook / illustration work by a team led by artist ukketori, helped by cosplay photographer soramimi and a cast of four models: boo-chan; myuu-chan; chii-chan; and Himemiya Mahore. Pardon the -chan, I assume all involved parties are well in their thirties or more by now, but they're still likely my same age or even younger, so yeah XD 

One special treat is that, while pretty much all of the participating parties haven't really updated their blogs in a while, we can still find online an fc2.com blog that is essentially a making-of this dōjinshi.Things seem to have gone something like this. Ukketori, who is a professional artist who is still active, or was until very recently (more on that later) gets together with her high school friend boo-chan (mostly a boys' love cosplayer) to make a book where a few of ukketori's illustration will be turned into cosplays, who will then be photographed by cosplay photographer soramimi. Then, ukketori produced more illustrations based on these photographies. 

The result is a very charming, tasteful operation that really captivated me. Ukketori's illustrations, while well within the bounds of PIXIV-style manga, are colorful and lively, really selling the character's design and traits, both the stand-alones, and those reproducing soramimi's colorful pictures. All four models each have their own flair, from boyish but cute boo-chan, to superpink Himemiya, and you can tell from their expressions and gestuality that they must have had lots of fun during the photoshoot. The outfits are sometimes revealing, but always stay on the tasteful side of things - no ecchi here, which is fine by me. The most fanservice you get is some catgirling, which is played more for cute than anything else. Also, unlike many photobooks, we are actually treated to abundant miscellaneous information about all participants, including a short interview with each of the models.

The book itself has a couple of pseudo-sequels, each still using ukketori's illustrations, soramimi's pics, and a few of the models already showcased here. If the quality is the same, I'm definitely going to track them down.

Now, from what I could tell, most parties involved seem to be no longer active, with the four models' activities stopping by 2015, and soramimi going MIA around 2019. A little internet sleuthing didn't haul much - as you can imagine, a bunch of onomatopoeias are sort of a thin lead for an internet search. The two exceptions seem to me Himemiya Mahore, who is a professional photomodel / cosplayer and has quite the following; and ukketori herself, who has produced a number of commercial works (including a 2021 Olympics tie-in) up until around 2019, where she became somewhat less active. 

What else to say? a fun dōjinshi, a cool time capsule from twelve years ago (I was still in uni back then! time flies) and a chance to do a little bit of sleuthing. A good time was had by all. 

見た目地雷系幼馴染 by tetto

 Sometimes I get that Japan somehow managed to spring out another fashion trend at the top of every hour - usually a minor variation of an already existing one, sometimes with some controversy attached as a bonus. It just churns trends. 

One such trends is so-called 地雷系 (jirai-kei), literally "landmine fashion". From an aesthetics point of view, it's really nothing more than a minor spin on that McGoth we used to associate with places such as Hot Topic a few years (or was it decades?) ago, plus a smattering of color, usually pink, here and there. Been there, done that, really nothing to write home about. The entire novelty of the style lays in the controversy that gives it its name: from what I gather, this style is associated with "landmine girls", aka girls that prop a cutesy goth exterior with involvement in drugs, alcohol, street partying, the rich kids gangs lifestyle etc etc. I mean, would you willingly step on a landmine, or date a "landmine girl"?

This lengthy tangent comes about because it's essential in order to understand the joke behind the series of  dōjinshi tetto dedicated to their very own landmine character - one such publication being 2022's  "見た目地雷系幼馴染" (Landmine girl childhood friend). Offering their own admittedly slightly ham-fisted twist on the stereotype, this dōjinshi (full color, 24 pages, stapled) shows, in a series of full-page pinups, the daily life of a landmine girl that does everything a landmine girl is not supposed to do: cook a healthy meal, help the aged, dote over cute animals, give her bus seat to a pregnant woman, etc etc. She is occasionally accompanied by a nonplussed, more stereotypical landmine friend; and occasionally addresses an invisible, arguably male friend, visual novel style. 

Yup, this is the entirety of the skit. No complaints from me, as the very light subversion of the stereotype is fairly amusing, and tetto's tract is cutesy enough, while firmly rooted in an anime aesthetics. Essentially the dōjinshi is a series of visual punchlines, which would make it perfectly fit for eventually becoming a 4-koma or a comedy anime. 

All in all a very simple but cure operation, worth taking a look. 

I made more stuff for Quake and Doom

 Yup, it's that time again. I made a few maps for both a Quake and a DOOM community projects:

"The Marshes" for Map-center's RetroJam: 

And three maps (!) for Doomer Boards Projects 67, Marble Hill. These will probably be my last DOOM maps, so enjoy them while you can. 

As for regular business, still chugging along with my Strife mapset, writing new stuff, more doujinshi on the way (finally!) and mostly just trying to survive this abysmally hot summer.  

I'm on Bandcamp now!

 As per title, you can now find all of my past MIDI music on Bandcamp, pay as you like or get it all for free to reuse in your projects, with credits. I plan to periodically update with new music.  

Enjoy!