On the surface, dakimakura covers might appear to comprise a flagrant waste of money. Well, on the other hand, most hobbies are massive wastes of money and when a dakimakura cover depicts one of my favorite characters – maybe my favorite character – in all of pop culture, I ain’t going to say no.
Dizzy is, of course, one of the main characters of the fighting game series Guilty Gear X. Her profile has been elevated in the hobby-collecting community by Alter’s figure, and before that by Kotobukiya’s figure and the Queen’s Gate book it was based off of. Despite all that, Guilty Gear is still a somewhat obscure series – compared to video games like Street Fighter, anyway, or even compared to role-playing games like the Persona titles – other than amongst those who enjoy fighting games, where it’s generally regarded as one of the best of its genre.
I was thus quite surprised to learn that Evening Call was going to make a dakimakura cover featuring Dizzy. I’m not sure how much the success of Alter’s figure factored into that choice but I’m sure it played some role. It actually hit mail order stores a while back, back in November of last year, I think, though I could be wrong about that.
Like most doujin-made pillowcases, this one measures 160 centimeters by 50 and is made of roica, a synthetic spandex fabric. The material feels durable, like most of Evening Call’s pillowcases, but there’s some obvious bleed-through in the photographs, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that happen with the other Evening Call products that I own. Curious. The illustrations are done by Ouma Tokiichi, and I must admit I had never heard of him prior to getting this dakimakura cover. His circle is named Shimoyakedou and he is a rather prolific creator of doujinshi, none of which I’ve ever seen, I think.
This dakimakura cover features front and back views of Dizzy in her familiar combat outfit. Looking through the illustrator’s website, he seems to have a thing for curvy bodies and large breasts and that is how Dizzy is depicted. I think the front side looks better than the back side; on the front, her facial expression is neutral, more or less, or perhaps a bit anxious as her clothes fall off of her.
On the reverse side, the focus is clearly on her backside. She appears to be on her knees, which provides an interesting perspective that makes her legs perhaps look smaller than they ought to appear. Her head seems to be rather small on that side, too.
Perhaps this is pedantic but the waistband of Dizzy’s panties are supposed to be made up of two white straps, I think – though it’s certainly plausible that she might’ve decided to put a different pair on.
At any rate, I really like Dizzy and so I really like this pillowcase. I’m much more fond of the front side than the back side, though. Incidentally, this isn’t the only dakimakura cover to be recently released of a Guilty Gear character; there’s at least one out there that features Bridget. Don’t ask how I know that. Also, rather curiously, Noel Vermillion from BlazBlue got an official dakimakura cover; I think Arc System Works sold it during a convention, but I might be misremembering that as well.
Evening Call has some nice stuff in the pipeline. I particularly like the two pillowcases of Aquarion Evol heroines Zessica Wong and Mikono Suzushiro. Unfortunately, I don’t really care much for the show; I watched the first episode – the first couple of episodes, I guess – and wasn’t really moved. I didn’t dislike it, it just seemed very mediocre and rather uninteresting. It’s sort of the same deal with Medaka; I watched the first episode and didn’t really care for the show (though I’ve heard that the original manga turns into the Uncanny X-Men, and I’m really curious as to what exactly that entails). Man, though, those pillowcases look nice. They also seem to have excess stock of this dakimakura cover so if you want to give Dizzy a hug, you know where to go.
I love this case myself, as I’m a huge Dizzy fan, too. Still can’t decide which ass I like more; her’s or the ass of Alice that came out at around the same time. I think I’m leaning towards Alice, but overall I’d say I probably like the Dizzy cover more; as cute as the front side of Alice is, it isn’t very revealing and I can’t deny that I’m a total pervert.
Even though I own this case myself, it’s always nice to see more dakimakura reviews from you. Just because I love seeing the detailed pictures… and it gives me an excuse to come and post about other random shit while talking about dakimakura covers. >_>
Surprisingly, I actually own several of the artist’s doujinshi; mostly the persona stuff but some of his other items too. I was definitely drawn to his cover art, but never made the connection that he was the one that did this cover (I’m incredibly lazy, so unless they’re artists that are normally associated with a particular circle, I don’t know them too well.) I must say that I’m surprised you ended up liking the front side more; I love both sides, but the side with the big ass almost always wins it for me.
I have to say that I’m absolutely loving Evening Call more by the minute. Their English is surprisingly good, and every contact I’ve has left me with a good impression. I recently found out that I was the very first person to pay via Paypal, and as such they didn’t think to add/calculate the currency conversion fee (3.9%.) When I was charged it on a later order, I offered to pay for the fee from my first order, because I really didn’t know that a fee was charged, but they were really cool about it and said that it wasn’t necessary.
Their rewards system also appears to be fleshed out a bit more, and man does it have some absolutely amazing benefits, if Google Translate is even slightly accurate. Granted it will take a lot of money to reach level 5, but the reward for it is definitely fitting (as I understand it, you basically get to choose a character, they’ll create a cover for it, and it will be given to you alone. The translation could definitely be off there, but that is truly one hell of a reward.) and it will be interesting how they work out the level 4 free shipping reward for us foreigners. I personally think that a 500 yen discount on all orders would be fair, since it would be kinda harsh to expect them to pay the ~1600 EMS for every cover we order.
They do have a lot of new stuff I like; of the two new covers, I kinda like the purple haired chick but likely won’t order either. I definitely want the Medaka cover though. I watched the first episode and wasn’t really drawn into it, but there’s really something special to the cover for me.
The odd thing about these dakimakura reviews is they tend to get quite a few hits. I usually toss them up when I need a break for shooting figures, or if I haven’t had the time to take pictures or construct backdrops, as is the case this week (a combination of fatigue, playing Akai Katana, and watching the NBA playoffs), but they get a lot of views. I’m not sure if people are interested in pillowcases or they’re looking for porn, though. The dakimakura pictures do tend to be more on the porny side of things.
I do appreciate a substantial backside; I think the thing that throws me off about the reverse side is the relatively small head. It’s one of those styles that I’m not a huge fan of. Like all those Takuya Inoue figures that Orchid Seed puts out; I tend not to consider them since they often have really small heads compared to their body size (apart from the first Chichinoe cover girl, which I like quite a bit).
It’s good to hear that your transactions with Evening Call seem to have gone smoothly. Truth be told, I was planning on waiting and seeing how your orders with them worked out before placing any orders myself. Well, that and I had already shelled out so much money on pillowcases earlier this year that I was going to take a break from dakimakura collecting. There’s a bunch more I want now, though; I ordered the two that Giga put out with the Hotchkiss girls and I’m thinking about ordering the one with the bondage loli drawn by the Musumaker artist. I really hope that one doesn’t get flagged by Customs.
That is an awesome reward indeed. I just looked up their rewards table and uhh, 80,000 points … I guess that’d take what, maybe 80 pillowcases, maybe a little less if you preorder? Heh, I wish I could get retroactive credit for the Evening Call pillowcases I already own, I’d be maybe 10% of the way there already.
Yeah, I like the Medaka one a lot. I dropped the show pretty quickly but I guess if it does become like the X-Men (whatever that means), that might be interesting enough for me to pick it back up. I really like the Mikono one a lot (and the Zessica one); pen draws beautiful faces. I really wish he/she drew front and back views rather than two front views, though.
I got my account registered on Evening Call’s website. I’ll probably be asking you more questions about the ordering process, though I remember you discussed it quite a bit on some other posts here. I’ll have to go back through them.
It’s not all that surprising I guess; I know I’ve referred a lot of people this way since I talk about dakimakura covers on a few other sites and your reviews are great if they’re looking for good images of a particular cover or just good images in general. I’d be curious to see if you get a decent number of views from Japan, though. While I find that fairly unlikely, it would be interesting if that were the case.
Ah yeah, I guess it does look a bit small. Would be nice if it were a bit larger, but I definitely do like her facial expression more on the backside. And the small head just makes her boobs and ass just look ridiculously large, which even with my normal dislike for large boobs, I’m not complaining about.
Yeah, I figured I’d act as a guinea pig for the sake of the community. So far my experience has been nothing but pleasant, but I haven’t had an order shipped out yet. I should have one shipping out near the end of this month, which works out pretty well, since I added the Nate cover, that I had originally missed out on, when they added some stock the other day. I guess if I had to complain about something it would be the lack of English functionality built into the site, but from the way our correspondence initially went on Twitter, it seems that selling internationally was a bit of an afterthought, so I really can’t blame them for that. Response times can also be a bit slow sometimes, but they’ve always gotten the process rolling before the payment deadline.
Even though dakimakura covers are my primary (only, even) focus, I’m currently in the same boat. I’ve spent way too much. There are just a constant stream of covers coming, mixed with the occasional event that has the exclusive covers that you just know are going to be expensive. I really need to take a break… I’ve said in the past, but I’ll probably spend the next month just paying down SMJ invoices and not buying anything else. Then hopefully after that I’ll take things at a fairly slow pace for awhile so that I can recover a bit.
I definitely want the Bondage Loli case; I’ve skimmed through the Musumaker CG in the past and enjoyed it, and I’ve been following this case since the first rough sketches. I also ordered some of the other covers from the Stylus webstore and put in a preorder for the red-headed slave/wife the minute it went up at the store. I should have waited a bit there, but everything I read in the past suggested that it would be limited to a few items on the store. I didn’t bother reading the item’s page and this was a good hour or two before it went up on the blog with the easy to find information. >_> If I had waited a day, I could have added the Bondage Loli into the order and avoided another special order fee.
I’ll likely order her through SMJ so I’m not too worried there, but I currently have the B&W Store two set on its way here from Taiwan and I did end up preordering the loli Rin/Sakura from Evening Call. Definitely a bit worried about those two sets of covers, but we’ll see.
Yeah, same here, though I’m doing okay so far with current orders. It will still probably take me ages to reach, but if I stay interested in the hobby, I don’t doubt I’ll reach it eventually. Preorders bump up experience a bit, but one interesting thing is some of their stock sales; I guess the stuff they’re really trying to get rid of. The one C81 cover is selling for 8000 yen with 1000 xp/200 points and the Astrea (I think?) is worth 1500/2000. Granted it’s A&J so the price is a bit higher, but it still knocks the price down to a lower point than the average case, at least if you count points the same as cash. Wouldn’t really be worth it to pick up the covers for the experience unless you wanted them, but I’d certainly consider some of them and wouldn’t mind the extra boost.
I don’t know if I’ll continue with the show, but I’m absolutely ordering the Medaka cover. I agree that pen’s faces are really beautiful, and I like their artwork a lot in general. But I’d also prefer a front/back view myself, and it’s probably the main reason I missed out on the Rin cover. I almost ordered the Hitagi, but others ended up working their way into my order first.
I’m more than willing to answer any questions you may have. I think I have a fairly good grasp of their system at this point, even if I’ve yet to receive an order. I’ve probably learned a thing or two since my last posts on the topic, but I’m fairly certain everything I had said previously should still apply.
Nah, I don’t get much traffic from Japan. Not too surprising, I guess, since there’s almost no Japanese text on this site; most of my traffic comes from predominantly English-speaking countries or places where English is common, like Singapore and the Philippines.
Yeah, I figure ordering from Evening Call will be pretty safe then, if they are responsive. Plus being able to pay directly through Paypal gives some measure of security. Mainly I just want to be certain that the package arrives safely at the correct address; I sometimes get worried that stuff will get shipped to the wrong place. I’ll have to decide how much I want those three covers I listed, since I really want the two Stylus ones. There’s also this one big-ass doll I’ve been looking for but haven’t been too successful at finding, so I’m reserving some money for that. And in more practical matters, I need to find a new car insurance provider. I’m thinking I might go with Progressive. I’d also like to get my student loan paid off since I’ve only got about $9k left on it but the interest rate is only like 2.5%, so I guess it’s not a big deal to keep making payments.
I dropped Medaka Box, don’t have much interest in Aquarion Evol, and Sankarea didn’t seem too great, even though I like the manga. I’m not even watching Fate/zero right now. It seems like this is a pretty crummy season for anime.
Yeah, that definitely makes sense. I’m always wondering how often they’re searching around for sample images though, but I guess it makes sense that they would only search Japanese terms. I search both, but most of my results are obviously from Japanese sites.
I just paid for Nate yesterday, and they told me that my first order is set to ship out on the 28th. I’m pretty excited; some of the stuff has been out for a few months, but I checked out with an order that’s just now set to ship.
I know that I should cut back on my expenses so I can save a bit. Luckily I’m going through school now and haven’t had to take out many loans, but I’ll probably have to do so for my last semester or two (still a year or two down the line because I spent way too much time figuring out what I wanted to go into and have a ton of credits I can’t use for shit.) So hopefully that should be fairly manageable even if I don’t manage to save a good amount now.
I’m watching Fate/Zero and Shining Hearts. Fate/Zero is infinitely better than the Fate/stay night anime adaption, but it just really isn’t my favorite series. It’s fairly good and the art is pretty to look at, but I usually end up watching each episode over the course of several hours. Shining Hearts is basically just a way to kill some time when I need to every couple of days – I usually end up catching up on it after a few weeks without watching an episode. They’re finally started to get into a bit of story, but it’s still mostly mundane things happening without any real movement forward. The eyes don’t creep me out as much as they did in my initial impression, and the rest of the art is good to look at. I could easily drop the show without a second thought, but I’ll likely continue watching it and finish it eventually.
I wouldn’t recommend the Medaka anime at all, at it’s current pace it’s not going to get remotely near to the good parts of the manga where it really picks up. That would be roughly when Kumagawa turns up at about chapter 50, and the anime pacing is only going at about 2 chapters per episode.
Rather than saying it becomes like the uncanny X-men, it becomes a shounen action battle manga, with pretty much everyone having some special power or powers and the focus being on fighting. However, it both explicitly draws attention to the traditional tropes of shounen action while also skillfully utilising them for some rather interesting takes on battles. The powers get progressively more and more absurdly overpowered, which means the battles take a far more interesting turn than usual in order to decide a victor. Kumagawa’s power for example, All Fiction, is the ability to undo anything, to make it as if it was fiction and never really happened/existed. He can immediately heal wounds, even remove old scars, he can bring himself or others back from the dead, and he could potentially cause the world to cease to exist if he wished it. And then there’s Anshin’in-san who’s on a whole different scale above that…
The manga is written by NisiOisiN (author of bakemonogatari etc..) and as you would expect, the level and depth of the writing is far higher than that of any other shounen action title, while still being very muchly a shounen action title itself too.
It does take quite a while to find its feet though. If you read/watched Bakuman, you’d know that often gag manga will turn into battle manga in order to improve ratings and not get cancelled. It seemed like that was the path that Medaka Box had to take due to rather terrible initial ratings early on in it’s publication. The first dozen or so chapters bear very little relation to how the series becomes and the change was apparently motivated by the plummeting popularity early on. It started to find its feet in the first major battle arc (about chapters 24-50 or so) and then really took off from then on.
I initially was continuing to read the manga just to see when it’d get cancelled, and loling at when it turned into a battle manga similar to how bakuman was describing at approximately the same time. Then suddenly, it turned awesome and it’s now the manga I look forward to the most each week.
It’s sad that we’ll never see Kumagawa animated, but at the same time I’m kind of glad as I’m pretty sure they’d never get him voiced “correctly” as he has a unique way of speaking in the manga, always having square brackets around what he says.
Okay Medaka rant over…
I have ordered 1 cover from Evening Call directly so far, and they were very helpful about it. I needed to have the shipping date delayed on it due to my being out of the country and they were quite willing to do that for me without any issues. They also seemed to have someone who speaks fluent english as all communications back and forth were very clear.
Just going to skip over the Medaka rant there, though the rant definitely makes it seem more interesting that the first episode I watched, even if it’s completely absurd.
With that said, my first Evening Call order shipped the other day and they just emailed me the tracking number this morning with the item already sitting in customs. Short of any unforeseen problems with the order, I can say that I highly recommend ordering from them directly versus a proxy. Not just for the money saved, but because they’re really friendly and easy to deal with and of course if you order a lot of their products, you’re going to see some other benefits over time. ^^
Yeah, I did have a bit of a problem when I first signed up. I mentioned it one of these reviews, I think, but basically the problem I ran into was a soft (meaning I could type as much as I wanted without it cutting me off) character cap with the address box. I tried registering about 3 times without any success, and then I cut down my address a bit by changing United States to USA. I was able to sign up without a problem past that. I guess you could be having a different issue, but that’s the only problem I had.
Dizzy is also one of my favorite, I really like the front side, the back side…hm maybe I prefer panties more -_-
Panties! The odd thing is, I thought Dizzy wears a black thong, but now that I look at her design, she wears her panties over her black dress, so there’d be no way for her to get them up over her tail unless they weren’t actually connected in the back. Most curious. Also curious is why this phenomenon hasn’t gotten the level of discussion that Noel’s undergarments have.
She is a bit chunky for my liking, I like my anime characters slimline but with nice curves and I’m not entirely sure what is going on in terms of the belly and waist on the front side of this cover.
I have a few covers from Evening Call (TID) and HOP now and I have to admit that when I am spending 12,000+yen I really have to like a cover to order it (money is just too tight at the moment – pretty much need to replace everything at once at the moment – need a car, new pc, new phone, new clothes etc etc) – the reverse on this is good but the front would put me off. Think this is the reason I also skipped a couple of Selvaria covers (think it was HOP’s and maybe EC’s if they did one) despite the fact that she remains one of my favourite characters from any game.
Have a couple of more generously proportioned, but think my favourite is still the TID Kurisu Makise.
Going forward, I do like the look of this cover though:
http://eveningcall.net/InformationDetail.aspx?NewsId=179
Have yet to run a translation to work out who the character is though.
Yeah, I’ll be honest, I would’ve preferred her looking a little skinner, too. Dizzy seems to be one of those characters where people draw her in all kinds of different styles; the Queen’s Gate book made her look really young, Alter’s figure made her look really slim, the official game art makes her look older (and the in-game sprites do make her look a bit chunky compared to the illustrations), and fan artists, of course, do whatever they want with her design.
Ouch, yeah, if I needed to buy a bunch of stuff at once, dakimakura covers (and probably figures) would go to the bottom of the spending list. And I’d probably start hocking stuff. Which I need to do already, since I’ve got maybe a half dozen figures or so I’d really like to get rid of to free up space and pay off Azone Saber this summer.
That’s Zessica! I even linked that pillowcase in the post! :O Yeah, it’s a really nice pillowcase, that one and Mikono. I wonder if their show gets any better after the first episode?
You know I can’t handle the wordy bits! When I finish work my attention span drops to that of a goldfish!
My mouth just opens and closes occasionally and I sorta go “gloop-gloop”.
Maybe you could opt for a minimally wordy version so that those of us with mental impairments can just admire the pretty pictures!
Ahhhh! After I put in all that effort writing out these words. While watching basketball. Heh, yeah, I don’t really expect people to read what I write. I think a minimally wordy version would thus be superfluous.
I like reading everything. It makes the next pictures a surprise.
Nice review of this cover. I like the backside much more than the front side. Her belly on the front side just looks funny to me. You can tell she is a little more plump on the reverse, but I am totally fine with that.
I love seeing these dakimakura reviews mixed in with the figure reviews.
I’ve got a bunch more (more or less) ready! Got two Horizon Ariadust pillowcases, one of Nanoha, and I guess I need to photograph the other Renai Saimin girl someday. I’ll probably have to get those Horizon ones posted soon, seeing as how the anime is starting up again this summer.
Thats quite pretty, the illustration is so nice with it’s details on body and clothes.
I somehow like what they did with her belly, it’s flabby, but still on an attractive level.
In real life I actually would prefer something more slim, but anime can even make chubby girls attractive for me. Or maybe Dizzy is out of shape after giving in to lust XD
I actually thought that her lizard tail would be attached further below, but that’s probably just the artists adaption of the Dizzy character.
She could be! Maybe she’s a bit flabby since she doesn’t do a lot of her own fighting, too; she tends to let her wings, tail, and her trusty chompy laser fish do her scrapping for her.
What! There’s a Bridget daikamura?! Is it accurate (as in a man) or an alternative world where she’s a she?
There is! It is indeed accurate. Though it doesn’t really show a whole lot, I guess. Which could be a good or bad thing depending on what one is wanting. Anyway, if anyone is curious about it, it looks like this.
My “wood” just shattered. Lol!Thanks Tier.
I am glad to have been of assistance!
>> willowywicca
That does sound quite a bit like the X-Men, or at least the X-Men of my youth. I don’t follow comics that much these days but I hear that the X-Men are now hiding out in San Francisco. And they have vampires or somesuch. Back in the day though, it was more about them fighting other mutants with wacky powers, and the powers got wackier as time went on. I’ve always thought that that sort of fighting anime and American comics weren’t that different. Spider-Man and magical girl anime have quite a few common themes, despite being worlds apart in tone and design.
I have not read Bakemonogatari so I wouldn’t say that I’d have any expectations on the part of the author. Or seen the anime, either. I was never as big a manga reader as I was a fan of American comics, and since Tokyopop went under I don’t read much manga anymore. It sounds like the Medaka Box manga is going to be a lot better than the anime, though, since from what I can tell, the anime series isn’t going anywhere. That’s really too bad since I’m always down for watching an anime with at least one cute girl throwing down with superpowers.
>> Shashin
That sounds like a good deal, then. It’s particularly good since I probably have more pillowcases from them than any other circle. I know that TID has visited this site at least once before and while I really doubt he’s spent any time reading anything here, if he’s got any plans to make a Fate T. Harlaown pillowcase, he’s got at least one guaranteed sale.
Yeah, I’d share the same sentiments regarding Fate/zero. The production values are pretty high at certain points (and really low at others, I remember watching the penultimate episode of the first season and thinking they must’ve been running out of budget because it looked terrible) and I appreciate how they’re taking a more mature approach to storytelling, but I don’t think it’s a great show. I had thought about writing a review post last season but I couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm to do it. I’m still planning on doing one for Guilty Crown, though.
I think I still have more AnkoKoubou covers than anything, but I’d have to run up a tally of the numbers to know for sure. Think I’ve ordered about 10 directly from Evening Call’s site thus far, I think I already owned 7, and I know I have one or two others still waiting at SMJ, but I’d have to go through all their items to get an exact total of how many I have. They’re almost certainly the circle I own the second most of, though. And they’re quite likely to overtake sooner than later. As far as circles go, I’d have to say they’re my favorite. Anko is probably my favorite artist overall, but Evening Call just puts out so many good products from varied artists. Speaking of AnkoKoubou, here’s their newest offering:
http://sadpanda.us/images/978755-1SHW8K9.jpg
He has? That’s awesome. He’s certainly pretty high up there when it comes to my favorite artists, and I’d also probably buy a Fate case if he did one. In the worst case scenario, I guess you could start buying up Evening Call covers and then request Fate with your level 5 reward.
Yep, the darker tone is a nice touch to the show and I’m surprised by how graphic it can be at times. I guess it’s not that surprising considering how F/SN visual novel was at points, but I guess I just wasn’t expecting it in the anime. I enjoy watching it weekly, more or less, but I could do without it just as well.
That pillowcase is awesome; I have a big thing for bridal veils so I really like that one. Maybe I should pick up one of their pillowcases if I come across one I like, I know I’ve seen lots of pictures of the ones you own and they all look great. I forget though, did you own the Fate Testarossa wedding dress one? I do remember you’ve got Nanoha but I don’t remember if you have Fate.
Yeah, he’s come across this site though I think he was just poking through his referrer logs on Statcounter. Yeah, that’s definitely a possibility too, though I guess if I were to commission a pillowcase, I’d probably ask for another Dizzy, or one of Senhime (Sengoku Rance one) or Kyoko Kusaka from Zanjibaru.
I must admit I haven’t seen Fate/zero in months; in fact, I still haven’t seen the final episode of the previous season, which is where I’m at now. I guess I should pick it back up, before the summer season starts, since there’s definitely a few series I’m interested in then. I don’t really got much else to watch right now other than basketball and the Game of Thrones Blu-ray box, anyway.
Their stuff is all high quality. I don’t think I’ve purchased one that I haven’t liked yet, though there have been a few disappointments. The Fate cover I own was actually one of those; I purchased it after I had already owned a few of their covers and it was far less explicit than the others I owned. Looking back on it now, it was a pretty good cover, but I guess my expectations were just so hyped up due to prior experience. It’s a similar case with their Shana cover I bought; not a bad cover by any means, but it remains to this day the most experience cover I’ve purchased (at 42.5k.)
I do own one of their fate covers, but not the wedding dress version. Pretty sure I had uploaded a few shots of it before, but here it is again: http://sadpanda.us/images/987692-2KW5X75.jpg
Probably, but it would be fairly cool if he checked out this site every now and again. I know it’s a long way out, but I’m still trying to think of which character I would do. I’ve had thoughts of Dizzy, maybe Ayane (from DoA), and several other characters. But I haven’t come up with anything solid yet. On a related topic, I’m assuming it would be done by TID, but it would be interesting if you had a choice of artist (within reason.)
Ah, okay, thanks for that; I remember you had at least one of their Fate pillowcases but I couldn’t remember which. Pictures of their pillowcases are sorta difficult to come by.
As nice it is to think about having a custom-made pillowcase, I’m sorta thinking it’d be cheaper in the long run to just commission a good artist to draw an image and get a custom dakimakura cover made. Or to just learn to draw myself; I figure I could learn to draw anime-style stuff passably well in the several years or so it would take to build up enough points.
Yeah, it’s definitely a pain in the ass. I’d say about half of the covers I bought from them, I had nothing but the face shot to go off of. The other half I was able to find reviews of varying quality or low resolution sample shots, but something is certainly better than nothing in that regard. It’s definitely why I’ve always tried to help someone out if I had a cover they wanted to see.
That’s definitely true and I can see it making more sense for you or others where dakimakura collecting isn’t the primary focus. But it’s what I enjoy collecting most, and Evening Call is likely to continue pumping out really high quality products which are easy to order. So I’d say I’ll probably end up hitting level 5 sooner than later (though admittedly, it should still take some time to do so.) Commissioning a quality artist or drawing yourself is an interesting idea though, and both would certainly be worth looking into.
Here’s a thrown together shot of my latest from Evening Call: http://sadpanda.us/images/989813-FZMXC9P.jpg
Hmm, if you like Bridal Veils perhaps you’ll like this one of Kanu:
http://www.figure.fm/post/en/39872/Dakimakura+Collection+31.html
It’s currently getting a resale until June 19th from http://www.e-nexton.com/index.php?ctrl=sheet&code=193
Ah, cool, thanks for that; it’s definitely very nice. One of the big reasons I preordered Hiroshi Aizawa’s Slave Bride pillowcase was because of the theme, though I might actually like the naked apron side better.
I like the second one too; I’m assuming it’s by Tsurugi Hagane, I like his artwork a lot. I wound up buying some Moe Moe Encyclopedia off of Amazon JP a while back just because he drew the cover.
I’m not familiar with the artist for the second one but google translate is giving it ( 蔓木鋼音 ) the pronounciation of his name as Tsurugi-kÅ-on which probably means you’re correct in your assumption! Definitely do like the art style, I saw it mixed in among some random sankakucomplex posting about dakimakura covers and thought “wow I really like that” and then had to trace it down from that (I could see the Dengeki Hime logo in the picture, which thankfully narrowed down my search quite a bit). Then after a couple of months of checking YJA/mandarake it popped up on mandarake one day.
>> Shashin
Yeah, I’ve had some luck finding some pictures of their older cases using Google, but I have the sense that they have a much larger catalog that I’m not aware of.
Dakimakura cover collecting definitely takes a secondary role in my collection, and I suppose that there’s also a question of practicality; not on the part of individual cases, but on owning several hundred or more. I’m already finding it difficult to store them and I’m not sure what I would do with several hundred pillowcases.
On an unrelated note, I’m not all that impressed by the official Guilty Crown pillowcases. I was curious to see what they would look like, since I like the anime designs a lot and none of the doujin-made ones mimic those designs, but now I’m kinda wondering if maybe I should’ve gotten Evening Call’s Inori. Though my general apathy for the character and distaste for the series kinda militates against me feeling regrets.
I’d be really interested to know how many covers they’ve put out. I’ve also had a bit of luck finding some samples of older covers or a face shot at the very least, but even then I’d find it pretty likely that there are some I haven’t seen at all. Like there’s a a cover of that pink-haired girl from ToHeart on YJA – the art style definitely matches Anko’s work, but I had never even had a hint that it existed until it first popped up on YJA like six months ago (and still hasn’t sold at the 40/50k pricing.) There are several other covers I’ve seen on/off over the years, some of which I’ve even managed to add to my collection; the most recent “rare” one I added was from Zoids. At this point, I think I have over 20 items from them in my collection, but I have no idea how close my collection is to complete.
That’s very true, though the same could be said with figures to an extent. Unless you have them all out on display, I’d imagine that several hundred figures would become fairly hard to store, possibly even more so if you kept a good number sealed in their boxes. I have no idea what I’ll do with my collection, especially if I ever reach a point in my life where I can’t keep them/grow tired of them. I have some thoughts of a massive bulk auction on YJA, but who knows how that would turn out. I do think if it ever got to that point, the price I could fetch (assuming someone wanted to buy that many covers – or I guess I could split them into circles and such) would be worth the hassle of the language/shipping barriers.
Heh, wasn’t even aware that there were going to be Guilty Crown cases, though I guess it isn’t at all surprising. I definitely do agree though; I wouldn’t touch them with a ten foot pole. The images used aren’t necessarily bad, but they definitely are a bit lacking and the sample images hint that their proportions will be weird. Honestly, that seems to be my biggest complaint with the mass produced dakimakura covers; the characters usually don’t use the full length of space. So on a 150 cm cover, they may take up 120ish or so.
I still want the Evening Call Inori cover, and after I pay off some SMJ invoices (I need to pay down my second Marks order… wonder how hard it would be to sell my spare Sena covers) there isn’t really that much I want preorder wise – some Evening Call stuff, and a couple of other random covers, but if I’m not blowing a ton on auctions I could possibly pick up some more Evening Call items if they still have stock in a month or so. Inori would be pretty high on that list of their current stock items. And as far as Guilty Crown merchandise goes, I really do like my HOP Tsugumi cover I received recently.
I do actually have the vast majority of my figure collection on display; I haven’t put that many back in their boxes and those that I have are the ones I am most willing to part with on eBay. For me, the difference is just that; I display most of my figures and store most of my pillowcases. I’ve technically only got one pillowcase in active use, which is the one that’s on my pillow body.
That said, my dakimakura collection is about as useful and practical as my basketball card collection, and I really did love collecting basketball cards, up until they got too expensive for my weekly allowance.
I liked the HOP Tsugumi a lot as well, though I quite disliked the character and the faux animal ears so it wasn’t one that I was interested in buying for myself. I’m kinda hoping the artist does one of Inori, though.
Makes sense, then. I don’t really have the room to display either figures or dakimakura covers. I guess I could probably rig up some extra clothespins and hang them up on all the wall space, but that seems a bit excessive. I have Dizzy sitting on my desk, and could probably fit one or two more figures if I really wanted to, but Dizzy looks fine by herself… and she attracts a lot more dust than she would boxed. D:
Yeah, I know that since I don’t actually use any of mine that they’re about as useful as a collectible card collection, but I really do like the collecting aspect of it… even if they’re infinitely more expensive than trading cards ever were.
On another note, this would be really tempting if I had the money/found some people to go in with and the covers weren’t in various states of use (the translation doesn’t sound very promising in that regard…): http://page13.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/r90580100
None of the Guilty Crown characters were particularly likable, except for maybe Scarface, but Tsugumi was probably my favorite of the heroines. I know you hate animal ears and they really aren’t my thing, but every other aspect of the cover really makes it up for me. It’s a shame I didn’t really care for the Ask Ayase cover; I wouldn’t mind picking one up of her, either.
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Dakimakura covers aren’t actually that much more expensive than sports cards; looking around, it looks like a relatively recent box of cards might go for about $80 or so, which is obscene. Though I’m not really sure if companies still make sports cards or not. It’s like all my childhood hobbies are ridiculously more expensive now; I remember getting Genesis games for $35 at the PX, and now a new Xbox game runs $60. I used to have this dream of building a gigantic Lego castle that would take up an entire room, and now that I’m in a position to be able to do that, I can barely afford even a single Lego castle.
That’s a very nice collection that guy is hocking; I wonder if that’s a “just got married and need to get rid of these” sort of auction.
Scarface was the man; well, as far as any of the show’s characters went, anyway. At least he was more interesting than just about everyone else. I’m gonna have to put the episodes on a flash drive and scan through them at work so I can get that post written already.
>> willowywicca
It’s always cool when you randomly come across something that you’ve been looking for after hunting it down for a while. I first saw his artwork on Danbooru, but I probably know him best for designing Mirim for the Queen’s Blade Rebellion series. He does a lot of warrior-girl-in-chainmail-bikini sort of art and I’m a big fan of that sort of trope.
Ah I do quite like Mirim’s design, and she’s probably my favourite character in the current queen’s blade rebellion anime series, since who wouldn’t like a girl who has vibrating crystals on her crotch that make her weak in the knees (to put it mildly) while fighting ;< Not that she has much competition, it's pretty bad overall but I watched all of Queens Blade 1 and 2 (due to Airi/Kanae Itou) so why stop now! :p
Indeed! I am well behind on every anime series this season, probably because I’m not very interested in most of this season’s series, but I do mean to catch up on Queen’s Blade sometime. It didn’t seem like many (or any) groups were subtitling it so I’ve only seen the first episode, I think. Still waiting for an Irma figure, too <.<
I was goolging around looking for Dizzy’s porn.
Interesting to see this old English review of the dakimakura.
I have the very same dakimakura too, but it aged, and I had the urge to get a new one.
Since Evening Call ceased its activities in 2019, I personally contacted Ouma Tokiichi last year, and had the honor to commision a new Dizzy dakimakura earlier this year.
I then hired Fules to print a minimal batch.
I still have a few copies in hand, should you interested in it, drop me an e-mail.
This is something I’d definitely be interested in seeing, if you’re willing to share, at the very least.