ALGL-score- by Asahiro

Here is another one I discovered through Pixiv's daily reccomendations - pretty nice addition to one of my favorite site where to find new artists, which I usually end up following on Twitter for the day-to-day stuff.

I've been eyeing for a while Asahiro, active under the circle name ALGL, and I decided to purchase a random dōjinshi as a sort of sampler - I do that often, usually going for the cheapest one, and then branch out if I happen to like what I see. This one is titled ALGL - Score and it's a few years old, 2015. A4 format, full color, wery well bound. From what I understand, it acts as a sort of capstone, or 'issue 0' for a dōjinshi series, which is now up to issue 6 or 7. While later issues, from what I could gather from the artist's web site, actually have an ongoing plot involving pirates and opera (!), ALGL - Score acts as more of an intro / sampler, focusing on pinup illustrations of the various characters that appear in later 'issues'.

Visually, well... I've never quite seen anything like it. Asahiro has a very distinctive style, very painterly, super elaborate, and which reminds me more of some Western art than animanga per se - at times, in the wireframe, stylized figures I could see echoes of Ueda Hajime, though I'm really clutching at straws to find a comparison. There is such a fantastic use of shadows and color, ranging from the muted to the vivid, that each illustration really comes to life as a complete, stand-alone art piece. It's actually one of the few dōjin outputs I've come across lately that I can really classify as 'professional-level polished'.

A first part of ALGL - Score is full page illustrations of the main characters - Rolando, who in spite of the name seems to actually be female, and also an orchestra conductor, and a pirate; Mirela, a princess of sorts; and a whole cohort of characters with Spanish-sounding names, though I'm not sure how Spain-influenced the actual series is - not much, from what I could tell. It will probably become clearer as I work through subsequent issues. A second section introduces, less in depth, the whole cast that is still to appear. A final section has some average, forgettable fan art.

This is NOT such fanart.

Overall, a very nice start to an interesting, ongoing work - according to ALGL - Score, there seem to be 12 issues planned in total.

パスタと休日 総集編5+6+α by SAYU STUDIO / ななひめ

Yes, I am Italian and, while I lived quite a few years abroad, I have pretty much been raised on a diet of pasta. I usually go for the simple stuff: carbonara, tomato and tuna, that kind of thing. Grandma's recipes.

I have reviewed in previous posts a couple dōjinshi by SAYU STUDIO, the brainchild of Sayu Yuzuru, who is not also a dōjinka but, as the bio at the end of this パスタと休日 総集編5+6+α collection explains, a chef of Italian cuisine who has worked in various Italian restaurants from high school to university. With a few exceptions (such as the previously reviewed Sakura Report) all of his dōjinshi are essentially collections of pasta recipes - spaghetti, for the most part. A lot of the recipes are the simple, no frills kind of stuff one could easily reproduce at home - I have tried a few, with decent results. Also, as one would expect from a chef, not every recipe is traditional italian fare, sometimes mixing not only unusual ingredients, but some Japanese additions too.

パスタと休日 総集編5+6+α (2015, 48 pages) is actually a collection of two dōjinshi from 2013. Each of them collects about ten recipes, with illustrated passages and a full page, very high quality macro of each completed dish. The recipes range from the kind of recipe you could find in any Italian restaurant, such as a slightly fancier version of a carbonara, featuring asparagus; to the slightly more unusual, such as a couple of recipes which include fish roe (which I guess is kind of like bottarga, which I really happen to like); to the... exotic, to put it mildly. And I'm not talking about that one recipe with avocado, which puzzles me but have actually seen done before. I'm talking about the recipe with nattō.

Yes. Nattō. 

Great detail is given for each recipe, so that it's quite easy to follow along even if your level of Japanese is nothing exceptional. Sayu also provides his opinion on some of the brands of ingredients he uses in his recipes, some of which I am familiar with - Divella pasta, for example; some of which must be Japanese brands - never head of Gaban spices. Of course, as any self righteous Italian, I am incredibly picky as to what should go into a good pasta dish, but living abroad I also know how expensive import goods can be, so I'm willing to cut some slack... even if, I mean, Kraft parmesan cheese... like, nope.

So yes, a pretty good dōjinshi, and one that is useful too, if you're into the topic like I am. My only beef is that these two specific volumes, 5 and 6, make very little use of ななひめ's wonderful illustrations, as there's really only three of them over 40-odd pages.