my loots

My Comiket 76 loot arrived last week ^^.  For the uninitiated, Comic Market (Comiket) is biyearly doujinshi event.  The most recent event, C76, took place on August 14-16.  Read on for more info and pretty pics.

While it is named Comic Market, there’s actually a lot more than just fan-produced manga presented.  Personally, I’m only interested in doujinshi artworks which is what you see in the above photo.

Most of the items sold at Comiket are exclusive and printed in limited quantities.  For those us not in the land of the rising sun, Yahoo! Japan Auctions are the best place to find Comiket goods after the event.  We just have to use deputy services to get the goods to us…  Adds a bit to the cost >_<

There were too many pages for me to scan completely so I’ve chosen a few from each collection that appealed most.  Chances are that all full scans of these books are available somewhere online if you’re really interested ^^.  Now on to the goodies!

アリスと不思議な幻想世界/Alice in Wonderland by FancyFantasia (Ueda Ryo)

First up is the third installation of Alice in Wonderland by Ueda Ryo, one of my favorite artists,  under his FancyFantasia circle.  Ueda basically provides his personal perspective on the Alice in Wonderland characters with much success.  The characters are quite attractive and their outfits are cute (when they’re wearing them ;)).  Just kidding, there isn’t any real nudity here ^^.  18 pages of full color goodness.

Cutest Cheshire Cat I've ever seen ^^

Cheshire Cat in cast-off mode ^^;

And an Alice ^^

Blossom Colors Celeste by Tinkle

Tinkle’s latest doujinshi offering.  Tinkle is a pretty popular artist and for good reason.  Her art is addictively cute and her character outfit designs are detailed and inspired enough for her own clothing line (as Stripey could attest).  There are 3 massive page-spread illustrations and 3 single page illustrations.  Sadly it is rather short at just 14 pages but makes up for it with beautifully huge A4 sized illustrations.

Oh, can’t forget about the huge, semi-transparent poster that came with this artbook.  It came in a nice paper pouch and would be suitable for display on a wall.  It is pictured in the photo at the beginning of this post.  There were other goods Tinkle sold at C76; a dakimakura if I recall but I didn’t get it due to the high cost.

Lovely day at the beach

My lazy image stitching doesn't do this image justice >_<

Missing a few pieces of clothes :D

Re: by Closet Child

Ah, Closet Child.  Another favorite circle of mine.  Closet Child members Koneo Ototsugu and Asaki Yuzuno have a wonderful style with darker colors and appealing character outfits.  Unfortunately, I can’t tell the two artist’s works apart very easily but I believe all the illustrations in Re: are by Konoe Ototsugu.  This is a collection of his works from 2005-2009.  So while not all of the illustrations are new, they’re all excellent :).  27 pages in full color.

Some of the illustrations have a nice sketch-like look

A hint of yuri? ^^;

Koneo Ototsugu draws a lovely maid ^^

Dmyotic 5.0 by Snow Ring (Dmyo)

Dmyotic is the self-titled doujinshi series by Korean artist Dmyo.  As you can guess by the name, this is the 5th full entry in the Dmyotic series and I haven’t missed one yet.  My only complaint about this iteration of Dmyotic is the disappointing length.  Just 14 color pages, a few of which have older illustrations.  Dmyotic 4.0 in comparison was 22 full color pages. Ah well, it’s still Dmyo and the art that is here is as beautiful as ever ^^.

Oops, I named the files dmyotic4 by mistake >_<

Some hanyuu + meronpan?

Cover girl drinking from fountain + "Where are you looking!?" ;)

A few smaller illustrations

K-ON! 放課後フォトグラフ/K-ON! Houkago Photograph by Mizukichan Club (Goto-P)

Some of my first encounters with anime art were done by the master known as Goto-P.  He’s been around quite a while and while his art style has improved visibly over the years, his work has always been a favorite of mine.  This is my first Goto-P doujinshi.  I do own a few of his published artbooks but he has not released any published collections (that I know of) in a while.  So I decided to grab this 18 page K-ON! book by Mizukichan Club (Goto-P’s circle).  Presented as a collection of photographs, all the girls are here except Azunya.  Notice how she is missing from a lot of fan art?  I would personally prefer her over Mio but that’s just me ;)

Neko-mimi Yui?

This outfit is the best thing about Mio

Forehead girl! jk, Ritsu <3 <3

5年 memorial by Afterschool of the 5th Year (Kantoku)

Well, this is the first item I’ve gotten by Kantoku.  While I like Kantoku’s work, I’ve been satisfied with with digital versions up until now.  I’m not good at resisting big collections and that’s exactly what 5年 memorial is.  It’s much closer to an official artbook than the normal Comiket fare.  Clocking in a 54 pages, it’s chock full of pretty pictures dating back to 2005 along with a few brand new illustrations.  Also, all but the last 3 pages are in color ^^

Came with a fan and a pencil board (seen in the photo at the beginning of the article).

Azuya tanlines ^^

Bakemonogatari, one of the newer illustrations

Kantoku has good taste in mahou shoujo :D

I like where this is going :D

Most of the illustrations are in a format like this

Neko Works 01 by Neko Works (Sayori)

Sayori has been a favorite favorite Internet artist of mine for the past couple years and now I get to own her art in a physical form ^^.  Sayori art is recognizable by its clean, uniform look.  Sayori is actually a Chinese artist and I believe Neko Works 01 is her first Comic Market doujinshi so I was lucky to get a hold of it.  Actually, I wasn’t able to get one from the actual event but did snag a copy from Toranoana.  Good thing I acted quick too because it now seems to be sold out.  24 pages of full color goodness.

I don't know this character but she's smokin' ;)

Hisui and Kohaku

Some Sound Horizon characters that I don't know...

Neko Paradise by Neko Works

Yep, another Neko Works doujinshi ^^.  This one is actually more like a short manga with a few full page illustrations thrown in at the beginning.  The manga is quite NSFW so I have not included any scans from it ^^;  The manga is about two cat girls, Chocola and Vanella, that help out at the shop for their owner.  They’re a bit naughty while he is out ^^;  Anyway, the greeting in the book says it is a collaboration with another artist named ideolo.  Ideolo did some full page illustrations of a new character named Caramell, but aside from that I don’t know what his/her involvement was.  24 full color pages.

Chocola (dark hair) and Vanella (light hair)

Apparently the first illustration of them ;)

Ehehehe...

Ryo Ueda Toho Art Collection by FancyFantasia (Ueda Ryo)

Now here is highlight of my C76 stash ^^.  Another release by Ueda Ryo but his Toho Art Collection is in a different league than most Comiket items.  It’s as close as to published artbook quality as it can get.  The book is hardcover with a nice semi-transparent obi.  Open it up and you get 60 thick, beautiful pages of A4 sized illustrations.  Like Tinkle’s Celeste, there are some full page-spread illustrations for ogling but unlike Celeste’s portrait layout, these illustrations are in massive landscape format.  They were originally illustrations for stick posters which explains their unique proportions.  I included a scan of one to show the sheer size of the images.  They’re really amazing.  Anyway, this book is comprised of, you guessed it, Touhou works by Ueda going back to C70 (2006).  A stunning collection of illustrations that I’m very glad I was able to obtain ^^.

Massive image is massive

I love the poses here ^^

I don't know the Touhou characters' names well...

I do know this is Patchouli Knowledge, one of my favs ^^b

Marisa and Reimu (I think)

Konpaku Youmu! She has the ghost thingy ;)

曹達色えほん/Soda Color Picture Book by WNB (Mako Tatekawa)

Last but certainly not the least is Soda Color Picture Book by WNB.  Something I found interesting about the title is that 曹達 (written souda) actually means soda as in baking soda.  I wonder if the Japanese borrowed the word and just assigned some kanji to it.  Normally borrowed foreign words are written in katakana.

Anyway, about the actual book… it’s yet another color picture book by WNB, specifically Mako Tatekawa.  WNB seems to put out a new book like this at every event.  There are many other えほん books and I have a few of them and while the art is superb there are too many for me to collect all the older ones >_<  This book is 20 pages and is full color.

I have to say that this cover image is by far my favorite from this book.  Yeah, I know she’s dressed as a nazi but, man, is she is hot ^^.

Saber in royal attire

I love the pose of the blond girl ^^

And lastly, some waitress Mion. Or is it Shion? Either way, I wish we had waitress outfits like that here >_<

Thanks for viewing! ^^

Related posts:

1. Some C75 loot
2. Comiket 74 Loot Arrives
3. Haruhi Shugi Artbook by Noizi Ito

My Comiket 75 loot finally arrived.  Due to multiple issues with auction sellers and with the deputy service, these items are well over due seeing as how C75 was back in December, 2008.  Oh well, it was worth the wait for these two doujinshi ^_^  Yep, only two this time around.  I was far more conservative with my spending this Comiket, partly due to the bad USD->Yen rate and partly due to me wanting to save money.  I’ve decided I will only be making doujinshi purchases if I can really justify the crazy high prices for the deputy service fee, money transfer, internal + domestic shipping + the actual item cost.  From now on I will probably limit my spending to only doujinshi artbooks that contain lots of illustrations or something unique.  Paying $50 for a something like a 15 page doujinshi + clear file is no longer going to work for me >_<.

So, despite just two items in my C75 stash , they are very good buys in my opinion.  First off, I have 白夜茶会 (Byakuya Chakai) by the very talented Tinkle. While this is technical a doujinshi illustration book, if it had an ISBN and a publisher, it could very easily pass for a commercial artbook, it’s that good ^^.  If you’ve seen Tinkle’s work before, you’re probably familar with the unique style with a mix of moe and sexiness.  Of course, like most of Tinkle’s art, a lot of it is on the ecchi side though not really erohon quality.  In fact, you’ll find vastly more girls with peeking pantsu here than not ^^;  Since the images in this book have been floating around the web for a while and I’m not going to try to compete with some of the more serious scanners.  Instead I will offer a sample :)  One thing I can say after scanning a couple pages is the the print quality of this book is very fine.  There is virtually no screening when scanned at 600dpi which is not common with artbooks.  The printing on this book must have been expensive ^^;

The cover

Quite possibly the best illustration in the the book. Kagami ftw ;)

Pantsu visible ^^

The other item in my order was Ueda Ryo‘s (circle Fancy Fantasia) 2009 calendar + Color Defragmentation book + The Evening Star + clear file set.  Ever since I discovered this artist, I’ve fallen in love with his art.  I previously purchased Fancy Fantasia’s Alice in Wonderland 2 book from C74 and was impressed by the style and quality so this set was high on my list.

The calendar is pretty straight forward and has 7 full color illustrations (2 months per page).

One of the calendar pages. I like the tail :D

Next up is the Color Defragmentation illustration book.  This is a full color book with 29 images.  The illustrations here are simply excellent :)   There’s also The Evening Star which is a black and white doujinshi based on Tales of Vesperia.  It’s actually by Ueda Ryo and a few other people I don’t know.   Since it’s black and white, I didn’t scan anything from it.

Alice in Wonderland style is always good :)

Last is the clear file included in the set.  A good clear file can be impressive looking with and this one is a good example.  While the print quality isn’t as good as Tinkle’s Byakuya Chakai, it is above average.

The clear file. I wonder if any really uses these things ^^;

And that’s it.  Hope you enjoyed the pictures.  For those of you who haven’t tried buying Comiket merchandise before, maybe now you’re convinced after seeing the awesome goods you can acquire?  Then again, maybe you still want to save your money ^^;

Related posts:

1. Some C76 Loot
2. May doujinshi stash
3. Comiket 74 Loot Arrives

Anyway, I am giving a brief preview of the goodies in from the Summer Comiket event.  I likely be revisiting the items in greater detail.  I just want to give a quick glimpse of what ~30,000 yen went to…

Items by the following circles and artists: RAMI, WNB, FancyFantasia, Dmyo, Closet Child, Electromagnetic Wave, Frill*Frill, and Tinkle.

That Dmyotic 2.0 book on the far left was not from C74, it just happened to arrive in the bunch ^^;

I’m actually waiting on a couple more items but this is the bulk of what I scored from C74.  Look forward to a more in depth look into each in the future :D

Related posts:

1. Some C76 Loot
2. Huge artbook stash arrives
3. Some C75 loot

Cotton Garland 1 + 2
I found out about the Closet Child circle from images on shuushuu and after hearing good things about these two doujinshi collections, I decided to pick them up and I’m really glad I did as they contain some very cute illustrations ^^ The Cotton Garland books follow a fashion catalog theme (lolita based, of course). Each page displays girls in a brand of clothing complete with descriptions and prices for each piece in the set. Each image has a fashion “designer” (aka the artist of the image). Some of the artists found here are Konoe Ototsugu, Asaki Yuzuno (the two members of Closet Child), as well as Kaya Kuramoto, Rami, CHOCO, Ryuran, Kaori Minakami, LLO to name a few. It’s a nice collaboration of various guest artists. I love these two doujinshi and I highly recommend them.

Chronicle 2 (and other Mikeou works)
I’m not a huge fan of Mikeou (PINK CHU CHU circle) but she(?) does have some nice art and I had heard good things about Chronicle 2, so I decided to pick up this doujinshi artbook. While it technically is doujinshi, it feels like a commercial artbook. It’s chock full of color illustrations and about as thick as a commercial artbook. If it has an ISBN, I would consider it a commercial artbook ;). As for the art itself, Mikeou likes to draw ecchi… and is good at it! XD While there is no nudity, some of the images push it close. However, this is definitely the cleaner side of Mikeou’s work and most of the images are perfectly tame with girls in swimsuits and skirts and are quite cute. The printing method (at least on the cover) seems different than most other artbooks I’ve scanned. There was little screening when I scanned at 600dpi and didn’t really need much cleaning ^^

The auction I bought Chronicle 2 from also included 2 other doujinshi by Mikeou: Clover 2 and Honto no Kimochi. Clover 2 is a Sister Princess fan book with black and white illustrations and has a couple ecchier images. Honto no Kimochi is a manga doujinshi and is more hentai than either of the other two ^^; I only took a pictures of the cleaner images from Clover 2. Oh, and I didn’t mirror the cover image of Honto no Kimochi, the title really is written backwards for some reason (though that is the back cover, not the front since the front has some nudity >_<).

Colorful Pop 3 + 4
After seeing some scans of these doujinshi on my image board, I took a liking to the artist’s style and decided to grab these two editions of the Colorful Pop series. Colorful 1 and 2 seem to be a bit more rare but I may try to pick them up if I can find them for a reasonable price. The main artist here is Izumi Tsubasa (hisuitei circle) along with some guests such as WNB Mark’s Tatekawa Mako and Hasekura Chiaki. There isn’t a common theme among all the images… some have neko mimi, maids, kimono, and seifuku. Volume 3 is printed on thick, rough paper (almost like thin cardboard) while volume 4 has glossier paper. Both are full color with many beautiful images. Recommended ^^

Drink Me
After reviewing Tsukiyo Chakai, I decided I liked Tinkle’s work in paper form versus digital, so I went searching for more illustration books :) This isn’t a new doujinshi (released in 2006′s C70) but it’s still quite nice. It’s a 22 page full-color illustration book of loli! Ok, not entirely, but close. Very cute. Also, there is one slightly naughtier image with nudity.

Puchi Puchi (Petit Petit) 2
I can’t remember why exactly I bought this because there’s not much to this set of items. I think I was just searching for random WNB Mark items and stumbled across this in an auction right after SC38 for a few hundred yen. It’s basically a large clear file, an 8 page collection of monochrome illustrations, and a postcard with Haruhi on it. The clear file is probably the best part. It’s a large, shiny clear file with Louise from Zero no Tsukaima on it. Pretty cute. The Haruhi postcard is not bad either, but being a postcard, is pretty small. The monochrome book has some decent illustrations. I just wish they were in color ~_~ There’s a white line in the monochrome scan I made, not sure why but I didn’t rescan it >_<

I’ve actually got several more items that have received since this package that I still need to cover. I just haven’t gotten to it yet (been busy), but look forward to it in the next week or so!

Related posts:

1. Artbook Stash Part 1
2. Some C75 loot
3. Artbook Stash Part 3

The artbook is 128 pages and includes original work by Tinkle as well as sections for Magical Tail and Cafe Little Wish art. The original work is very nice and contains many of my favorite images. The artwork is quite beautiful and represents Tinkle’s unique illustration style. Tinkle is gifted with the ability to create exceedingly cute and detailed characters though you will find a decent number of ecchi shots in this artbook. Pantsu shots are scattered throughout the book, but aren’t in poor taste. There are also a few slightly more ecchi images of see-through clothing or missing tops (teehee).

The artbook itself is printed on non-glossy, rough paper. This makes the colors look somewhat duller than other books but the images still look good.There is a 3 page interview, short Photoshop how-to, and 2 pages of Tinkle sharing thoughts on various topic such as favorite color, use of rabbits in illustrations, lolita, and more. Finally, there are 8 pages of cute illustrated stories in color. I definitely recommend this artbook if you can find a copy. I know I’ll be looking for other Tinkle works now ^^

Sample scans below:

Related posts:

1. Some C75 loot
2. May doujinshi stash
3. Artbook Stash Part 1