ギルティごはん by COSMIC FORGE

 ... and it's thanks to a dōjinshi from this circle that I learned the Japanese word for 'normie'. What makes it even funnier is that jisho.org has 'normie' as an actual definition. Sign of the times...

A different dōjinshi, that is. I reviewed in the past a couple of works by COSMIC FORGE, all of them rather high-quality - glossy, full color, and fallign right into that 'bizarre, specific take on a narrow otaku interest' that I dig so much. This one is no exception - ギルティごはん, a 20 pages, full color work from 2015 is dedicated to showcasing a few places in the Tokyo area where you can have your fill of, as the title says, 'guilty pleasure' meals. 

This blog is not new to food-centric circles, as I happen to be a big fan of SAYU Studio's self-published books of recipes. This is the first time, however, that I got my hands on a restaurant-reviews dōjinshi, which I know to be a rather florid subset... I simply never bought one. Still, it's a purchase I don't regret, and not only because the publication itself is rather high quality - the pictures are nice and crisp, the descriptions and field reports clear and to the point, and the horiziontal layout really brings it all together in a 'magazine insert' kind of way. 

ギルティごはん also happens to be a time capsule of sort. As globetrotting foodies might know, restaurants and eateries in Japan, big cities especially, are very short lived; and, as far as I could research, none of the places reviewed here are still standing. I might be wrong, though, as my Japanese Google-fu has failed me before. 

So, yeah, not much to say beyond this. Still, a nice interesting read, especially relevant if you happen to be into this kind of stuff. There is a volume 2 available as well, though I'm not sure I'll bother buying it. We'll see...

MASSIVE ARTIFACT by COSMIC FORGE

Sneaking into the schedule a very short review of this little thing I picked up in my latest OtakuRepublic order - it was cheap and I always wanted to get at least one dōjinshi from this circle, even though I was actually hoping for a different one which seems to be unavailable...

MASSIVE ARTIFACT is a short illustration work by COSMIC FORGE, which usually split their work between Touhou fanworks, and food moefication/guides a la Sayu Studio. This one, instead, is part of a genre I happen to enjoy quite a bit, when well done - 2d characters in a photographic environment. 20 pages, full color, horizontal A4 format. The peculiarity seems to be that the photographic backgrounds are rendered through some kind of hi-def technique called HDRR. The end of the dōjinshi features a long and detailed explanation with pictures, but unfortunately I'm not a photo fanatic, so I can't really go any deeper than that.

What I can say, is that the insertion of the day's 2d moe chick into the photo backgrounds is really well done: there are no abrupt lightning shifts, and one can tell COSMIC FORGE really worked into blending together highly edited 2d and 3d. Even the two distinct elements can hold their own: the photographs, in particular, give that kind of 'nighttime urban cruising' feeling that I liked so much in works from the kojo moe genre, like 廃墟探索部 's Midgard. My only complaint? 20 pages, even for this kind of painstaking work, is way too short - a critique that could actually be moved against a lot of dōjin works. Still, a nice little buy I didn't regret the least.

Dōjinshi - November Haul

Another fairly small haul - a lot of my favorite circles, including Heikinritsu, haven't released anything new in a while so I have been exploring my wishlist a bit.

The big, light blue one is an anthology by long defunct circle SELFISH GENE, which I have reviewed in the past. It's actually a photography collection, some stuff has appeared in other dōjinshi but in a very edited form. Very nicely designed, it includes a DVD (which doesn't seem to work, more on this later).

Then I also knocked off my list Heterodox Muse, an Ikaruga dōjinshi by 'Can't HUE' I have been eyeing for a while mostly due to its stunning cover. I was not disappointed, it's actually not an artbook but a fairly long manga drawn in a very idiosyncratic style, very Tsutomu Nihei-ish. I really hope my Japanese is up to snuff (which reminds me, I have my N4 in less than a week..."

Finally, Massive Artifact is a short '2d chara in photo background' dōjinshi by the relatively unknown COSMIC FORGE, whose usual offerings range from Touhou fanbooks to those 'food guide' thingies I love so much. Design wise it doesn't disappoint, but it's definitely the one I'm still on the fence about, so I'm reserving final judgment until review time.