Shizuku

*WARNING* spoilers for Shizuku. Also, incoherent rambling. 

So yeah, Shizuku - which, admittedly, I have read in the recent English translation because I'm already slogging through Kanon and wanted to get through this one at a reasonable pace... and works out fairly well in its own right, as there is a lot to be said comparing the two. 

First of all, let's get the easy part out of the way: the OST slaps, hard. For the most part it's the work of Orito Shinji, aka 'Oribass', the same guy whoe would later on pretty much become the go-to musician for visual novels, including but not limited to fundational works such as One, Moon, Air, Clannad... and Kanon, leaping from studio to studio as part of a VN think-tank of sorts. Here in Shizuku, Orito shows full command of composition and sound synthesis, squeezing the mximum out of the PC-98's sound capabilities. Composition wise, there are some real bangers ('The Spirit World', 'During a Lesson', 'Ruriko') that avoid those tear-wrenching, sappy tropes that make stuff like Kanon or Clannad's OST more miss than hit. Saori's theme sounds a bit out of place compared to the rest of the soundtrack, but I guess it fits the character.

Now, as for the visual novel itself. We all know that Shizuku is the first occurrence of the 'visual novel' tag (in the fourth wall-smashing bonus story) and generally seen as s cornerstone of the medium's early days. It's easy to see why, as this is where a lot of the tropes so typically associated with H visual novels find their origin: the school setting; the deeply disturbed, amoral protagonist; the denpa subplot; mindfuck as a fetish - it's all there. H-novels have always been more about power fantasies of control than the depiction of intercourse itself (I have a really hard time imagining how anyone could be aroused by the chacters' Looney Tunes body proportions), and Shizuku makes good use of such a power fantasy in a horror setting. 

Tame as it might be by today's standards, Shizuku is certainly a work of horror fiction as much, if not more than erotic fiction. While I won't spoil the story in its entirety, it has that 'uncanny into reality' vibe that would make it a perfect Twilight Zone episode: a flash of the impossible ruptures into everyday reality, changing the perceptions of all involved. The sublime background art, enhanced rather than humstrung by the dithery limitations of the PC-98 hardware really help to this regard, lending the game a stylish, reality-bending look that the 2004 remaster utterly destroys. 

 How such perceptions change, varies wildly based on the path chosen. None of the endings give the 'full story' - in fact, one could argue that we are not given the full story at all since, as far as I could tell, we're never really told how Ruriko got her denpa powers in the first place and all of a sudden. We are treated to a variously sized slice of truth based on the heroine we pursue, with Ruriko's obviously disclosing the lion's share of the events behind the mysterious happenings at the academy, and Mizuho's arguably not really giving any clue at all. Saori's is in sort of a weird place, as her path is ironically the one that removes her the most from the events, turning her into a sort of a 'character study' rather than a player in the crisis at hand. Still, it's nice to see all of the heroines play a part in each other's story, and the overarching plot, to an extent; it's an approach I prefer to Kanon's, in which the heroines you choose not to pursue just... sort of fall to the wayside, as if they never existed. It lends more cohesiveness to the whole, so to speak.

A must play for all retro gaming, visual novels, and horror fans; especially if you prefer creepy mysteries over world-shatterin cosmic horrors. I'll now try and wrap up Kanon before moving to a couple more indies. Exam session is also pretty much over, which should help with free time and such.

"Sound System Girls 2" by TNSK

So, I've fallen once in again in one my my visual novels benders, which do happen from time to time. I'm currently working through Kanon, and trying to get RetroArch to play nice with emulating Shizuku, as the English patch just dropped... all the while slogging through Clannad, which is... I don't know, I wonder if I just sort of want to like it more than I actually do. I'll wrap it up someday. 

In the meantime, we have another dōjinshi review, and this time it's an illustrations collection. This time it's the turn of TNSK, another high profile creator with a series running in Kodansha's Afternoon! and a whole lotta illustration work under their belt. As one can see from their PIXIV, they have a colorful, lithe style that reminded me a lot of early OKAMA, a very contemporary and dynamic style that sort of seems to have fallen out of fashion in more recent years, where a more painterly approach seems to be the trend. Yes, in case you didn't guess, we're going back a bit with this one. 2011, which is fifteen years ago. Eek.

So, full color, A4, 16 pages, Western reading direction for some reason. The theme of Sound System Girls   2 (what's with me always picking up part two of a two-parter ;_; I always forget to check) is a blend of girls and... a shape that I guess is supposed to look like a speaker, but doesn't always to be honest. In fact, the theme is not particularly strong throughout, and we could just call this one a collection of bishoujo illustrations, rendered in very dynamic poses and with a healthy dose of stylization - again, OKAMA comes to mind; or Senmu, to cite another well-know dōjinka (of whom I own some stuff, and still need to review it seems). Funny enough, in the credits TNSK namedrops COSMIC FORGE for assistance - another artist I've reviewed in the past. It's coming full circle...

So, another day, another pleasing if somewhat brief collection. It does have pizzazz, though. 

"ドールをお迎えした2" by Koruse

 Here is a small, cute one that came along with my latest Mandarake shipment...

I've always been a big fan of dolls, especially antiques and the modern, more elaborate bjd variants (*not* those weird-ass western dolls with huge heads). It's always been a bucket list item of mine to own a proper dollfie, but due to a sort of nomadic lifestyle and former lack of funds, I could never quite do it. Maybe soon?

Anyway, we're talking dolls because the aptly titled ドールをお迎えした2 (literally Welcoming the doll) by Koruse is a short, b&w A5 manga from 2022 exactly on this topic: how to better welcome a doll into our homes? the protagonist has found her a nice maid dress for her new purchase, but something doesn't seem right... maybe a special setpiece is in order? 

Koruse is not just a dōjin artist, under the circle name "Studio Iwashi", but also a professional mangaka, currently serializing 伽藍の姫 in the well known yuri magazine Comic Yuri Hime - and yes, in case you hand't guessed it, yuri seems to be Koruse's jam. ドールをお迎えした2 is the first work I read of them, and it's a short but sweet piece: very well drawn, especially when it comes to the doll, perhaps at the expense of the human protagonist and the backgrounds, which are for the most part barely sketched. No big deal, as the doll's features and attire are rendered with plenty of luscious detail, a real piece of eye candy. You can see plenty more, of both dolls and maids (yes please!) in their Booth or their Bluesky.

"Kamisama no Shinzou" by Fumino Aya

 Aaand here we are again. As you might have noticed from my previous post, it took me only twenty or so years to cement my otaku credentials and get myself a banner - specifically, some old Comiket paraphernalia which -- I have to say -- looks real good on my wall.

Still, we're all here for the dōjin, and we're starting the new year with yet another 'early work' from a mangaka who, later on, made the switch to commercial work. I was, in fact, sort of familiar already with the name Fumino Aya because a bunch of her manga were translated in Italian, though I don't remember reading anything. I will clearly have to dig up some, because the item in hand for this review is quite intriguing. 

As often happens with mangaka who 'make it', there isn't a whole lot available on Fumino Aya's dōjin activities; their PIXIV is a wasteland, and the Twitter doesn't seem that active either. They do have fairly meaty Wikipedia entry, from which we learn they had an interest in fine arts, something that probably had a bearing on their 2020 debut work Myuuzy no Shinzui. From that same year comes the dōjinshi Kamisama no Shinzou (A5, B&W, 48 pages), a short manga that definitely encapsulate their interest in, as the bio itself put it, "encapsulating daily life".

There is definitely something of early (the good) Asano in this short, charming yet slightly disquieting story about a disillusioned young couple struggling to understand each other on an emotional, and sexual level. It's that sort of melancholic, perhaps a bit darker 'slice of life' that was on display in masterpieces like What a Wonderful World or Solanin: that feeling of having to come to grips with the reality of adult relationships, while still carrying all the emotional baggage of our teenage years. A bit edgy, perhaps, but then again, a flair for the dramatic (as, in the case of this short story, swearing to die together) feels more like a rite of passage than anything else, when we realize it's something we all went through at some point or another. Much like the female protagonist of Kamisama..., who among us never wondered even once if we came across as 'weird' to our partner? 

Short, interesting story for those who appreciate their slice of life with a touch of realism. One last factoid: according to their bio, Fumino is one of Japan's top Puyo Puyo players, and used to spend up to ten hours a day playing it. To each one their own (I'm not looking at my 600+ days on WoW...)

It took me only twenty years

 

New year's first post or whatevs

 So yeah, 2026 has come around - not to an amazing start, but much better than the utter shitshow the latter half of 2025 was. Gonna be hard to go as low as that...

I do have a couple leftover dōjinshi from the previous batch I'll be reviewing soon; besides that, as I'm waiting for the next, beefier than usual shipment (see: me trying to work around that new silly custom tax), I figured I'd do a bit of a different post. 

I've been watching a lot of 'otaku room' videos on YouTube - you know, weeaboos displaying their hoards of asian plastic and wall scrolls for anime that everyone stopped watchin a decade ago. They are a fascinating time capsule of a different era of otakuness, and one I squarely belong to: in fact, with the exception of dōjinshi and visual novels, I sort of fell off the weeaboo train once it became laughably easy to track down Japanese products that, before some arbitrary date probably located around the mid 2010s, required connections and knowledge to get one's hands on. Pickets are sort of difficult to place, but I feel that a big change for the worse started once Crunchyroll became popular: moving from obscure YouTube playlists and sketchy download links to a streamlined, dedicated service killed a lot (not all, fortuntately) of the subculture. That's when I began to see big scanlation groups die out, lots of 'the usual places' go belly up from one day to the next, and so on. This is all off the top of my head: I'm sure people like Patrick Galbraith would have a lot to say on the subject.

I feel that, by large, the Western otakusphere has gone the way most of the Internet has - oversaturated with cheap, rehashed content that simply doesn't excite me anymore. Which explains a lot of my dōjin preferences, I might add. You may have different opinions about places like Sankaku Complex, ZeroChan etc., but for better or worse they were a part of my otaku intake back in the day: nowadays, thanks to a passable knowledge of Japanese, I mostly get my stuff off PIXIV or straight from JP blogs. Never been into figures, so those don't factor in.  

This rant just to say that... a very specific type of dōjinshi aside, I don't really collect. So my hypothetical 'otaku room' video would be, like, ten seconds long. Figured I'd be easier to just show a couple of pics. 

My dōjinshi collection. While it might seem small, keep in mind that I collect only non-h, original IP doujinshi, which constitutes probably 1% of all yearly dōjin output. I have a few fairly rare and older thingies - some you can find by perusing previous blog entries, others will be forthcoming. I also have a couple intruders that cross-link with other interests of mine, like a few issues of Super Mystery Magazine MU.  What's that? read and find out. 

My new battle station (and no, I'm not a redditor). For most of my adult life, as I frequently moved from one country to another, I couldn't feasibly get a proper desktop PC. Finally gifting myself a nice one, led lights and all, has been on my bucket list for a while, and this year I made it happen. Nothing special (still i7), but it's a huge upgrade on my laptop, and I mostly play retro anyway.

 

A poster from IKEA's 2017 Art Event, which I got mostly as I really liked Yasuto Sasada's art after seeing it at a Tokyo gallery way back in 2013. 

And, for something really offbeat - a limited edition poster by Little Thunder for the 1st anniversary of Hong Kong's Coffee & Laundry. Besides being a really nice poster, I'm a huge Little Thunder fan - Kylooe is probably in my all time top 3 of non-JP comics. Really worth a read. 

Short and painless, wasn't it? next shipment I'll be getting my hands on my first tapestry, which I guess sort of invalidates all of the screed above. Whatevs. 

"Organica" by Garuku

 Final post of the year! So, I found out yesterday that Italy has passed a law that will dictate additional custom fees on all items from China and Japan... only a few euros, fortunately, but I put in a huge order with Mandarake for good measure. An order that includes my first ever piece of paraphernalia... pics will follow as soon as it gets here. Lul.

In the meantime, let's take a quick look at Organica: music and girls, am A4, full color, 16 pages illustrations collection from 2014 by Garuku, an artist that I'm not ashamed to admit I had never heard before coming across their excellent illustrations on PIXIV. They have a very polished, detailed style that really feels at home on the platform, and seems well suited for light novels covers and video game art / character design... which, according to their bio, is exactly what they do.

This, by now, more than a decade old offering is very much in line with the artist's more recent output. Focusing on illustrations that put together the two excellent themes of girls and music (be it listening to music, musical instruments or else), Garuku crafts a series of brilliant full-page illustrations, which conjugate sharp character designs with, at time, almost painterly detailing and coloring: they are clearly a master of composition and digital brushwork. The illustrations are all pinups, but with enough variety of angles and layouts to keep it interesting. The girls are also very, very cute, which helps.

Not much more to say, I guess. A very pleasant showcase by yet another excellent illustrator / concept artist that I was not familiar with. It's a bit slim, perhaps, but still within dōjin standards. Recommended. 

"鉄さび探検隊" by Hayashi Isao / Nagase Yosuke / Asato Mizu

 Gotta love when the name of an obscure doujinshi from 2013 shares a name with some sort of bizarre entertainment / event agency... I'm a sucker for strange rabbit holes but I think I won't be wasting my time with this one XD

Instead, I'll introduce 鉄さび探検隊 (literally 'Iron Rust Exploration Team'), a 24 pages, B&W, A4 collection of short manga stories plus assorted paraphernalia by three different authors - Hayashi Isao, Nagase Yosuke, and Asato Mizu. Self-proclaimed 'photography and animation aficionados' (aka your typical Japanese old-school otaku), they each present their own, stand alone manga, beefed up by omake, random commentary and whatnot.

 Hayashi Isao's contribution is a sort of illustrated travelogue of a trip around Okunoshima, an island well known for its population of semi-feral rabbits and storied involvement in the Sino-Japanese war (it includes a 'poison gas museum'...), complete with moe anthropomorphizations of wartime landmarks, and obligatory onsen pit stop. Ah, the island also features the tallest power lin pylon in Japan, if like me you're into this kind of stuff. 

Nagase Yosuke offers some sort of Junji Ito-esque short horror manga. A high school kid, along with his friends, is ejìnjoying a sport of urbex in the ruins of some sort of industrial facility, when he comes across a parasite that soon takes hold of his friends, zombie-style - an infection that makes them super thirsty for Capri-Sun, of all things. Unless, of course, he dreamed up the whole thing... the story is only a few pages and fairly insubstantial; mostly, I suspect, an excuse for the 'photography aficionado' to showcase a few pretty cool industrial ruins pictures in the two-pages omake. 

The third short story by Asato Mizu features a heroine of our days, a stay-at-home, WataMote-ish young lady whose self-proclaimed career is 'pinpointing': aka, finding the location of any pic. She is sent a request to identify a certain home, which she certainly does... with surprising results. Charming and very close to my interests, as I also spend inordinate amounts of time on Google Earth. 

Now, the dōjinshi is surprisingly scant about the authors themselves, and having rather common names I'm sort on the fence about identifying them with absolute certainty: I am fairly sure Nagase Yousuke is this manga artist, considering they list 'ruins' as their passion, and I'm almost as sure about this one account being our Isao Hayashi. I'm a bit more on the fence about identifying Mizu Asato with the author of a gazillion anime spinoffs, though the tract is somewhat similar. It doesn't help, of course, that all three authors make almost no reference to their dōjin past... well, in case I'm right, well done! All three of you made it. Cool stuff!

"Winter 2012/12" by Holon

 Alright, this time around we have a real obscure one - the artist, thirteen (!) years later, doesn't seem to be active anymore - no Twitter, no website, and nobody on Pixiv seems to be a match. So yeah, all we have is this B&W, A4, 16 pages sketchbook which... well, it's the typical DIY dōjin booklet that an amateur artist would put out in the mid 2010s. 

Not to say that this is a bad thing at all. Sure, the contents are entirely derivative: the dōjinshi consists entirely of fanart from series such as Evangelion, Monogatari, Madoka and others, but it's pretty good character fanart, with an excellent sense of dynamics and composition; a bit lacking (that is to say, entirely lacking) in the background department, but that's fairly typical for the product. The cover illustration is particularly nice, I must say. 

So yeah, not much to comment about this one. A nifty, little piece of ephemera - nothing more, nothing less. Still, if you happen to know more about the author (or, even better, have a contact, please do let me know).

"By The Window" by Umishima Senbon (海島千本)

 Here goes another small collection from a big time digital illustrator. Umishima Senbon has a huge following on Twitter (yup, still Twitter to me) and is now in the business of proper artbooks publishing and professional illustration work, both in print and for anime; still, as it's now the norm for the sort of stuff you'll see in this blog, what really is of interest to me is their dōjin work -aka, their self published stuff that, in my opinion, often turns out to be a better display of the artist's inner workings and quirks.

So we wind back to 2021, with a small (24 pages), A4, mostly full color collection of illustrations themed around 'windows', in case the title didn't give it away.  The format is one we're accustomed with by now: the illustration, usually a full page, is displayed side-by-side with development sketches, showing the process from a simple outline to the completed artwork. Sure, it's a blatant way to pad the page count, but it's also interesting to see not only the artist's own process, and compare it to others'. Umishima's style of line and coloring has, at times, a watercolor-like quality to it, eschewing the plastic sheen so typical of PIXIV-derived illustration: lines are rarely bold, and instead color contrast is used to fill out volumes and shapes. It reminded me a bit of Sahara Mizu's color stuff, personally. 

Not a whole lot more to say, really. A nice, short collection from an illustrator that has clearly made it big. Stay tuned because, next time, I have some real strange work to introduce you...

"Exotica" by Nekosuke

 Oh yeah! After a far too long hiatus, we're so back, with another fresh batch of Mandarake purchases ready to be hastily discussed and displayed in all of their grainy glory. As for the actual reason why I've been away this long... well, I just was. I also made a megawad for Doom in the meantime. 

Our first offering for our return to style is, by pop culture standard, a relic - a relic from 2015, to be exact. ねこ助 (Nekosuke) is a popular and affirmed illustrator, sporting almost 200k followers on Twitter (yes, it's Twitter, get rekt), and a similarly beefy following on both PIXIV and Instagram. While working within the usual canon of bishoujo illustration, they have a very distinct visual style, borrowing less from anime and more from sources such as childer's books, European illustrations and that whole aesthetics that, today, would be lumped somewhere in the cottagecore orbit. Their spindly, emaciated young girls, often accompanied by painstakingly rendered animals, live in a washed out world of near monochrome, occasionally touched by a hint of pastel. Very refined and porcelain doll-ish. 

Anyway, I've been eyeing for a while a specific publication of theirs, titled "Exotica" - a short (20 pages), full color, A5 illustration book depicting Nekosuke's signature girls' interactions with a select group of animals, in pairs of two. Yeah, I know what you're thinking... no yiffing here, sorry. What we get, instead, is a series of two page spreads: on the left page, a full body of the girl and the animal, aesthetics trimmed to match; on the right page, the girl enjoying (?) the company of said animal. While all this might sound cutesy, there is a distinct undertone of darkness in Nekosuke's illustrations: the girls, at times, seem to be worried or frightened by their totem animal's oppressive presence, and the vaguely dark fairytale-like limericks accompanying each pair hint at a darker truth behind the facade. Why should we ask the deer to tread lightly? spooky.

Visually, the booklet is well within Nekosuke's style, delicate illustrations that appear, at times, once colored but now greyed by time and wear. The environments are well constructed, the animals are for the most part close to realistic in their portrayal, and the doll-like girls are appropriately different yet similar in a Platonic ideal kind of way. A style that, from what I can see, even ten years later Nekosuke wouldn't stray from.