#Hot Coffee by Yume No Kakera

It's kind of difficult to gauge what constitutes an 'oldie' in the dōjin world. The thing I'm reviewing today, for example, date from 2005 - which is more than thirteen years ago, a whole era in the typical life cycle of a dōjin circle. Sure, when I was over in Japan there was stuff from the Ninetie and even the Eighties on display - with an appropriate price tag. On the other hand, my personal experience tells me that, when it comes to dōjinshi shopping, unless I get lucky anything older than two or three years is pretty much lost to history. Long story short, I like digging up old stuff - and, if you are like me, you might want to keep an eye for the next review, which will feature a funny little thing from 1987 (!).

Today, however, we're reviewing Hot Coffee, a very short dōjinshi by circle ユメノカケラ. It's a one-person circle, behind which hides a certain 藤田秀俊 (Fujita Hidetoshi), who is still active as of 2018, although with a very different visual style and... umm, let's say 'themes'. I'll let you figure it out by his current Pixiv page. Hot Coffee is a charming, black and white manga which tells, in a mere twelve pages, a cute little love story between a boy and a girl, who happen to bond over a shared love of... hot coffee. Yup, that terrible tasting Boss cans that you get from vending machines all over Japan. Could never stomach that thing, I was always more of a Melon Soda type of guy.

Unrequited love.

Story wise, we're in entirely familiar territory, that kind of flimsy yet timeless manga fare that is the sefest bet when it comes to capturing the soft-hearted reader like I am. There are fruitless waits by the vending machine; desperation when finding out the significant other might have a different crush; kissing and making up while guzzling hot coffee. Nothing new, really.
Visually, well... you can tell, especially comparing with what the artist is up to now, that Hot Coffee is an early work. Still, while the graphic style and tract are a bit rickety at times, they go a long way making the characters charming and apt to convey their emotions even without speech. Backgrounds are understandably kept to a minimum, anatomy is mostly spot-on, and there a are a couple more daring visual choice to spice it all up. By the way, in case you're wondering, the text pattern on the cover is an entirely unrelated lorem ipsum, about Trump and hi yacht. Yeah...

All in all, a nice and little amateur work that doesn't break new ground mostly because it doesn't mean to. Good stuff.