くらやみの世界 by ツクモイスオ

It's artbook time this week! In spite of what one might guess from my previous reviews, I am actually more of a dōjin manga fan, than a dōjin artbook one: while usually of a higher production quality, the first category tends to be made up of hopeful professional illustrators, which often leads to slick, plastic-y artwork that only goes so far for me; I tend to find more edge in the amateur manga scene, especially when it goes the super-alt way.

The artbook in question, くらやみの世界 by circle Ox/ツクモイスオ, is no exception. As one can easily see from their Pixiv profile, Ox's work pretty much approaches professional quality, possessing that clean, shiny, digitally enhanced polish that is pretty much the professional standard in Japanese illustration (and you can also buy the dōjinshi I'm reviewing on their Booth).

くらやみの世界 , a fairly slim (around 20 pages) artbook from 2016, is split in half between landscape concept art, and character art. Visually and technically, there is very little criticism that can be leveled against Ox's work: they nail the perspective and volumes to a pinpoint, the color palettes are varied (perhaps sometimes a tad bit too chaotic), and the large, two page spread format really makes the artist's fantasy cityscapes justice.

The contents themselves are, however, a bit too... by the numbers. I mean, there's nothing explicitly wrong with Ox's designs; yet, they play really close to the tropes of that generic J-fantasy that, personally, I am not a big fan of. Let's look at the character designs: there's the little dark witch, the human prince, the anthro, the robot... even the landscapes, while well constructed an executed, could thematically come out of whatever SAO clones happened to be the flavor of the week in 2016.

All in all, a very nice display of skill, but I can't help wishing that the artist had pushed the envelope a bit more when it came to the... imagination part. This is really a criticism I could move against most Japanese fantasy illustration today, so I hope Ox doesn't take it personally...

蛇を飼う女 by 胡蝶社

It's been a while, huh? Finally a new batch of purchases has arrived, a rare treat in this period of suffering 33 celsius in front of an oven for six hours a day... Only five dōjinshi, but all of them turned out to be keepers, so I'll probably review each one of them. I might even make a new order post-Comiket, even though my favorite circle isn't putting out anything new this time around.

First of this new batch is a little hidden gem, which I purchased on title and cover alone. 蛇を飼う女 (The woman who keeps a snake, 2003) sports one subdued, yet deliciously creepy cover, and I was instantly won over. Behind the 胡蝶社 circle name hides manga author 武富健治 (Taketomi Kenji), who has published some manga proper, as well as winning a few prizes.

Anyway, 蛇を飼う女  is exactly the kind of not-overt-horror, yet totally creepy story that I happen to totally be into. A young woman keeps a boa constrictor in her city flat, except the snake isn't really hers: it used to belong to her dear friend Kyouko, who died in a car crash. Since then, the young woman (really nothing more than your average Japanese office lady) has been living the life of a hermit, projecting her grief and anxiety onto the pet animal, as a sort of surrogate for her dead friend. An attempt to break out of her shell turns into tragedy, when the pet breaks free and does the irrepairable... or maybe not? 

I noticed that, often, Japanese authors tend to have a very ham-fisted approach to metaphors (might be a cultural thing, who knows), but this is certainly not the case with Taketomi: the parallel between caring for the cumbersome animal, and the elaboration of grief is very well handled throughout, inclunding a spectacular final panel that really tops off the story in the best possibile way. 

Visually, I expected edge in the style of Garo or Ikki, and I wasn't disappointed. The visual style is rough, unpolished, yet extremely vibrant even in black and white. There are anatomical errors and wonly perspectives, but that's more of a part of the alt style, than a fault per-se.

In short, an excellent work from an artist that I'll be digging for from now on.