骨董庭園 by 由貴香織里 (MOON CLOCK)

 N.B: repertoire images, because my copy is in good condition but super fragile.

It's a fairly well known fact that, while the dōjinshi world is a fairly amateurish affair (can't imagine anyone making a steady living out of them, at least as a maker), a lot of professional manga artists either started their career, of integrated it, by dabbling in the dōjin world. Kazuhiko Katō did, Kazushi Hagiwara did, Kiyohiko Azuma did, and other big shots like Clamp and Kaoru Mori (I'm still on the lookout for something of hers that won't set me back a whole shipment). Their dōjin stuff is not always top notch, especially when it belongs to the onset of their careers (Azuma's stuff is pretty atrocious, unlike his commercial work), but I guess it's always interesting to see where a mangaka started from.

骨董庭園 is a b&w dōjinshi by Yuki Kaori, best known as the author of Angel Sanctuary (nothing astounding, but still one of those 'big old' titles from the first wave of English official localizations) and the far superior Godchild, pretty much a must if you are into the Gothic thing. She doesn't have a whole lot of dōjin work to her name, but this 骨董庭園 (Antique Garden) stood out to me as it featured both original material, and a couple of Final Fantasy fan stories. Dating from 1995 it was also pretty much a relic in the low-circulation world of dōjinshi, so I just had to get my hands on it!

The dōjinshi is not excessively long, clocking in at 68 pages, and features two originals ('A doll's endless rest' and 'Empty airspace'), and a series of short Final Fantasy fan fictions. The remaining pages consist of commentary and illustrations.The originals are... what you'd expect from Yuki if you're familiar with her work at all: drama-filled black fables with a dark twist-ending. Nothing stellar, but entertaining enough. The Final Fantasy tidbits, as someone who has little to no interest in the franchise, kind of fell flat on me, though they seemed very dark, which I don't think Final Fantasy itself was supposed to be. Not sure, to be honest.

Graphically, well, it's Yuki Kaori. She has this very dated, mid to late 90s style that I instinctively associate with Viz localizations, the earliest days of AMV, and so on. Everyone is donning eyeliner, their wardrobes look like they come out of a Visual-kei music video, etc etc. It's a mostalgic visual style you kinda have to into in order to appreciate, and if you don't... you're not a thrity year old boomer, I guess.

All in all, a little relic worthy of attention, as a curio if nothing else. I would suggest however to give Godchild a read, it's a rather decent and entertaining work. 

グラスタイル Summer 2010 by Range Murata

 It kinda feels like cheating, whenever I feature dōjin work from etablished artists, who probably don't need whatever tiny publicity this blog allows (blog that, by the way, is doing quite well visits-wise... thanks for stopping by! And feel free to take a look at my own stuff if you feel like it). Still, this time around it's about an illustrator I actually kind of idolized a lot of years ago, the quality of the product is fairly high... and I already bought it, so might as well get a post out of it.

People who follow anime, and especially 2010's anime probably happened to come across a guy by the name of Range Murata. He's best known as a character designer, having contributed to a number of anime series and videogames (Last Exile, Blue Submarine n.6, Shangri-La, Animatrix, Robot etc), as well as dabbling in cover art, fgurines design, and apparel. Not sure what he's up to now, as I don't really keep up with anime that much, but I don't see his name thrown around as it used to, so there's that. Probably had his heyday. 

What we're dealing with today is a dōjinshi of his, the 2010 illustration collection titled グラスタイル - which also wins the prize as history's most deceiving cover art as, if you're not familiar with Murata's work, you'd probably expect an alt-photography collection. Instead, you get a 26 pages, full color collection of pin-ups, mostly unrelated to his mainstream work: young girls, sometimes accompanied by dashing and burly male counterparts, dressed up in Murata's signature brand of retro-futuristic, dieselpunk apparel. 

So, content wise, we're in standard anime-esque dōjinshi territory. Now, it's undeniable that Murata knows his stuff, and visually the illustrations are stunning. Aside from a weird, uncanny valley-ish tendency to pair wide eyed anime girls with hyper-realistic drawn males, which I find a bit disjointed and off putting, he clearly has a mastery of color, shape, composition and style. Still, as a whole, the dōjinshi feels a bit... inconsequential. I have a feeling that his stuff probably works better as part of a larger project, as his draftsmanship feels a bit wasted on 'just' pin up illustrations. Also, the book almost entirely lacks commentary, work-in-progress and such, which often make the difference for me in illustration collections.