Strange stuff you find sometimes in thrift shops. There is one such shop pretty close to where I live, and I sometimes wander there to see if they have something of interest (mainly 90s Sperling&Kupfer novels, which I sort of collect). Lo and behold, I find nothing other than a book in Japanese! How did it end up in the heartland of Italy? Pretty interesting story, I must say.  You see, in what's pretty much the city right next to the one where I live, Reggio Emilia, there is a rather famous restaurant and coffee shop, Caffè Arti e Mestieri. Or, rather, I should say 'there wa ..read more

 So yeah, when I bought this 2016 dōjinshi by John Smith (a circle name, in case you didn't figure that out) I actually wasn't aware of them being sort of a big shot - from their web site and twitter I discover now they also do commercial work, cover art for novels in particular.  Jessie is a small-sized, full color collection of illustrations ranging from pinups in abstract landscapes, to recreations of realistic scenes that I assume were either photomanipulated, traced or copied from pictures of real life locales. Little matter as, much like Inio Asano (one of my favourite ..read more

 Having been a NEET for quite a few years myself (before I fixed my life and... who am I kidding, my life is still a lovable mess lol), I always had a soft spot for the NEET character, expecially when it's played for comedy value over the social plague that it actually is, I guess - if you still buy into the 'get rich, find wife / husband, two and a half kids' meme. I don't, but that's neither here nor there. I am, however, yet again reminded of how little of a weeaboo I am when ですそーど's プロニート家を出る starts dropping names I am only vaguely aware of - I do know Kantai Collection and ..read more

 So yeah, shipment from Japan, which was supposed to be here like a month ago - finally arrived, and it managed to dodge customs too! Used to get very lucky with that, then had a very bad streak in which every single order would get taxed. Good to see a return to the good ol' days.  Pretty decent haul too, as also got a CD (Subarashii Sekai by Eufonius, who happen to be one of my favorite JP bands, scandals or not) and this thing here: Now, I've heard some pretty dreadful things about this one - mostly, that it's basically a Zaregoto fanfiction tacked on to just sort of milk the m ..read more

 So yeah, I do make Doom and Doom-adjacent games maps. While still waiting for that bloody dōjinshi shipment stuck in roasting Japanese airport hell, here is a few latest ones: Strife: Low on Ice One of those rare Strife mapsets. Requires the latest GZDoom, it's sort of an oddball (really plays more like Doom than Strife itself) but still rather proud of it. Custom OST by me.  Sewer.wad Three maps for Doom II, target port is DSDA. Very, very hard stuff - map02 is probably the most difficult map I've ever made. Really stretches a limited selection of IWAD resources. Custom O ..read more

 Yup, here it is, a few days later than the blog's 10th anniversary - a small roundup of more VN stuff I played /replayed recently.  Yume Miru Kusuri A leftover of the days when I was still subscribed to the Jast USA newsletter, before the company's owner produced a crude, sad joke on one of Italy'd deadliest tragedies. Go you, boy.  Cringe aside, this is the only visual novel I ever bought from the site, and with good reason. I'm not sure if it's still practice or not, and I have no interest in finding out, but back then you had to log into the site to play. Yup, pseudo-DMR fo ..read more

 As my interest towards Doom and Warcraft wanes, I have sort of come around to one of my original video game (if you can call them that...) passions: visual novels.  Out of the loop for a while, I had to do a bit of digging in order to see what was up nowadays when it came to the sort of stuff I like: indie, short, possibly free visual novels, either Japanese or OEL, with that touch of the 'amateurish' (in the best possible way) underground feel I sort of enjoy in... all media, really. Sadly, it seems like the good ol' days (yes, I'm old) are gone: insani is out of commission for the ..read more

 Artbook time! and a very nice one it is, by another far from unknown illustrator - 宇一 (Uiti) can count on more than 100k followers on Twitter , has just published a new, non-dōjin artbook, and is generally one of those illustrators you will often find featured on daily Pixiv collections. They sport an increasingly common visual take on the bishōjo pinup genre, which sets aside the shiny, plastic-like sheen of anime-inspired visuals for a more daring, blocky visual language based around bold colors mutuated from 2000s' vector art. It reminds me a fair bit of Hirotaka Tanaka, in ..read more

 One could say that shoujo illustrations are a dime a dozen in the doujinshi world, and they'd be right - which is why I am saving all the dimes I find, 'cause I simply can't get enough of that. Young, idealized women are the sort of blank canvas subject that can accomodate more or less any art style, which is why they are such a popular subject in my opinion - there will also always be a market for them in Japanese otaku media, which I guess is another reason why the subject is pervasive, and pretty much all you'll find on Pixiv nowadays. Not that I'm complaining... While I usually fo ..read more

Brancusi's Nightmare  ..read more