I find myself, however, slowly getting to the point where I'm no longer just cover shopping, but actually beginning to develop some sort of direction for my collecting. One thing that I ruled out since the beginning are hentai dōjinshi: not only because the subject matter does not interest me enough to open up my purse, but because they are already widely available, sometimes even in translated form, on places like Fakku or E-Hentai, if that's your cup of coffee. Once that was established, I also soon decided to limit myself to 'original' dōjinshi - 'original' as in 'not parodies of other Japanese popular media'; all these qualifiers necessary, since a few of my best purchases could be considered parodies in a wider sense (lol).
While these two directions in collecting were more or less conscious rules I imposed myself so as to waste as little money as possible on irrelevant stuff, one less clear cut choice I made was to focus on dōjinshi with a 'style'. That is to say, something that would set them visually apart from the norm of anime aesthetics - I'm thinking of anything in between Ghibli and KyoAni. Very fuzzy pickets, I admit, but maybe the idea is better summarized by the reaction I got once on a board: 'so you read that stuff just to be different and hip?' Well, yes, maybe I do. Sorry if moe eyes and cow tits do nothing for me -_- Hopefully, these vague directions will also help keeping my reviews interesting and relevant, as there is little to no material in English reviewing this more obscure kinds of dōjinshi works.
Yes, yes, I'm getting to the topic of the review. A circle that fulfils all of my criterias, and one that quickly became my favorite, is 平均律 (Heikinritsu). The circle is a one-man show by Robert Yamamoto (Robamoto), a self styled 'dōjinshi rebel'; a label that I think describes his work quite well. He is active since 2000, and he also has a fairly active Twitter (in Japanese, of course). While his main outlet are dōjin conventions such as Comiket and Comitia, it seems like he is gearing up to make the move toward 'mainstream' recognition, as his work has also been featured on higher profile publications. Hopefully he won't baleet everything in the move, like another circle I will review later on did. Grrrr.He is not as prolific as others in the media, having published eight dōjinshi and a handful of collaborations.
Although he actually has video readthroughs of all his works on his website, a very nice move in a world where you usually end up buying on the cover alone, I will be focusing on the three works of his that I actually own: くろいブラウスのあのこ (Those Girls in Black Blouses); パラメトリック (Parametric); and アレクサンダー・カルダーの恋人 (Alexander Calder's Sweetheart). Some of his older stuff is pretty much unavailable, but I'm still searching...
As you can guess from the covers, all of his works feature shōjo. Doesn't get more vanilla that this, does it? Well, think again. The real draw is that each of Heikinritsu's dōjinshi takes the shōjo archetype so commonplace in media and throws it into a theme piece where a clear, defined conceptual thesis is explored through the visual medium. These are probably as close as we can get to a 'conceptual dōjinshi', if such a thing actually makes any sense. This intellectual endeavour, coupled with his amazingly minimal aesthetics has quickly made Heikinritsu my favorite circle by far.
くろいブラウスのあのこ is one of Heikinritsu's oldest works (2007), and the conceptual underpinning is still somewhat flimsy. There is a generic concept of 'the visual interplay of black on black' going on, and visually the result is stunning; but, mostly, Heikinritsu is just drawing cute girls, and he's... well, okay. His facial expressions are interesting and compelling, but he clearly has difficulties in anatomy and hands/feet in particular. The shading and the coloring, however, are top notch, and this still was a buy I did not regret.
パラメトリック is a much later offering (2014) and shows, instead, a compelling and fully developed concept behind the work as a whole. I am absolutely ignorant of fractals, processing, frameworks, generative graphics and such, so I will not comment on those - Heikinritsu does, in an afterword to the dōjinshi, with examples of code and all that jazz. The basic thing, it seems, is that he has built his shōjo around (or, rather, within) fractals and nets produced through specific types of mathematically-laden image generation processes: attaining, as a result, girls scantily clad in curves, fractals and geometric shapes. Beyond the novelty concept, the impressive thing is how effortlessly Heikinritsu inserts the human figure into the computer-produced shapes and lines so that, in the best instances (almost all of them) the two become perfectly entwined. He also display an underlying sense of whimsy I happen to really dig. There are still some problems with hands and feet, but all is forgiven.
Finally, a while ago I managed to lend my grubby paws onto a work I had been sniping for a while: アレクサンダー・カルダーの恋人, where Heikinritsu pits his cute girls against... Calder's mobiles and stabiles. For those unfamiliar with the artist, Alexander Calder (1898-1976) is a giant of sculpting, as well as a topical figure of Conceptual art, mostly famous for his mobiles, delicately balanced scupltures made of colored shapes held together by wire. His art is fantastic, he made wire portraits, and you should really read up on him.
Each of Heikinritsu's illustration is a minimalist masterpiece: a girl and a sculpture are located in the same empty, white, gallery-like setting and allowed to visually interact in all kinds of interesting ways. Color is king, and the daring juxtapositions are a pleasure to look at: unlike パラメトリック, which is in full B&W and パラメトリック, which is full color, アレクサンダー・カルダーの恋人 is mostly color with a few B&W drawings toward the end - even these monochrome sketches are, however, fantastic. Definitely one of my favorite dōjinshi in general.
I am still hunting for what's out there. Heikinritsu also produced a very intresting looking Hatsune Miku dōjinshi, which also seems to be fairly experimental, visually and thematically - will definitely try to track down this one. Next probable purchase, however, might be his latest: Bodoni and the Red Eurocel, which looks way too cool even on screen.
EDIT: not related to dōjinshi per se, but it turns out Kohji Robert Yamamoto is also a researcher and entrepreneur. He is art director for Euphrates ltd, a digital media company with some interesting work under its belt, some of which really show Heikinritsu's fingerprint: compare, for example, パラメトリック and this.
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