est em's men

est em is my favorite BL labeled artist. Her work is far from the usual school boy romance that plagues the genre, her characters are actual characters and her men are men. It is probably not BL at all, it shares almost nothing with the genre, but I guess it is easier to sell stuff as BL than gay. Her sketchy art is wonderful, especially when she isn't using the computer.

All of the images are taken from est em's website VOSTOK. She currently has three books collecting her short stories published in English: Seduce Me After The Show, Red Blinds the Foolish and Age Called Blue.

Fantastic shōjo: Who is Macoto Takahashi?

Just now a friend sent me Lililicious' scanslation of a 1957 shōjo manga called The Rows of Cherry Trees (さくら並木) by a man named Macoto, or Makoto, Takahashi (高橋真琴). I am baffeled, it is like reading yuri/shōjo blueprint: two rival girls competing for the love of a upperclassman (also a girl), a widowing mother, bullying, ballet, namedropping of classical music, huge sparkly eyes and the most expressive planels you've ever seen. Who is this man, what else has he done, where can I find some more?

And those are only illustrations from the prelude, the actual manga is shōjo boner heaven.

COMPUTERS

So my computer died on me three days ago, hard enough to be beyond repair unless I format my main drive. The fans go WH-WH-WH-WH-WH-WH-WHIII, the harddrives go KCH-KCH-KCH-KC and then everything goes CLICK when I try to start it up. It is over five years old (97 in computer years) and I have been thinking (and am in the process) of getting a laptop for my soon-to-be international life but it is annoying as fuck to come into a computer and OS switch unprepared. All of my KURUTTA "research" was on my main internal drive so it might be a little while (longer than usual) until I get back in full swing. I hope I can salvage everything from it, but first and foremost I'm installing and copying everything essential from my external drives.

I WILL RISE AGAIN! At the very latest in time for Taiyō Matsumoto week. Huh?

Blade of the Immoral

Hiroaki Samura, author of the horrendus Blade of the Immortal, has beside his mainstream manga done a lot of extreme illustrations for various high- and lowbrow porn and art magazines. In 2006 he collected them in a book called Hitodenashi no Koi (人でなしの恋) with the English subtitle The Love of the Brute. It is filled with women not enjoying getting sexually tortured, but Samura's penwork is so beautiful you can't stop looking. I am particualy disgusted by the thread around the collarbone in the third picture.

By the way these aren't even near the worst images in the book. If you want to see for yourself you get the book at Amazon.co.jp

:(