トンネル by 幻灯会

As I mentioned in my previous post (where I also explained why this formerly museology-leaning corner of the Web will not be turning to a 'whatever I feel like' personal blog), one of my big passions is dōjinshi (同人誌), a fancy word for amateur manga. Only after my first trip to Japan I have begun collecting, focusing exclusively on original (non-parody) works, mostly with an 'artsy' slant. If you're curious, I buy through Otaku Republic (very handy because they give you free priority shipping over $50 and, if you're not yet fluent in Japanese like me, they speak more than passable English); and this is my doujinshi.com 'wishlist'. Given that it's pretty much impossible to find any English-Language review of original, non-porn dōjinshi (one such place was Nattoli, but it seems more or less dead), I decided that part of this blog will now present reviews of dōjinshi from my collection, starting off with one that I am actually translating right now for Japanese practice.

School girl Kasumi, during her elementary school days, used to be part of a pack of kids with a - maybe - typical passion for the age: scouring industrial ruins in search for cheap thrills. A particularly popular haunt was an underpass, the setting for a special game: you had to run its whole length without looking back, otherwise... well, otherwise bad stuff would happen. Which ended up being the case with Kasumi's good friend, Yukiharu-kun: in a session of this childish dare, he simply never reached the other side. Kidnapping? mysterious disappearance? not even the police could find out but still, ten years later, Kasumi just can't let go...

トンネル (Tunnel) is a black and white, 36-page dōjinshi from circle 幻灯会 (Gentokai), released in 1999. Along with the titular story, it also includes a funny, slightly ecchi omake at the end. The circle itself consists of みずはらけんじ (Mizuhara Kenji) who seems to have done little to no work outside of this circle; and 鈴木がんま (Suzuki Ganma), who is also part of another circle, 三流倶楽部, that mostly deals in Sailor Moon porn and therefore does not concern us. Gentokai itself has no Internet page I could find, but a few other dōjinshi to its credit, none dating past 2004. I surmise the circle is, therefore, gone for good.

トンネル itself is fairly stripped-down as far as dōjinshi go: spine is glued but the paper is fairly lightweight. As you can see from the screenshot below, the art style is quite 'retro', shall we say, with more than a touch of 80s - 90s manga but a more than decent grasp of anatomy, perspective and shading: I usually tend to prefer hyper-modern styles, but nonetheless I found Gentokai's tract to have more than a bit of charm. The story itself is, after all, more nostalgic than scary - in spite of the subject matter. The Japanese used is fairly simple, no exceedingly difficult kanji aside from a couple of very text-thick pages. Nothing an intermediate can't grasp.

I admit this one was a lucky impulse buy - a strategy that seemed to work fairly well for me, so far. The dōjinshi is old by the medium's standards and probably difficult to find (though Otaku Rep seems to have a couple copies left): I'd scan it for all to see but I'm terrified of ruining the book. As this reviews was the first one merely out of convenience - the comic was literally laying on top of the pile - I will try to offer something a bit easier to find in our next outing.