The Favorite One by Chico

Very short review post because I have very little left to review (my finances are not exactly great at the moment), and because I actually have very little info on this dōjinshi - it doesn't display any info but the circle's name (no date, no web media, absolutely nothing), and it's one of those impulse purchases entirely based on an eye-catching cover. Eye-catching for me, at least...

The circle's name is Chico and, unlike what one might expect for the very industrial-looking cover, this is actually a shojo illustration book. Very short, only 12 pages, but it's full color and al images are A4 size. Chico's illustration style is extremely plain, using very Steins;Gate-ish color palettes which I happen to really enjoy. I wish I could peruse more from this circle, but it seems as if they have no internet presence at all. Not even one of those broken Japanese blogs even the smallest, defunct
circles seem to have. What a shame...

As far as I know, Chico produced only one more dōjinshi (Constellation), and a participation in a dōjin anthology. Only the former is still available, I might snag it if I find it for a suitable price.

マジカルガール・オルタナティヴ by 平均律 / 東京胡同案内(価格改定版) by ヘリオトロープ

A slightly steadier influx of cash means more dōjinshi right in my mailbox! Truth to be told, aside for a WoW subscription and the occasional belt sushi, that's pretty much all I spend my entertainment on - I'm a library aficionado, and rarely if ever watch movies. This month's special because I managed to get my hands on yet another book by my favorite 平均律, which actually leaves only one more dōjinshi from him before I complete my collection... along with that, I also got a nice little thing by ヘリオトロープ, one of those rare circles that completely forsake animanga , and instead use the dōjin as a display for more 'traditional' art forms such as photography.

But let's go in order. マジカルガール・オルタナティヴ is a mostly b&w, 28 pages work by 平均律, whom I have reviewed several times on this blog. It came out in 2005, meaning - because yes, I know what you're thinking - it predates Madoka Magika by quite a few years. The theme is, however, somewhat similar: contemporary-styled magical girls, in a sort of 'profile bio' format. The dōjinshi is, as usual, fairly verbose, and there is actually more to read than there is to see: the magical girls' designs are fairly interesting and curious, but they are usually dwarfed by the mass of text on every page. The 'theme' also feels slightly less engaging than usual, perhaps because it's somewhat more typically dōjin, unlike Heikinritsu's latter stuff, where the theme is a certain aesthetic or artistic procedure. All in all a decent product, but it definitely shows how far he's come, more than anything else.

東京胡同案内(価格改定版) is, from what I could gather from the credits, is a 2011 collaborative effort between jack-poy film, ketch+, and ヘリオトロープ (web presence defunct). It's a very small booklet, 12 pages of a narrow, tall A5 format; but it's full color and, visually, quite impressive. It's a sort of prose poem (atrocious Engrish translation provided), which really doesn't add much to the amazing background pictures of Tokyo's seediest angles that really are the centerpiece of 東京胡同案内. Dark yet hypersaturated, super-sharp and bizzarrely angled, the dōjinshi's creators offer a visual treat that is really unlike most kojo moe-like doujins. The city takes a msyterious, ethereal-like atmosphere, which falls in line with ヘリオトロープ's take on their most common subjects - usually ruins and the like.

This was half the purchase of this month. I will discuss the remaining two in a later post, for different reasons (I could not find anything on the author of The Favorite One; and the other is a bizarre uni otaku-club report or something like that. More reading is required...)

漫画雑誌 山坂 第七号 by 山坂書房

I am currently translating one of my recent dōjinshi purchases from the folks over at Otaku Republic - which also happens to be one of my frequent impulse purchases, dictated by cover design alone. I have to admit I have a soft spot for that hyper-realistic, 劇画 inspired visual style that this cover nails perfectly. The book is, however, actually an anthology by the circle 山坂書房, which very loosely follows the title's 'countryside' theme, declining it in a variety of ways. Results are uneven, but there is some really good stuff in there. Six mangaka are featured, each one with their distinctive visual and narrative style - and all of them, at least from what I could gather, are fairly well known fixtures of the underground manga scene.

 My personal favorite from an art point of view is がんばれチャグ by ひうち棚, the heart-warming misadventures of a rural factory worker, whose wild fantasy puts him at odds with a variety of increasingly zany coworkers. Tana really nails the old-time, 'serious' manga style visually (and, in a way, keeps true to its origins as societal critique), yet from a storytelling point of view the accent is on a brand of bittersweet comedy I really happen to dig.

Another highlight are the bizarre, surrealy 4-koma by 山坂ヨサンセン: almost entirely devoid of words or dialogue, as well as background or context, their little skits entirely focus on the two main characters' strange interactions, largely based on punny wordplay and manzai-like routines. Mileage greatly varies according whether you consider - as I do - manzai one of the greatest forms of comedy under the sun. Otherwise, 山坂ヨサンセン's stunt might fall a bit flat.

The remaining works range from bizarre tributes of Osamu Tezuka that completely flew over my head, to the standard 'countryside nostalgia' stories the Japanese seem to love so much, peppered with nearly unintelligible country slang and inflections. They're not bad, but they don't reach the quality of ひうち棚 or 山坂ヨサンセン's work. All in all a pretty good anthology (and one of many from this circle) for those who are not into moe or the usual illustration fare.

おたまと影の変態記3 by あびゅうきょ

In spite of its deceptive title, あびゅうきょ's omnibus おたまと影の変態記3 has very little hentai within, especially if compared with the artist's more extreme (and, fortunately, progressively rarer) forays into futanari and such. The 2015's meaty book (134 pages, B&W as usual) instead features a variety of short works, commentary, sketches and stories that don't neatly fit into あびゅうきょ's usual themes - military technologies and extreme jailbait porn. All in all, this is for the best: unlike his usual offerings, which can be really hit and miss depending whether you buy into his otaku-like obsessions and his peculiar, detailed yet deformed art style, this omnibus displays a variety of different styles ad themes, which don' necessarily make this book for everyone, but at least broaden the appeal a bit.

There are, of course, あびゅうきょ's trademark scantily-clad nymphets, but the collection also includes some hilarious Evangelion fan-art (given the artist's usual topics, I'm surprised he hasn't produced more); a short manga featuring an anthropomorphic cat who, for once, doesn't engage in lewd acts (yes, あびゅうきょ has produced quite a few anthro-futanari dōjinshi); and a few illustrations drawn in a different, distinctive style that, while still entirely his, clearly shows that あびゅうきょ hasn't merely pulled his many retro references and visual cues out of a hat.

There are few flaws with おたまと影の変態記3, one of them being that, as it often happens with あびゅうきょ's works, some pages are so overloaded with images, vignettes, side doodles and handwritten text, they become literally impossible to parse. There are also some anatomical imprecisions (including あびゅうきょ's trademark stocky proportions, but those by now are more part of his style than anything). These are, as usual, trifles if you happen to enjoy this artist's anarchic visual world, as I happen to. This collection is probably a good entry point into あびゅうきょ's world, especially if you're not interested into extreme fetishes or military paraphernalia.

As a footnote: for some mysterious reason (probably hidden in あびゅうきょ's atrocious handwriting) there are quite a few color pages at the end of the book dedicated to gag manga by a certain 森野優樹 whom I never heard of before. They are incongruous and forgettable, and they can all be seen on the artist's Pixiv regardless.

AKAZUKINCHAN あかずきんちゃん 増刷版!! by モクタン / TOEKOMST by Ward

Yes yes, long time since my last update (save a farewell post I regretted pretty quick). One of the reasons is that my purchase schedule had become quite erratic, so I had very little material to actually review. Fortunately, I might FINALLY actually have a day job soon, so I might be able to indulge once again in what's pretty much my only vice - buying doujin.

For now, quick reviews of two standouts I bought recently. The first one is AKAZUKINCHAN by モクタン, member (along with fellow artist Sei Umehara) of the circle Wonderworld Studio. As one can see from the circle's web site, Wonderworld Studio is all about stylish, high contrast visual work, both in manga form, and of the purely illustrative variety (including some professional output). I actually strongly suggest checking out the web site, since (unusual for doujin artists) there is a lot of freely available material there.

AKAZUKINCHAN, as the title suggests, is a modern retelling of the well known Red Riding Hood fable, where the titular girl becomes a busy big city errand girl, and the wolf a metropolitan hipster. I personally never cared much for fables and retellings of them, so I was in it merely for the visual aspect, which is nothing short of stunning: モクタン has an amazing eye for design, and actually uses to their advantage the powerful constrasts that black and white can create. His style reminded me, at times, of big names like Kumeta, or Sayman. Definitely an artist to keep an eye on, if you're into very anti-moe, contemporary stuff.

Another standout purchase was one of my favorite kinds of doujinshi, a multi-artist illustration collection - the weirdly titled TOEKOMST ('future' in Dutch, or so Google tells me), which packs into a mere 24 color pages no less than nine (!) artists: Ward, Marthe, Tonomura, Tetsuya, Dan, Kaji, Tuchiyama, Wawon. Unfortunately, and this is big peeve of mine with some doujinshi, there is no bio or info page for any of the artists, who also have such commonplace names that it took some supreme Google-fu to track down some info on them (on a Deviantart page, of all places! feel free to explore).

Some of the artists, like the Japan residents Marthe and Ward, actually have some pretty high profile professional work under their belt, a recognition they definitely deserve. The art book in general is of a fairly high quality, to the point that none of the artists really stand out as a weak link: from Tetsuya's mechanical sci-fi concept art, to Tsuchiyama's tongue in cheek moepunk, every one of them manages to grab one's attention in spite of having only three pages or less to themselves. I was particularly impressed by Wawon's supremely intricate art style, so warm and glowy it almost approached traditional media.

平均律の《空》の本 by 平均律 / map03 仮面の街の昼と夜 by 丸紅アパートメンツ

Double review this time, and an overdue one too. Thanks to the recent Alitalia fiasco, and the usual incompetence by those... ahem, fine folk at SDA, I had my latest purchases stuck in limbo for what seemed like forever. And they'd been sent by priority shipping too! Anyway, better late than never, so here go my impressions on yet another Heikinritsu from the past, as well as the most recent dōjinshi by one of my most recent favorites, 丸紅アパートメンツ (Malbeni Apartments).

Heikinritsu's own site presents 平均律の《空》の本 (literally 'Heikinritsu's 'Sky' Book) as a 'collection of sky themed illustrations. Which is kind of true, I guess, as there is a sky in each full page (sometimes double spread) illustration. Still, as always, the real focus of the artist is on his trademark petite bishōjo, whom he places in a variety of landscape that always feature a sky, be it a summer blue one, or a fiery one at dusk.

Hailing from 2003, 平均律の《空》の本 is still an 'early work' of sorts, and displays some of the anatomical uncertainties I had seen, for example, in アルミ、クラフト、ポリプロピレン. Still, his eye for color and composition is amazing as always, and there are already hints of that attention towards abstraction that he will further develop in later dōjinshi. All in all a very nice, albeit short treat, and another one off the list of Heikinritsu back catalog.

My impulse purchase for the month was map03 by 丸紅アパートメンツ, an excellent artist I had recently spotted while browsing through Japan's side of Pinterest; I was particularly captivated by her amazing color illustrations of surreal, you guessed it, apartment scenes.

map03, however, is actually a fairly thick (66 pages) b&w manga, which ostensibly narrate the author's own trip to the city of Venice, and the happenings and mishaps therein. I'll be honest, the tract loses out a bit by the absence of color; nonetheless, the vistas, the paneling and, of course, the theme reminded me quite a bit of something like Aria, which it also resembles in the way it mixes travelogue with surreal imagery. To 丸紅's credit, I have to say that her grasp of anatomy and perspective is actually better than Amano's...

So, another small haul that got into my mitts two dōjinshi worthy of attention. Sadly, at least according to the artist's site, map03 is currently sold out, so managing to find a copy might be tricky.

'Memory Hole' on Patreon

While waiting for the next batch... I am now on Patreon! My writing, including my latest work 'Memory Hole', is available as a serial for minimal pledge amounts. Love me? read, share, support. Especially share, which is just as valuable as monetary support at this stage of my writing career.

DAWN by みけねこりんご / 幻想探行記 by ゆずりんご

Two reviews for one this time around, mostly because these two artbooks are both very, very flimsy... 16 and 20 pages respectively. As an added bonus, both circles have りんご in their names, though unrelated - at least as far as I could tell...

DAWN by みけねこりんご(the circle name of うろこ) published 2009 is, as mentioned, a fairly thin artbook, but one that visually packs a punch. While the artist has been recently dedicating their craft almost exclusively to Danganronpa fan art, DAWN is simply a full color collection of unrelated illustrations, where thematically the lion's share is taken by armed and dangerous bishōjo of all varieties.

While there might not be much variety as far as subject matter goes, the artist definitely displays a strong sense of both color and composition, developing complex color palettes that enhances the curvy, wavy qualities of their pinups. An unusual amount of attention is also paid to backgrounds. Such a shame that, as far as I could gather, the circle hasn't published a thing since 2013 outside of occasional Pixiv updates and Danganronpa fanart.

The other collection of illustrations I picked up in my last shipment is 幻想探行記 by ゆずりんご, published in 2009. While there seems to be a single artist behind the Yuzuringo name, the dōjinshi actually goes through three or so quite different visual and thematic styles, ranging from slick digital illustrations and pinups in a clear manga inspired vein, to items that display a closer affinity for traditional art.

While, as usual, I am left wishing that both dōjinshi simply had a higher word count, DAWN and 幻想探行記 were overall two very different, yet worthy additions to my collection of illustration works from little known artists. Next time, yet another Heikinritsu from the past, and a whole new, very interesting artist...

SAVOYA by サボテリアン

Through one of NHK's typically incomprehensible mazes of reruns and chronological chopping, it seems as if my favorite show, At Home with Venetia in Kyoto, is still running - there were at least two seasonal specials filmed in 2017. Even the reruns are amazing; that woman lives exactly the kind of life I would like to lead, if I had the financial security I currently don't possess.

I started with this little side comment because the dōjinshi I'm reviewing this time is probably the farthest one can get from... well, anything sunny and countryside-ish slice of life-y. Among my most recent purchases was yet another dōjinshi I bought on its cover alone - an illustration collection by a certain SAVOYA, whom I never heard of before.

B5, B&W, 36 page, and I'm pretty sure it's not Reimu on the cover. Inexplicably, SAVOYA is actually another name - seemingly used only for this publication - of illustrator サボテリアン (Saboterian), who actually has a web site and a Pixiv page to their name, and whose work was featured in a Pokémon themed anothology a while ago. The illustrations featured here are all original work which is partly germane to this dōjinshi, and partly appears in color on the Pixiv page linked above.

Stylistically speaking, the visual coordinates of SAVOYA's art are fairly clear: there is a bit of that 'scary kawaii' aesthetics a la Murakami, but mostly we are in Ueda Hajime and Dowman Sayman territory, from which SAVOYA borrows the extremely dynamic compositions, the willowy and often abstract body anatomy, and the sketch-like quality of the tract. While, as mentioned, some of the originals (linked here) are in color, often the compositions work just as well - sometimes even better - in B&W.

Thematically, we are in rather extreme, sometimes borderline guro territory. We range from exploding shoujo to monster avatars, through a facial of raining testicles (yes, that too). As often happens in these cases, the vile subject matter is redeemed by SAVOYA's skillful use of composition and line, which sublimates the body horror into a compelling visual which works as design as much as illustration. Though the stylistic coordinates are very different, SAVOYA's work reminded me somewhat of Nedlog's.

Overall, a little quirky surprise whose subject matter might not be to everyone's taste but that, at least visually, is sure to make an impression.

ハ短調 by HEIKINRITSU / 平均律

And the collection keep growing...

Sadly, my most recent shipment from the folks at Otaku Republic has been mysteriously delayed on the Japan side - which is unusual to say the least, as it contains no H material, and as far as I remember customs never even bothered checking my packages before. Should be here in a couple of days.

Fortunately, however, I had another shipment on its way, a single dōjinshi which I just had to fit into my monthly budget, since it happens to be an oldie from my favorite circle, HEIKINRITSU / 平均律. This one not only came in on time, but it also contained a complimentary pack of transparent covers. Pretty badass and useful, as I usually never bother to protect my purchases beyond shelving.

I reviewed this one-man show's work a bunch of times, so unless this is the first time you stumble here, you should be pretty familiar with the kind of stuff he does. While, on the surface, Heikinritsu seems to offer collections of somewhat traditional bishōjo illustrations, each dōjinshi has a cohesive conceptual core which ties it all together.

As the musically themed title suggests, ハ短調 (literally C Minor) is no exception. I'm not sure many people could convincingly pull off a bishōjo personification of one of Bach's fugues... The format is a B5, part of it is B&W, but the first four illustrations are in a wonderfully minimalist color, of which the cover above is a great example. Heikinritsu is a master at making blank backgrounds actually work in favor of the image's composition and balance, rather than against - they never come across as an easy copout, but instead constitute an integral part of the illustration's economy.

Crappy pic but I'm not going to bend my copy.

There are only two very minor gripes I have with ハ短調, which actually are shared by other works by Heikinritsu. The first one (which also explains why my reviews of this circle's work are very short compare to my fanboyish enthusiasm) is that it's really, really short. 24 pages overall, but this includes the front title and credits, so the actual illustration page count is a fair bit shorter.

The other aspect, which is actually more of a shortcoming on my side (I'm not very good with Japanese jargon) than a fault per se, is that Heikinritsu's dōjinshi are fairly packed with complex text, which sometimes overtakes the illustration it accompanies. It's an essential element of course, as the concept behind each book does need a bit of explaining to be fully grasped, but I can't help feel the balance is at times a bit off. This is, fortunately, not really the case with ハ短調: here, the text explanations are treated as part of the image's composition, rather than merely as explanation tags or footnotes.

These are both incredibly minor complaints, which I mostly put down so I wouldn't come across as a total fanboy. Heikinritsu is by far my favorite circle, and the work it delivers is consistently engaging - especially if you are into math and procedural graphics, I suggest you check out アルゴリズミック・ビューティ. 

FLOWER vol. 1 - 10 by D.K.

While waiting for my most recent purchases to arrive (which include some VERY underground stuff, even by dōjinshi standards, and a very very vintage Heikinritsu), I will try and keep the blog warm by spending a few words on a series of illustration dōjinshi which were actually among the first I bought, during my trip to Japan way back in 2013. There, in Nakano's Mandarake, I got my hands on issues 1 through 10 of FLOWERS, by illustrator D.K.

What's interesting is that, in fact, a few illustrations from this series have appeared in an official, English language publication too. In 2008, Del Rey published a grand total of two issues of famous Japanese pop lit magazine FAUST, featuring a lot of big names like NISIOISIN, Kouhei Kadono, Kinoko Nasu; and a short story by Tatsuhiko Takimoto, the famous author of Welcome to the NHK. This story's illustrations, by D.K., also appear on FLOWERS vol 4.

While today - at least judging from his most recent works - he seems to dabble more in 3D CGI than anything else, the issues of FLOWERS I have, ranging between 2004 and 2008 (though an omnibus came out in 2012), are fairly traditional collections of bishojo and action illustrations and pin-ups; as well as selections from the character designs he did for series like Nier, Casshern and Kamisama no Puzzle. Each book is fairly thin, around 20 pages; some are full color, some B&W, some split.

D.K. has a very recognizable style, focused on complex poses and facial expressions, which really shows his professional background as a character designer. This is, like often happens in such works, a double edged blade: as there is little to no story or context to the pinups, the whole 'weight' of the dōjinshi rests on the the appeal of the illustrator's skills and virtuosism. This is not inherently a fault, but it definitely makes the work somewhat repetitive, especially considering that D.K. never strays at all from a handful of themes: fighting girls, robots, a few monsters here and there. This criticism, I readily admit, might also be part of a shift in my own tastes - I used to love illustration collections, then I discovered Pixiv, and now I mostly buy dōjinshi manga and novels. Additionally, some padding is provided by illustrations that appear in more than an issue, in color and B&W versions.

All in all, an excellent collection of pinups, but also a marker of my shifting tastes. It's unlikely that I would buy a whole series like that nowadays - and, in fact, I find D.K. newer, more thematically complex stuff far more enticing. You can try out for yourself the excellent web browser game Aragai, for example.

アルゴリズミック・ビューティ by 平均律 / HEIKINRITSU

Fun Fact: I really wanted to buy and review the latest Sayu Studio but, it turns out, it's cheese themed... and I hate cheese. Like, I can barely stand looking at melting cheese.

Sending manuscripts out, and applying for academic positions has pretty much turned me into the ultimate patient guy - waiting and waiting for the payload is second nature to me now. Which is all good, because it means the time between Heikinritsu dōjinshi flies by without me even noticing.

アルゴリズミック・ビューティ is the Comiket 91 (winter 2016) offering by what has become my favorite circle by far, 平均律 / HEIKINRITSU. I have reviewed a bunch of his previous publications, highlighting the way in which they do more than merely present us with cute moe girls, and instead manage to actually get a 'high concept' across; often, but not exclusively connected to some aspect of graphics and design practice. After all Robert Yamamoto, the man behind the circle, works as an art director in Tokyo. 

アルゴリズミック・ビューティ (B5, 28 pages, B&W aside for the cover) could be considered a direct continuation of 2014's パラメトリック, a dōjinshi which blended the typical moe chick fare with math-based procedural graphics. This new book picks up some of the algorithms already seen in the previous volume, but adds more procedural graphics and even some interesting concepts in the way the girls are drawn and portrayed. Overall, アルゴリズミック・ビューティ feels more thought out and complete than パラメトリック, and definitely beats the amazingly quirky but slightly thin ボドニとあかいユーロセル.

As before, I won't even pretend to understand the math behind the procedural graphics used by Heikinritsu - to his credit, he adds a short bibliography at the end of the work, so you can try the algorithms yourself if you feel like it. The black and white doesn't detract much from the illustrations, in fact it does the opposite, allowing us to fully focus on the forms and shapes the girls are designed within. As I mentioned, even the girls diversify a bit this time around: there is a procedurally star-generating magical girl (a theme Heikinritsu fully explored in one of the few dōjinshi of his I don't have), an Asuka, and a variety of ballerinas, and girls with teddy bears (!). 

There are a few very very very minor anatomy problems (feet are still drawn unconvincingly, which is surprising considering Heikinritsu draws hands very well) but, beyond this, it's very hard to find faults in アルゴリズミック・ビューティ. The only flaw I could point out, which is actually sort of a good point, is that the dōjinshi feels kind of short: it could have definitely used 4-5 more images, or maybe a couple color illustrations. In fact, I would love to see a Heikinritsu anthology, or a thicker sketchbook publication.

Overall, another Heikinritsu, another good purchase. While アルゴリズミック・ビューティ still hasn't replaced アレクサンダー・カルダーの恋人 as my favorite dōjinshi by this circle, it's a very strong offering, which makes me look forward even more to what he might cook up for Comiket 92. 

Small Haul - January

JLPT didn't go as good as I had hoped... and, a usual, it's the listening section's fault. Goal for December 2017 is to improve on that side. Any pointers? I had good past experiences with a few online language exchanges platforms, otherwise I might have to resort to the good ol' pen pal system...

I've also been playing some Factorio. Not my kind of game, I'm more of a mindless MMO kind of guy, but one of the game's merit is that, for the first time since high school, I had to use equations.

Small haul for January, mostly to justify the shipping expense of Heikinritsu's new thingy, アルゴリズミック・ビューティ. So far it really feels like a パラメトリック part two, which is great as the latter was one of my favorite experiments from the circle. It also means more math talk that will simply fly over my head, but cute girls will more than make up for that.

On the right is 1000elegy 100wonders syllabus 千変挽歌百不思議 導入手引, a... very strange sort of fictional syllabus for a Battle Royale style school? lots of collage-y pages and walls of text which, fortunately, don't seem to be too far beyond my grasp. On the left, 武蔵野茶房 総集編 2, a sparse manga which, at a glance, looks like something Hitoshi Ashinano would have written.

First review will be, of course, Heikiritsu's, then followed by the others. Good stuff.

中根浩一 写真作品集 by SELFISH GENE

Winter is in full swing, and it seems as if it's snowing all over the place in Italy. All over the place but here, that is. Gone the beautiful foggy season, all we're left with is the worst part of winter. I will never move to the seaside soon enough :S

In spite of very little photographic material that I'll be able to provide for this dōjinshi (there is nothing online and I'm not going to compromise my copy's spine just to take a few pics), it felt as if I just had to write a brief review of 中根浩一 写真作品集: not only because SELFISH GENE is one of my favorite inactive circles, but also because of a rather sad particularity: it's the first commemorative dōjinshi I have come across. By commemorative, I mean featuring the work of someone who has passed away.

Kouichi Nakane (1975 -2001) seems to have been a good friend of SELFISH GENE's Fujikura Kazune, and shared with them a passion for photography. The 中根浩一 写真作品集 collection is split in two parts: a first half is made up of Fujikura's own works, some of them unedited versions of pics that already appeared on Libération from Fujikura, while the second part is dedicated to the photography work of Nakane, which shares some elements in common but also differs from Fujikura's in style and subject matter. There is also a DVD which, unfortunately, did not manage to survive thirteen-odd years of bad storage. Such a shame :S

The book is a nice and thick 86 pages in full color, very well designed and solidly bound aside for the DVD mishap. The part dedicated to Fujikura contains very little text, and focuses instead on the pictures themselves: mostly sunshaft-filled shots of suburban landscapes and people closeups, something Inio Asano would do if he photographed instead of drawing manga. Nakane's side is a bit thicker with words, giving some background on him, his interests and the memories he left behind for Fujikura and other close friends. Nakane's work is very similar to Fujikura's, and the book includes some very moving pics of both of them frolicking in suburbia with friends.

While, technically speaking, both photographers are fairly skilled - at least as far as a photography ignoramus like me could tell - I am not sure how I feel about the theme of the book's second part: I have always felt very ambivalent toward memorials, as they often ride a thin line between healing remembrance and sappy sentimentalism. Still, I can't help by appreciate this tribute of a photographer to another photographer  and friend. As far as I could tell using my still very shaky Japanese knowledge, the tribute didn't seem overdone or too congratulatory.

I'm now missing a single SELFISH GENE dōjinshi, a very slim one so I'm not entirely sure whether I'll purchase it. Next week, however, the new Heikinritsu is coming in...