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Doujinshi Review: “Paint or Die” by SOLOIST (Riv)

13 Sep

Riv’s bold graphic style has become a favorite of mine and so I’ve made it a point to get any new doujinshi publications I can. I am happy, for once, to get a SOLOIST doujinshi that isn’t Touhou themed but is Riv’s original work. During Comic Market 78, a 44 page color & monochrome illustration book entitled “Paint or Die” was released. I’m glad to say that it’s a pretty nice little tome.

The cover features a shimapan-clad catgirl with an appetite for chocolate bars. I won’t lie, but female crotch bulge creeps me out a bit. Riv has the original CG version of this image here on Pixiv in a 1024×768 resolution.

The inside of the front cover, of course, treats you to shimapan zoom layer. Always a pleaser. I guess. *female apathy settling in*

The first illustration is a catgirl, with what appears to be meatbuns. Includes thigh-highs and gratuitous panty shot. The page to the right of this image includes an introductory paragraph by Riv in both Chinese and Japanese. According to the Pixiv description for this image, Riv drew it for a CG lecture in a magazine. The picture’s title そんな目で見ないでください (sonna me de minai de kudasai) could be translated as “Don’t look at me with those eyes.” or ” Please don’t look at me like that”. Cute, eh.

Some sort of maid girl character design. I wonder why they often have little heart badges near their waistline. Must be a maid cafe thing.

I am noticing a theme and that theme is shimapan. Also, you can see this book has a crease in the corner. It arrived at my doorstep that way and I’m not too happy about it. I have no idea if it was the doing of Toranoana or Shopping Mall Japan, but it really sucks when you pay 5x the original item cost in deputy fees to acquire it.  /endrant

A lovely little dog-eared girl.

A purple-haired elf or demon lady perhaps. I find the anatomy in this illustration particularly well done.

All of these characters are for an original doujin game cover. Riv claimed to be a little worn out after drawing this one. ;) (View on Pixiv)

Another doujin game cover. (View on Pixiv) There’s another version of this image that only features and girl in the foreground, and it’s pretty darn awesome.

This is probably another doujin game. Ren ai, I bet. I was pretty excited to see a drawing of male characters for once.

Here are some typical moe style images that we know and love. The left illustration is also on Pixiv and its title ひまわり笑顔 (himawari egao) means “sunflower smile”.

These are characters illustrated for a Taiwanese novel. (View on Pixiv: The seeker 01 & Girl and Sword)  I find that Riv’s bold drawing style really suits strong fantasy female type characters. More so than gentler moe characters, anyway.

Well, it doesn’t get much more moe than two mikos in each other’s laps.

The rest of the book is in monochrome. All of the monochrome artwork is a pleasure to look at, however, I chose to only photograph a few pages as an example. This one features a variety of nekomimi characters.

I think Riv’s sketches are fantastic. I feel in some way like the style of sketching in these is similar to my own. It’s also interesting to see how much different the images feel without their signature coloring. Particularly the eyes. A graphic style is so different when you strip it of the CG.

These two images are just gorgeous. The girl with the leaf is undoubtedly one of my favorite Riv illustrations overall.

Overall, I’m fairly pleased with this book. Of course, I always want the books to be larger and to include more color illustrations, but the monochrome work in this book really is very nice. While not as impressive as Yumeiro Mangekyou in terms of presentation, “Paint or Die” is still a really lovely little compilation of Riv’s work.

Related Links:
Buy P.O.D. – Paint or Die at  Toranoana.jp
Riv on Pixiv
Riv on Twitter
SOLOIST

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Late Summer Odds ‘n Ends

30 Aug

I apologize for the length of time between my entries, however I’d like to keep this blog free of filler and stick with stuff that readers will actually find interesting. There’s actually a mish-mash of random things I’d like to discuss, and since none of them currently warrant an entire blog entry, I’ll be mentioning them all here in one collective post.

Pixiv News

A lot has happened with Pixiv as of late; enough that I won’t really cover it all. The most notable is their site re-design, which some people have noticed makes my Pixiv guide posts regrettably obsolete. I will eventually go back and re-write some guides for the new Pixiv, but it’s not high on my current list of priorities as I am busy and it’s just a hobby. On the artbook scene, Pixiv Nenkan 2010 has been released and you can see a preview of it (along with a nice review) over at Pireze. While it isn’t news, there’s also a Pixiv magazine that comes out quarterly, aptly named “Quarterly Pixiv”. You can order volume 1 and volume 2 from Amazon JP, respectively.

Also notable is the fact that Pixiv will be in charge of the next OTACOOL book, which will feature worldwide illustrators. This is an amazing opportunity for artists around the world to become internationally published, but the timeframe during which you can submit artwork is incredibly narrow. For someone like me who spends over a month on a really serious piece of artwork, it might be too much pressure. I imagine will see a lot of the same artists we see in Pixiv nenkan and a bunch of the more popular deviantArt folk who actually know how to sign up at Pixiv in the book. For details, visit Pixiv’s OTACOOL4 Illustration Contest page.

Comiket 78

Many of you are aware that Comic Market 78 happened this month, and lots ‘o lovely new publications were released. Comiket is the best time of year for browsing moe.imouto because of the immense dedication of dovac and his site administrators when it comes to acquiring and scanning new doujinshi. (There are even donations set aside for Comiket scanning in particular.) They put an ungodly amount of time and money into the site and I can’t thank them enough for everything they do to share those acquisitions. You should definitely take the time to browse the pools and see if any of your C78 wishlist items have been scanned. Of course it doesn’t beat owning the original book, but it’s the next best thing if you just can’t win the bid on the newest Tinkle doujinshi. (The incredibly gorgeous Stellato Giada, which has also been reviewed over at Hunting the Elusive.)

As of this moment I’ve ordered a small handful of goods from c78, but I haven’t found everything I’m looking for just yet. Among my purchases are RabbitNet Chronicles, Ame Nochi Yuki’s  “Colorful Sweets” K-On! fanbook, “Hurry Up! 2” by Rei’s Room and of course Riv’s new book “Paint or Die”. I’d still like to get QP_Chick Colors #3 and the newest Dmyotic. I have a pipe dream to own the full c78 Tinkle set, but that one is probably outside of my price range. It’s a given that I want all Carnelian doujinshi, but I’m also pretty picky about which ones I buy; I lean towards full color and full page illustrations if possible, with exceptions made here and there. Since Carnelian’s stuff is also very expensive, I want to get the most bang for my buck.

Stamps

Yes, I’m still collecting them. Since my initial posts regarding my stamp collecting obsession, I’ve added a few notable sets. My favorite of which is a set of zenin Vampire Knight greeting card stamps and a Rurouni Kenshin stamp that I’ve literally been looking for for something like 10 years. There’s also this incredibly tiny set of Magic Knight Rayearth clear acrylic stamps and a wooden Lina Inverse one that I purchased from a good friend.

For more photos of my stamps, you can just shimmy over to my Flickr album. :)

… and other Miscellaneous Geekery

I hope to visit Little Tokyo in L.A. again next month and then I’ll post a bit about my adventures here. Unfortunately, L.A. is pretty darn ugly and so I never take many pictures when I go there. (On the other hand, San Francisco is fairly pleasing to the eye and so I wrote a lengthy entry about it after going there.) Store managers also tend to have explosive hissy fits at you if you take photographs in their shops, which often leaves me limited to photos of storefronts and parking garages. Anyways, I’ll be sure to enjoy some good ramen and weigh down my backpack with more artbook purchases from Kinokuniya. In addition to L.A. I’ll be visiting Anaheim to meet up with my WoW guild mates for dinner outside of Blizzcon. I think I might have to do some Yelp!ing to find out if Anaheim has any secret hidden Japanese gems. (I wonder if my guildies like sushi restaurants…) Also, because I can, DISNEYLAND!

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Doujinshi Review: Touhou Pocket War Evolution Illustration Book

20 Jun

東方ポケット戦争EVO IllustrationBook (Touhou Poketto Sensou EVO Illustration Book) is essentially a small (22 pages) full color artbook release for the doujin game created by 未完童話 (Mikan Douwa). The book features character profile illustrations by the game’s 3 illustrators; Riv (who is my primary reason for this purchase), Ninsei and Maetaku.

Both the front and back cover are rather cute and colorful. You can see the CG’ed version of the front cover here on Riv’s Pixiv!

The artwork styles on the back cover differ enough that I suspect it was a joint effort between the artists. I believe they are done by Ninsei (top), Maetaku (middle) and Riv (bottom), respectively.

The first page is simply a textless version of the cover, so I didn’t bother to photograph it. The next 20 pages are character illustrations. Pic spam inc!

There is a clear difference between the characters who are illustrated by different artists. It’s obvious to me which ones are not by Riv, but due to the lack of an art gallery on behalf of Ninsei, it’s difficult for me to tell the difference between him (her?) and Maetaku. I suspect, however, that Ninsei’s works are the ones with the soft-edge style of coloring and Maetaku’s have the hard-edge coloring (not counting the ones by Riv, of course.)

Page 22 has no illustrations, so again, I didn’t photograph it. However, it gives artist information and links to their websites, which I’ve provided in the intial paragraph via links for each artist’s name.

I purchased this book without knowing much about its contents or the fact that it contained work by artists other than Riv, but I don’t really regret it. Riv is one of my favorite artists right now, so I’ll take any of her work I can get! (Still, I’m hoping to get my hands on more publications similar to Yumeiro Mangekyou or Hanakotoba.)

I’d like to apologize for the vagueness of this review, as my Touhou knowledge is minimal and I had a very difficult time finding information on the artists other than Riv. Regardless, I wanted to take some snapshots of this book in case anyone was wondering what’s inside and if it’s worth their dollars to pick up a copy. As far as I’m concerned, any way for someone to get a sneak peek at a hard to find doujin is worth taking the time to share.

I got my copy of this book from doujin_store on eBay. His prices are rather steep, but I guarantee the quality of his service and products are absolutely out of this world. Sometimes it’s cheaper to buy from him than to import via deputy services, so it’s always good to compare prices when you buy. (Also take note that the pricing of his doujin is based heavily on popularity and rarity. When one copy of a doujinshi sells and he has multiple copies, he will list the next copy at a higher price than the last one. It is usually a $10 markup.) Nonetheless, I can’t recommend him enough!

Other Stuff:

Touhou Pocket War Evolution on Toranoana

Official Demo Movie @ YouTube

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Doujinshi Review: BENIGYOKUZUI Remix by Carnelian

2 Mar

Carnelian has released a couple of “remix” doujinshi so far, and this particular one is the first, released in the summer of 2008. BENIGYOKUZUI 再録集 (Sairokushuu, which means “remix”) contains various illustrations and comics from previous Benigyokuzui releases, but unlike the more recent BENIGYOKUZUI Remix 20-21-22, it isn’t a very thick book. It is about average doujin size at 36 pages. As far as I can tell, it contains images from Benigyokuzui volumes 17 through 19.

Cover

The Cover image is a sexy bunny girl.

You dropped your pen.

Page 1: Sexy office lady!

Pages 2 & 3

The image on the right I recognized as the cover of Benigyokuzui 17.

Pages 4 & 5

The Devil May Cry art on the right has previously appeared in Ura-Benigyokuzui vol. 2 Full Color, which I reviewed earlier…

Some lovely maidens...

The Aquarian Age image on the left (as well as just about any elf drawing by her) is one of my personal favorite Carnelian illustrations!

Pages 8 & 9

Touka and Seika of Fairy Factory make their cameo on the right; a lovely girl with cherries and blonde ringlets on the left.

Miku!

I was most excited for the Hatsune Miku illustration, which I believe was used for a pillow cover. Previously, I’d only been able to see a small resolution of said image on Carnelian’s blog.

Pages 12 & 13

The pointy-eared gal is from Carnelian’s full-color “Gin-iro no Shiina” comic published in “Comic RUSH!”. The miko on the left was used on her homepage for awhile.

2-Page Spread

The only 2-page spread in the book is this gothic lolita-styled illustration of a girl falling amidst black feathers.

The last color page.

The last colored page features a boy/girl(?!) with a sword and then the monochrome section begins, which is primarily a hentai comic which I didn’t photograph (sorry!).

It’s pretty excited to be able to own books that are a collection of Carnelian’s doujinshi. While this first remix book isn’t quite the must-have that Benigyokuzui Remix 20-21-22 is (make sure you check out Nattoli’s review of that one), it’s still pretty darn nice to have in my collection. (Especially since nobody seems to scan Carnelian’s Benigyokuzui doujins anymore!)

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Doujinshi Review: “Yumeiro Mangekyou” by Riv/SOLOIST

20 Feb

Riv, a Taiwanese artist who goes by the circle name of SOLOIST, is one of my more current favorite artists. I couldn’t pass up the chance to get a book of colored illustrations, so I picked up Yumeiro Mangekyou (夢色万華鏡) or “Dream-colored Kaleidoscope”, which is a full color book of gorgeous Touhou art. I know very little about Touhou (despite being constantly exposed to artwork inspired by it) but that doesn’t make me like this publication any less!

Cover

Shiny! The title of the book is printed in metallic silver. The book actually opens at the “top” instead of the side. The images inside are presented in both horizontal and vertical formats.

Page #1

The first page has some opening text (not pictured here) in Chinese along with Japanese. This illustration is on the page to the left of it.

夢色万華鏡

The first two-page spread of many features the same gorgeous artwork used on the cover. You can peek at a CG version of it here on Riv’s Pixiv.

Making Music

The next couple of pages feature some really lovely music-themed illustrations. The image on the right is just stunning!

Vertical Spread #1

This is where the book switches over to some glorious vertical 2 page spreads!

Vertical Spread #2

This one’s a bit too loli for my taste, but it’s cute, nonetheless!

Vertical Spread #3

Nemuiiii ~3~

東風谷早苗

There was some funky scan-line action happening in this photograph, but the print is fine, I assure you. You can also see this one here on Riv’s Pixiv.

お嬢様と犬耳咲夜

Here’s where the book returns to horizontal spreads. (View on Pixiv.)

Happy Fun-Time!

A cheerful page-and-a-half spread along with some very cute chibi versions of the Touhou characters.

東方ポケット戦爭

We’re back to the single-page illustrations. I love Riv’s coloring style in this image especially. (View on Pixiv.)

東方ペロペロ

The second of the two “ecchi” images in this book. Take a look at the face on the lolipop! (View on Pixiv.)

天子と衣玖

Love the blue hair and red eyes; it’s very striking. (View on Pixiv.)

霊夢と桜

Everyone loves a good “miko in the water” illustration, right? (View on Pixiv.)

Index

There’s an index of all the colored images to sum it all up… and then a few pages of really nice monochrome art.

Monochrome #1

Monochrome #2

The "Endning"!

This book turned out to be a really pleasant surprise for me, since I only had a couple of pages as a reference for purchase and I hadn’t seen any scans anywhere yet. (I still haven’t, thus my choice to review it.) I’m very glad I chose to purchase it and I’ll definitely be getting more works by Riv in the future as they are released.

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Doujinshi Review: Ura-Benigyokuzui VOL.2 Full Color by Carnelian

18 Jan

Carnelian’s “Ura-Benigyokuzui” doujinshi contain Carnelian’s illustrations of male characters. There are 3 volumes of Ura-Benigyokuzui that I know of, one of which is this one, that is in full color. You may find it somewhat confusing that “Vol. 2 full color” is a completely different doujinshi than “Vol. 2“. I’ve no idea of the reasoning behind it. If there exists a full color volume 1, I do not know anything about it. In case you’ve ever wondered, “BENIGYOKUZUI” or 紅玉髓 is the Chinese writing for “Carnelian”. The use of “Ura” in front of it denotes that is the opposite or underside of something. In this case, it refers to the illustrations being of boys rather than of girls.

This was one of my most sought after doujinshi for 3 reasons:
1. It’s Carnelian’s work.
2. It is in color.
3. It’s GUYS!

Not that I don’t love Carnelian’s gorgeous girl illustrations. It’s just that I’m a girl and I like boys. It happens, okay?

Onto the photographs!

Ura-Benigyokuzui

The cover is a shounen ai illustration of Gundam SEED characters, and is my favorite image in the book.

Inside the front cover.

The first page is monochrome. I’m guessing this is also Gundam SEED fanart.

With a ZOOM LAYER!

The cover image is so hot, it’s also the first color image in the book… and the second. Gratuitous zoom layer: ON!

Are those Jelly Bellies?!

The next page is some guys with jelly beans. It reminds me of Kyou Kara Maoh!

Cloud and Zack

If nothing else, I would have purchased this book for the opportunity to see a drawing of Cloud by Carnelian. I’ve always been a Cloud fan. I don’t particularly care either way for the Cloud x Zack pairing though. I liked him with Aerith. ;p

REBORN!

The next page is Katekyo Hitman Reborn! fanart. If you really like this one, the premier self-titled doujinshi “Chrysoprase” is full of these guys. (Chrysoprase is a doujinshi circle consisting of Carnelian and Amamiya Polan.)

BL Novel Illustration

The next page’s illustration (and character design sketches) were done for the cover of a BL novel entitled 社交界艶戯. It seems to be out of print, but you can still get it used.

Devil May Cry

Fanart for “Devil May Cry”, which I’ve never played. Hey, there’s that zoom layer again!

Messiah

Takuto from “Messiah”, looking beautiful as ever, and forlorn because his face is stuck in the book binding. Poor Takuto.

Trick or Treat

The last page is a Halloween themed sketch. I think that these are original characters.

URA-Ura-Benigyokuzui

The End!

This book was particularly difficult to photograph. I had to hold the book open with one hand and photograph it with the other. ^^; I ended up taking the photos so that you don’t see any of my hand that is holding the book open, but you also don’t see any of the page margins which have writing on them. Each page says “CARNELIAN” on it somewhere as well as an image description. At least you know what’s inside now, right?

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Doujinshi Review: “Recipe” by Carnelian

15 Jan

Carnelian’s original doujinshi “Recipe” is a colorful collection of dessert-themed fairies or sprites. Each sprite is presented in the form of a colored sketch and a fully CG’ed super-deformed version of them swimming among the culinary treat of her choice. The cover is printed on sturdy textured paper and the pages on the inside are thick and glossy.

"recipe" cover

The cover girl herself is nameless, as far as I know, although you may have seen her before on the front of Carnelian’s 2008 calendar. You can view Carnelian’s CG of this image on Pixiv, too.

Inside the front cover.

The first page of the doujinshi introduces each of the characters in chibi form on a light purple checkered pattern.

Anne

The first food fairy is Anne. In her chibi portrait, she is sitting among dumplings and traditional Japanese wagashi. (和菓子) (View on Pixiv.)

Sugar

The second girl is named “Sugar”, and she is most appropriately the fairy of sugary sweet doughnuts! Notice that she has cute little glazed doughnuts in her hair. XD (View on Pixiv.)

Ginger

Ginger is knocking on the door of a rather delicious looking gingerbread house, complete with gingerbread cookies and… almond pocky! She looks rather like Kogami Akira from Lucky Star. She even has the ahoge. o_O (View on Pixiv.)

Limone

Limone is the mascot for Jelly desserts. Bill Cosby would be proud. She must be sitting in a glass of mint jelly because her chibi form appears to be holding mint leaves. (View on Pixiv.)

Chocolat

No list of desserts would be complete without Chocolate! Miss “Chocolat” presents to you here a luxurious box of truffles and chocolate-dipped fruits. (View on Pixiv.)

Cream

Cream

Our final dessert girl is “Cream”. Standing with a candle atop a cake with chocolate snowflakes and cream puff snowmen, this illustration is somewhat Christmas-themed. (View on Pixiv.)

Recipe

Recipe Girl

Once again our pastry chef is showcased, without the sprites shown on the cover. Just in case you missed anything, there’s a handy ZOOM LAYER version of the picture as well. It’s kind of a filler, but I’m not complaining!

Chibi backs!

Chibi backs!

The last of the colored pages shows the back of the chibi image you saw inside the front cover. Cute! It’s followed by the introduction to the monochrome section, which is printed in chocolate brown.

Monochrome Intro

Monochrome Section

The monochrome section starts off with the sketch of the cover girl and an introduction that I can’t read (sorry. :p)

Monochrome Pages

Sketches of the Girls

For the sake of not becoming too redundant, I compiled the photos of the sketch section into one image.

The back!

The end!

There you have it. I hope you’ll forgive the quality of my photographs. I use a point and shoot with bad lighting, but the important thing is that now you know what this doujinshi contains! After waiting a couple of years to find scans of this book with no luck whatsoever, I finally gave in and bought it, and I’m certainly glad that I did so.

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