Customer Reviews

Doujin Work, Vol. 1

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2 star:		(1)
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As a fan of manga and anime about mangaka and animators this is one of my personal favorites. It is also written in my favorite manga medium yonkoma manga. This series is a comedy about a girl who discovers the world of doujinshi and sets out to create a dojinshi to earn lots of money! The problem, however, is that her art is horrible. The characters are each quirky and funny.

The anime has also been released in America.

The former doujinshi artist who wrote this work most likely used a maru pen, as his line style is very thin and detailed. His studio appears along with the mangaka himself on one of the DVD volumes of the anime under the special features.

Being a fan of series such as Genshiken, I was immediately drawn to this book when I saw it. The series surrounds a young girl (Najimi) who has decided that she will make doujinshi in order to become wealthy after discovering that some authors make thousands of yen from selling their wares. Along for the ride are her friends Tsuyuri (who introduces her to the world of doujinshi) & Justice (a childhood friend who seems to have some designs on Najimi). Add in a moe character of Sora, who's a little girl with the hots for Justice, & you have a combination that is surprisingly entertaining.

I figured that this series would be fun to read & I wasn't wrong in that. The 4 panel setup works well for the series as it isn't anything very serious & there's never really any plotlines that really last longer than a few panels at a time. There are some arcing plotlines (Justice's intentions towards Najimi & another suitor who also is into Najimi), but most are played out for the humor aspects while the main storyline remains that of a girl discovering her love for doujinshi.

Fans of Genshiken will like this series, although others who like their manga to be more serious minded will probably tire of it fairly quickly. The only thing about the series that surprised me was that the volumes were so small. The first volume is only about 100 pages, which makes me wonder why Media Blasters didn't combine several of the 6 volume series into larger volumes. The price tag of $11.99 seems a little steep for such a slender volume, especially when you consider that Media Blasters isn't considered a main contender in the world of US manga publishing.

There is also a box set of the first volume being offered that packages the first volume of both the anime & the manga in one easy package, although it seems to be a teensy bit hard to find in some places.

I picked up this volume because I am a fan of similar series like Comic Party, I, Otaku: Struggle in Akihabara, and Genshiken. However, I was unpleasantly surprised by this book.

First of all, the price is way too high for what you get. The book is very slim (only about 100 pages) and it doesn't make up for the price with color pages or anything like that. Secondly, the art quality is not very good. The character designs are very generic, and the quality of the art itself is not great. I would be willing to overlook these problems if the book was an entertaining read, but the 4 panel comics are just not funny. They seem really generic and predictable, and I didn't enjoy reading the book at all. Looking back, I regret paying this much for a book without researching it first.

Overall, I would not recommend that you buy this book. The price is too high, the book is short, the art quality is low, and the jokes are just not that funny. If you are looking for comics about otaku and doujinshi, there are better ones out there.