"フェチ交換合同誌" by various

Fresh off the presses - Comiket is becoming another mainstream publishing outlet. Can't say I'm too thrilled, but the eventual cooptation of third spaces to the mainstream is the rule rather than the exception, so I guess this is the way things go. 

While I, for the most part, willingly chose not to collect H-dōjinshi (not because I have anything against prurient interests, they simply don't really catch my attention), I certainly am not in the business of shaming innocent kinks. I mean, if you happen to enjoy some innocent (and consensual) oogling and make- believe, who am I to judge? Sometimes, quirky stuff comes out of it.

 One such quirky artifacts is フェチ交換合同誌, roughly translatable as Fetish Exchange Anthology... which is pretty much all you need to know about the topic of this 72 pages, A4, B&W collaborative pubblication by... actually some fairly big shots in the official manga world. I guess Weekly Shonen Jump wouldn't be the best avenue for an anthology in which, basically, authors bring to life each other's fetishes in manga form. We have some intersting names here: Masaki Ando, the author of the 4-koma Yagatome-chan; Keitaro Yotsuya, of Memumemu-chan... fame, I guess?; Yukiko Nozawa, who is actually sort of at home with ecchi... 

This 2017 anthology is certainly a curious toy for those who like to see 'the professionals' loosen up a bit and, umm, describe in detail their fetish for others to put in manga form? Granted, said fetishes are fairly tame stuff, the sort of things like peeking at pantsu, see-through clothes, maid outfits... cool stuff, but don't expect anything wild. Same in the ecchi department: aside from a couple risque transparencies and a few sweaty faces, things stay rather tame. 

As one might expect, visually there is a wide range of styles on display. Each artist gets only a four to eight pages worth, and most of the people involved work in the comedy / slice of life genre, so don't expect painstakingly rendered backgrounds or sweeping two-page spreads: still, all of the creators involved are professionals or long-time independent makers, so the quality stays pretty high throughout. To be honest, though, the best part comes before each chapter, where each secret santa partecipant gets to champion for their personal fetishes. Cool stuff.