マツダ is one of Pixiv's scores of artists who seem to have carved a career for themselves in the production of, I'm sorry to say, rather generic fantasy artwork for J-card cames and such. A few years back, however, they made the rounds in the dōjin scene under the name Bricologic, with something much more to my taste - slice of life coffe shop scenes.
Yeah... the one I got my hands on is titled Cafelog R3 (2012), and it's actually an anthology that features choice cuts from two previous dōjinshi, Cafelog R and Cafelog R2. As you might have noticed I am a sucker for meaty page counts, which are hard to come by in the self-published world; and, considering this collection of two previous works is a mere 40 b&w pages, and apparently includes everything the Bricologic name has ever produced, well... not much of a chance to dig deeper into this circle's production, I guess.
This one collection, however, is one of the most visually pleasing I purchased in quite a while, displaying a distinctive visual style which, shamefully, seems to have been noticeable watered down in Matsuda's recent commercial work. As often happens with dōjinshi, the premises are barebone: a quartet of OCs, who do nothing but drink coffee at a coffee shop, all the time. Yup, every single illustration in Cafelog R3 is the blonde protagonist sitting at a table, sipping coffee. She might have an ornery suitor or a waitress friends, but it doesn't matter much - here, the main draw is Matsuda's amazing art style, far more reminescent of some more recent strands of European comics, than the standard, goggly-eyed Japanese fare. Backgrounds are painstakingly rendered, the character's poses are dynamic and natural, and the coloring job (unfortunately visible only on the cover) is top notch.
So yeah, another nice little discovery, and another well that has run dry long before such discovery. You can see more of Matsuda's recent work on their Tumblr.
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