PIXIVA 04 by VANIA600

Among the many little, secondary passions that interest me enough to follow up, but are not relevant enough to qualify as a hobby, are trains and railways. Along with buses, they are the only means of transportation I can actually say I enjoy riding; I religiously follow Japan Railway Journal  and the trains thread on Futaba; I'm probably also the only human being on Earth who squealed with joy when learning that a local property value-destroying high speed train line would be built 200m from his house.

Unfortunately, I was also born in a country that is well known for its railway system, in negative. Like most means of public transportation in Italy, trains are the lowest of the low in the priorities of the cultural sector, no effort is made to add value to the train experience, and - no surprise there - I have never come across a train anorak in Italy. Which made it all the more exciting when I was over in Japan; who, unlike Italy, takes its trains very seriously. The sideways glances of my tour buddies everytime I giggled at boarding a local train, or seeing the train conductor do a little timetable-checking dance at every station, were priceless.

And yes, I also enjoy illustrations of trains, especially when they are realistic and super-detailed. The king of this (actually very common and well developed) subtype of illustration is certainly VANIA600. Pretty girls and trains are all he draws over and over and over, but he does it so well and with such flair that leafing through a dōjinshi with nothing but trains and shoujo in it feels like a far more varied experience than the theme would suggest. And he doesn't do only dōjinshi: he's also illustrated Rail Wars and Usui to Kanojo to Roku-san no (train-themed light novels).

Sadly, as it often happens with artists of some renown, prices are prohibitive (in the sense that it's 'either one of theirs or five of others'), so I actually own a single VANIA600 dōjinshi - Pixiva 04 (2010), a collection of illustrations out of his Pixiv account.

It's a full color, stapled A4, 32 pages. There is little written commentary, and most of the dōjinshi is dedicated to full page illustrations, either stand-alone or Rail Wars themed. Toward the end there is a handful of non-train themed illustrations, and the final section provides a useful, fairly detailed step-by-step tutorial of the way a VANIA600 illustration is planned, sketched and executed.

On the theme of the dōjinshi, there is little to say: you must like girls and trains, and trains, and girls... and so on. I have said above that the repetitive subject matter was not a hindrance, but this holds true only for a train fanatic: others, who are more interested in the... ahem... 'human' aspect might choose to focus on the girls, who are probably the weakest point in VANIA600's art. Sure, they're cute and moe, but they're also very cartoonish and sometimes downright anatomically imprecise. There's also a fair amount of gratuitous service, which I just don't buy into.

The art's strong points are definitely the lighting, and the sheer amount of detail. Contrasting with the very anime- like characters, the trains and the backgrounds are painstakingly rendered, down to the last scratch and glimmer of light; maybe a little too much 'lens flare' for my taste, but it's still forgivable. You can tell VANIA600 has been looking at trains with a passionate eye, and the art reflects this passion. There is also a great variety and range in the locomotives depicted, though this specific dōjinshi seems to focus on fairly old, local lines.

 

All in all, I'm not sure 'll get my hands on another VANIA600 dōjinshi so soon, but this one was a little nice surprise of sure interest to trains / dōjinshi fans. It'be nice to see what the artist could do if he focused a few illustrations on the trains alone...