When I wrote my first dakimakura review, I mumbled something about wanting the raunchiest one I could find. And yeah, the Tony one is pretty explicit, as are many things based on Tony’s art. My newest pillowcase – my seventh dakimakura – however, stands far apart from my other ones in terms of salaciousness. Compared to it, Tony Taka’s dakimakura are as mild and inoffensive as 3-2-1 Contact.

I got clued in to Illust Guerrilla‘s work by Shashin. They seem to be mainly a dakimakura-making circle, with the illustrations being done by an artist by the name of NAKA, and they have a bunch up for display on their website, including one of Sheryl Nome, one of Nanoha and Fate both looking very young, and one with one of the Touhou girls. I’m not sure which one it is, but it says “Master Spark,” which I assume will mean something to Touhou fans. They’ve also made a few pillowcases with original characters, such as this one.

The two girls on this pillowcase are Nagomi on the left and Sono on the right. Running the item description through an auto-translator indicates that Nagomi is the bookworm type while Sono is the athletic type and is 10 minutes younger than her twin.

This pillowcase was sold in four different materials. The least expensive is called Vera SK Satin Suede, although I’m assuming it’s made out of polyester like most dakimakura. The next most expensive is called smooth knit, and I assume that it’s less rough to the touch than the cheapest pillowcase. Next up is the one I have, made of a material called Roica. This is a spandex material manufactured by Asahi Kasei, a Japanese chemical engineering corporation. This version is a two-way stretch fabric; it stretches vertically but not so much horizontally. The most expensive is two-way tricot. This pillowcase is over five feet long, making illustrations even more impressive in real life.

They’re sort of dressed on this side, other than the panties that they are holding. Those skirts are really short, though; I’m not sure they’d be covered up even if they put on their underwear.

And here’s the other side of the pillowcase. I think it’s really cute how they’re tied together at the ankle and how Nagomi has Sono’s panties hooked with her toes.

The twins seem to be in a very amorous mood here.

CLICK IT. THIS, I COMMAND!

Oh my. They might want to put a towel under them or something.

And here’s what it looks like on a hugging pillow. The material is really stretchy – no surprise since it’s basically spandex – and it feels a bit thin, and sometimes I worry that it might tear. Then again … it’s spandex, it’s supposed to stretch, so I’m probably worried for no reason. Anyway, this is a fantastic pillowcase, and I’m really happy with it. I mean, you get two girls on each side, you get lesbians, you get twincest, you get an anatomy lesson, how awesome is that?

Up to the tizzop

As expensive as dakimakura are – for rectangular pieces of fabric with a picture printed on them, anyway – I keep buying them. Here we have one of the main character of Kämpfer, and also probably the closest that this site is going to get to featuring a review of a hobby item with a dude.

At first glance, Kämpfer appears to be about teenaged battlers duking it out in a struggle for secondary school supremacy, but it rapidly evolves into a romantic comedy in which fisticuffs serve only an ancillary role. The center of attention and affections is protagonist Natsuru Senou, a young man who awakens one day to find himself turned into a girl. If this were an American show, it would have spent half of the first season explaining exactly how and why it happened but as it is, the first episode spends scarcely more than a few sentences on Natsuru’s mysterious transformation.

In addition to the biological concerns concomitant with a nonconsensual genderswap, Natsuru has to contend with a horde of amorous suitors, as it appears that the entire female student body of his school is homosexual or bisexual. He – she – is rapidly subdued and pimped out in various student activities, and while he’s – she’s – doing this, Natsuru has to fend off the advances of the main cast while trying to score with Kaede Sakura, with whom he is smitten.

Sakura is one of the school idols, and she falls in love with Natsuru. Unfortunately, it’s the female Natsuru she falls in love with and she – and everyone else – does not seem to realize that the female and male Natsurus – who go by the same name – are the same person.

Joining Sakura in her pursuit of the female Natsuru is Akane Mishima. Normally a meek, bespectacled girl who works in the school library, she transforms into a foul-tempered, foul-mouthed, gunslinging fireball.

Shizuku Sango is the student council president. Seductive, measured, and elegant, she sets her sights on Natsuru, twisting him around her finger and taking what she wants without asking, making her perhaps the coolest character in the show.

The last girl is Mikoto Kondo, Natsuru’s worldly childhood friend. She’s the last of the main cast to be introduced and the show tries to play up the mystery of her identity, but she sends postcards to Natsuru through all the early episodes and shows up in the ending and opening sequences from the start, rendering the innuendo rather pointless.

This dakimakura is from Chara-High, who’ve also made dakimakura of Shizuku and Akane. It’s 150 centimeters by 50 centimeters in size and is made of polyester. It feels like many of the other dakimakura I have, or the tablecloth I sometimes use as a photo backdrop. If you’ve got any polyester garments, I suppose you know how this pillowcase feels.

Being that pillowcases aren’t all that complicated, whether one likes a particular dakimakura is really going to be a referendum on whether one likes the images printed on them and I certainly very much like the pictures presented here. I prefer dakimakura that feature a front and back view of a particular character, but that sort of design doesn’t seem to be that common; instead, many dakimakura show a character in different clothing or in a state of undress on the reverse side. That’s one of the reasons I like this pillowcase of Natsuru a lot, since I gotta say, he’s got a great ass.

Lots of fetishes being nailed here … maid hat, garter belt, striped underpants, toplessness … good stuff all around.

Anyway, this is a great pillowcase, a bit showy but not overly so. However, I’ve got another dakimakura in the mail, one that is almost ineffable in its explicitness. Stay tuned!

Up to the tizzop

Back before I started this blog, there was nothing I wanted more than a dakimakura cover. I was elated when I got my first one, and while I got a second one in short order, I figured that I wouldn’t get many more; after all, dakimakura are some of the most impractical things to buy in this hobby. The pillow is too big to keep on my bed, I can’t actually hold it since I don’t want to get it all funky, they’re too expensive to hang on the wall, and owning even one outs you as a hardcore anime freak. Nonetheless, they keep coming out and I keep buying them, and here I have dakimakura number five.

Mafuyu Orifushi is one of the stars of the h-game and anime OVA Kanojo x Kanojo x Kanojo. The character designs were done by well-known artist Happoubi Jin, whose artwork also provided the inspiration for Orchid Seed’s Hustler figure. Mafuyu is the youngest of the three sisters and while she is a blonde, her sisters are a redhead and purplehead. There is something obviously very strange going on with their family’s genetics.

When it comes to romantic relationships, flatchested twintail girls seem to often assume one of two roles: the whiny tsundere type or the dominating, predatory feline type. Katja from Seikon no Qwaser – the greatest anime of all time – is a recent example of the latter, and Mafuyu seems to belong in that category as well. In the anime, Mafuyu is depicted as being rather conniving and mischievous, opening the first episode with a practical joke played for her own amusement at the expense of her sister Akina’s modesty. She also rapidly asserts control over the male lead in her one sex scene. Unfortunately, she doesn’t get a lot of screen time due to the anime’s need to squeeze in scenes with all three girls in the show’s half-hour duration. Perhaps there will be a followup that gives her a bit more time in the limelight.

I haven’t played the h-game but looking at the CGs, she seems to get as good as she dishes out there.

She seems to be something of a bookworm, as she’s often drawn carrying a little book around with her. She also seems to be fond of dressing up in maid outfits.

Regarding the pillowcase, everything I’ve ever written about my other dakimakura applies here. It’s soft and rather stretchy and it fits snugly on my pillow, which is the same cheap Bed Bath & Beyond body pillow that I’ve always used. It’s a bit too long for that pillow so about six inches of the cover drapes off at the end, but that doesn’t bother me too much since there’s some blank space at the bottom of the pillowcase anyway.

Omega Star is the company that developed the h-game and they’re also credited with producing this dakimakura, which is a bit odd since it seems that specialist hobby companies like Cospa or Matching World often handle the production of licensed pillowcases. I guess Omega Star wanted to handle this in-house.

One nice thing about this dakimakura is that it wasn’t all creased like my other pillowcases. It looks great right out of the plastic bag.

And here’s the side everyone wants to see. Oh the shame.

She looks kind of like, hmm, like she’s enjoying something. Or that she wants something.

I’m sort of assuming that if Funimation can release an uncensored copy of Strike Witches – along with sticking a picture of a topless Yoshika on the back of the box beside this charming picture, that I’m going to be okay here. Just in case, though, I’m backing up this site right after I finish this post.

A lot of the artwork shows Mafuyu in striped stockings but she’s gone with nice, simple white socks here.

Here’s how Mafuyu looks stuffed with a pillow.

And the other side. Anyway, I suppose there’s not really a lot to say about the pillowcase; it looks great, the colors are bright, it’s soft and stretchy, and the images are really nice. The two other sisters have also received pillowcases and they’re out now, so if you’re interested in picking up one or all three, you can check out Amiami’s dakimakura selection. Also, for Happoubi Jin fans, Orchid Seed is doing another figure derived from his Sweet Body artbook. It’s looking great and I can’t wait to see the painted version.

Up to the tizzop

I’ve got a backlog of figures to photograph, but I ran out of plaster cloth, so figure reviews are going to have to wait for a bit. In the meantime, let’s look at this pillowcase. Featured here is Ikkitousen’s it-girl Kanu Uncho on what is, to my knowledge, her fourth dakimakura. This one comes from Ensky, whom I’ve never heard of, and seems to have been exclusive to Hobby Search.

There are two versions of this dakimakura, a more expensive version that seems to be made of presumably-stretchy tricot material, and a cheaper version that is not. I’ve got the cheap one here and the material is indeed not all that stretchy; getting the pillow into the pillowcase took a bit of time, as is usual for these things.

I’ve not seen the original illustrations anywhere other than on Hobby Search’s site. I wonder if larger images will show up somewhere.

Thematically, this dakimakura has some similarities to this older pillowcase. That dakimakura shows Kanu looking a bit peeved, while this one presents her as rather shy.

I’m not sure what material this dakimakura is made of; Hobby Search’s item listing just says “smooth knit,” and true to their word, it does feel quite smooth and soft. I’m not sure if that’s due to the material itself or its thinness; it feels a bit wispier than my other pillowcases. One other thing I noticed is that this pillowcase doesn’t have the creases that my other pillowcases had.

Of course, the main attraction for any dakimakura are the images. On one side Kanu is shown in her midriff-baring Seito school uniform, while the other side has Kanu basically unclad.

The print quality is pretty good; it’s quite sharp, the colors look nice although it looks to me like they turned the contrast control up a bit too much. It could just be me, though.

I’ve got the feeling that this side will be much more popular than the reverse.

I guess there’s not a lot more to say about this dakimakura; it’s Kanu, it’s a pillowcase, everyone knows who Kanu is and everyone knows what a pillowcase feels like. Not much more to it than that.

(Edit: it seems that the following pillow listed on RightStuf is in fact a different item than a regular dakimakura case, as it is listed as being 13.5 x 42 inches in size, which is slightly smaller than a typical dakimakura. I’m going to leave my following comments here so that my cluelessness can be viewed for posterity.)

I did notice a bit of an odd thing while looking through the RightStuf catalog: they’ve got this Yoko dakimakura listed for $30. It’s the same one I reviewed, except I paid a hundred bucks to get mine from Hobby Search. How strange is that? I didn’t even know Great Eastern brought pillowcases over here.

Up to the tizzop

With two dakimakura in my possession but only one body pillow, I don’t really need any more pillowcases. When I saw that Itsuki was going to be the star of her very own dakimakura though, I had to have it. Itsuki is my favorite character of my favorite anime series in the past few years (not saying much, as I haven’t watched much anime in the past few years). I have this thing for duty-minded, socially inept characters (I wonder if there’s a Japanese phrase for this archetype?). Itsuki’s dakimakura came a few days ago. How did it turn out?

Pretty much like Yoko, which I suppose is no surprise, as they’re both made by Cospa. One side depicts Itsuki in her field uniform (technically her piloting uniform but she often ends up in it for obvious reasons), her face displaying ambivalent consternation.

The reverse side has her dressed up as her alter ego Mutsumi Shimoyama, the covert operations alias she assumes when infiltrating a high school. Curiously, she is wearing a garden-grade brassiere here, whereas she wore a sarashi in one of the series’ early episodes. She also evinces grave indignity here. Itsuki is a rather reserved girl, perhaps she feels more free to express herself when she is not herself.

I would’ve preferred a front-and-back view of Itsuki in her Q-tector suit like the Yoko pillowcase, but this ain’t bad.

The pillowcase is made of 100% polyester. The images are clear, sharp and bright. The texture is smooth, although it’s noticeably rougher than my Taka Tony dakimakura. I’m trying to think of something to compare it to; I suppose it feels a bit like the red tablecloth I’ve used as a backdrop in some of my figure pictures (not surprising, as looking at that tablecloth’s label, I learn that it is 43% polyester).

Anyway, Itsuki looks great and this is a great, great item. Made greater by Itsuki’s presence, of course. Good Smile Company needs to roll out her figure already.

The camera just sort of points itself at these sorts of things sometimes, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

These things too.

Maybe I ought to get some more pillow bodies so I can display my dakimakura in all their glory. Yoko’s looking a bit flaccid here.

Up to the tizzop

Much to my dismay, most of my preorders for May have become preorders for June, so instead of photographing the figures in my backlog (which would require me to clean off my desk and set up my lights), I think I will do a review of my Yoko dakimakura. Made by Cospa, there’s already a good review of it on Ota Desho so I’ll keep this short.

I’ve written a review of my Taka Tony dakimakura (NSFW) but Yoko was actually the first pillowcase I bought, sometime back in January. I promised myself last year that when I started working, I’d get myself a dakimakura and I keep my promises. The ones I make to myself, that is.

The material is similar to the Taka Tony pillowcase but it isn’t quite as lustrous. The printing is bright, sharp, and undoubtedly pleasing to the eye.

Five-foot tall pillowcases don’t really stand up well by themselves, as one can see by the evident sagging. Unlike my other pillowcase, this one isn’t noticeably creased, even though it’s spent several months folded up in a drawer.

Some dakimakura show a frontal view of a character on one side and a more scantily-clad front view of the subject on the reverse side. I prefer this style instead, where you get front and rear views of a character.

I wonder why her scarf has a zipper?

I wonder if her belt helps hold her pants up?

Cospa’s printed off like three production runs of this dakimakura, and they seem to be gearing up to release another one next month. It’s not hard to guess why, as this pillowcase looks outstanding.

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This post is so very, very, very unsafe for work, school, or public areas.

Dakimakura tend to invoke a universal set of responses, usually something like, “omfg i cant believe u bought one.” It doesn’t really matter if the image printed on the pillowcase is innocuous or innocent or not pornographic in the least; the very idea of owning a pillowcase meant to sheathe a holding pillow is, to some people, completely alien.

That meant that when I decided to buy one, I went for the raunchiest one I could find. This one definitely qualifies as raunchy, to say the least.

Originally sold at Comiket 75 last December, I got this pillowcase from Tora no Ana via Masato’s M-World Service. The design is by well-known artist Tony Taka. Being unfamiliar with Clannad, I thought that these girls might be from that series as it was the theme of Tony’s C75 doujinshi, and while they look superficially like them, I’m not sure I can identify the brown-haired girls.

The pillowcase came folded up and I’m not sure how to remove the creases. Perhaps they’ll go away over time.

I don’t know all that much about textiles so I’m not certain what material the pillowcase is made of. I’m not sure if it is evident in the photos but it has a pearlescent luster and it definitely feels synthetic to the touch. I think a lot of dakimakura are made of polyester so I’d guess this one is as well.

Maybe I should have gotten a dictionary or something heavy and tried to flatten out the creases.

Taking pictures of something this large was actually quite difficult. As I haven’t vacuumed my floor in a couple of weeks, I put a towel down to keep dirt and dust and crumbs off of my pillowcase.

Definitely should have made an attempt to flatten out the creases. Unfortunately I don’t have the space right now to keep a body pillow around, but then again, I might try to create some space because this is a really, really cool pillowcase.

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