Time for more pillowcase show-and-tell. This one comes from Carnelian, surely one of the most famous illustrators in the anime world. She’s a veteran artist, having been around as long as I’ve been on the internet, which goes back to the mid-90s, but although she’s quite well-known, she’s never had the sort of commercial stature of someone like Tony Taka or even newer artists like redjuice or Huke. She’s contributed character designs to just a couple of mainstream anime – Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito probably being the most prominent – though H-anime fans will also remember her work in Moonlight Lady. Instead, her work is much more visible in the doujin community, where she is very active. In particular, there are a number of dakimakura covers featuring her art; this particular one was released last summer during Comiket 80 and depicts an original character named Lucrezia.
This dakimakura cover is, like many doujin pillowcases, made of two-way tricot – a smooth and stretchy lycra fabric – and measures 160 centimeters in length and 50 centimeters in width. It features front and rear views of the character, which is the scheme I like most when it comes to dakimakura covers. This side shows Lucrezia with a calm, imperturbed expression, wearing an attractive black dress with one arm curiously cuffed to her thigh.
Close up of those cuffs and some other stuff.
I really like the shading on her stockings; it gives them a kind of satin-like appearance that goes well with the rest of her otfit.
The reverse side is quite a bit raunchier, with all her naughty parts out for admiration.
Very nice detail in the cuffs. The tradeoff is not a lot of detail in her anatomical parts, I suppose. Some circles delight in providing exquisite detail there, like Illust Guerrilla did, but this is a more tasteful treatment. As far as an explicit dakimakura cover can be considered tasteful, anyway.
I quite like this pillowcase – in fact, it might be one of my two or three favorite pillowcases in my collection. It’s got several themes that I like, and the artwork is very beautiful, as much of Carnelian’s art is.
Though she’s created a lot of doujin work sold at Comiket, she’s also done some commercial work recently, including artwork for the Muv-Luv Alternative spinoff Schwarzesmarken. That series appears to be a story set in divided Germany, featuring lead character Katja Waldheim and her CO Irisdina Bernhard. As of yet, few of her character designs have received figure adaptations, though given that the last figure based on her art doesn’t sound like it turned out all that great, maybe that’s for the best.
If I could have a NSFW dakimakura, this would definitely be one I’d want. A nice Saber Alter would beat it out, but this would be one of the top ones.
Evening Call has a nice Saber Alter! Maybe you could negotiate something with the powers that be? One can hardly imagine a pillowcase injuring anybody.
Made a deal with the powers that be a few weeks ago. Yes I can have one if I want, no nudity though as our house will be frequented by family once we move. She figures its bad enough they’ll see dolls in various states of undressed. So no NSFW figures, scrolls or daki for now.
WTF family. Will your family love you any less if they see you in the company of a skillfully-illustrated pillowcase? They couldn’t possibly be that shallow, could they? I mean, I know people are weird and all in Texas but I would imagine that they will accept you for who you are. And if they don’t, isn’t it mandatory for all Texans to own guns?
We’re moving back to FL. Where they are much less liberal about gun control and a lot stricter about having children around questionable material. And we’ll have said small children over often so its a risk vs reward situation. Good art should still be viewed though, which I plan on doing with a scrap laptop turning it into a large digital photo frame.
I have been a fan of Carnelian’s work since the mid 90s, good acquisition!
Thanks!
Quite pretty indeed, though the explicit nature of the vast majority of dakis still upsets me. I’ve been looking for some more but every single one I like the A side of has some obscene B side, which, not only being illegal to import, isn’t really my taste anyway. I don’t want porn in my bed; I have a computer for that. I don’t want to grind my pillows or any such, I just want pretty decorative coverings for them.
Unfortunately ero sides make them distasteful more often than not. 🙁 I need to find a circle (or some) that does SFW covers with the quality of this bunch; http://dakemakura.com/touhoumokuji.html (or pick anime or LN or whatever source, I just fancy Touhou due to many kemonomimi, as you know).
Two of my dakis do have ero sides, so I can’t say I’m completely adverse to them, but they were risky enough to import as is. I can do without a $25,000 fine and/or six months in jail, I think. Absurd laws are absurd, especially when it comes to 2D, pure fiction/fantasy.
I envy people who can just collect anything and everything. ;.; Though really, I just don’t find most ero sides on dakis tasteful anyway; I’m fine with tasteful nudes eg laying in bed with no clothes on, I’m not keen on slutty stuff.
I wish you luck in your search! XD Curiously, a number of pillowcases I’m planning or thinking about ordering are about as risque as a typical televised anime show. I need more ero pillowcases. On an unrelated note, I’ve got a friend who’s a big LeBron James fan, and I’ve been thinking of getting him a custom-made LBJ dakimakura cover. Would that not be a fantastic gift?
You can get custom dakis made at the major bootleggers, not sure about official circles. If you have high res images and crop them to the size/ratios etc they’ll print ’em up. Could be a good gift idea, particularly as a gag gift (like giving someone an inflatable sheep sex toy, which my brother did for his best friend’s bday many years ago to his mother’s horror).
Haha, your family is awesome XD That must have been a great party and a great day for your brother’s friend.
I didn’t know explicit daki’s were illegal to import…
Are they really? I thought of it as just buying another pillowcase, why would it be illegal?
Quote didn’t go through^
Australia bans the import of any explicit material, and 2D is just as good as 3D according to the law — at least some recognition happens, anyway, even if it’s for entirely wrong reasons.
Very nice case; I might have to pick it up for myself.
I have a handful of Carnelian cases off the top of my head, and I believe every one of them that had an exposed lower region was of a similar style. It suits me just fine for the most part (though I do love my IG and Ankokoubou cases), and is certainly better than the careless censoring like a smooth region or even mosaic.
Yeah, Barbie doll anatomy looks really silly. There was this one pillowcase featuring Happoubi Jin’s art of a character from Classy Cranberry’s (or some H-game like that) that looked fantastic, except she had a smoothed-over crotch, and that wrecked my interest in that pillowcase. Really a big shame because I dig Happoubi Jin’s art.
That is a really beautiful cover. I don’t mind having nude sides, as long as they’re done tastefully as you said. Most doujin dakimakura covers are only sold at cons or only have Japanese websites that only ship in Japan though, so I can’t get many of the ones I want =(
You can! You just need to use a proxy service which will increase the cost to you a moderate amount. But if it’s one you like then it’s worth the extra charge!
Yeah, it can be a hassle buying goods that are sold only in Japan. I think it is worth it, though. Particularly when it comes to buying dakimakura covers. Tasteful or flat-out pornographic, it is all good to me, though I don’t actually have as many of the latter as I would like.
I couldn’t help wondering how her panties were pulled down. OK, she wore them over her garters (Very naughty! ;-)), but how did they get them past the cuffs? That would have been rather time-consuming: Uncuffing – hiking down – recuffing… Takes the sizzle out of the situation somehow. But it’s still a very nice pilowcase, I like it very much!
I was wondering the same thing while looking at the pictures. I guess maybe she untied them and re-tied them? A strange mystery indeed. Though, hypothetically, if someone else were involved in removing the cuff and then recuffing, I think there’s something kinda hot about the deliberateness and control aspect of the process. Though on the other hand, it still seems pretty dang awkward.
Love to see her art as figs but from previous showing the figs have a hard time capturing her art style Xp. The closest one I think that managed to do that was that resin/polystone of Suzuna release a while back
Yeah, it seems like it would take a skilled sculptor to make a figure that reflects her work. I took a look at some of the figures based off of her art and most of them don’t look much like her work. Hopefully future figures will be better.
That’s a lovely cover. Carnelian’s art is always impressive to see, though I kinda feel like the left hand on each side (and to a lesser degree her thighs on the front) feels a bit “flat” with the style of shading she’s used this time. The eyes are absolutely gorgeous, I’m tempted to try and pick it up just for them alone. Usually it’s pretty impossible to judge just how nice the eyes are on a cover from the small preview pics you usually have available. Detail on the dress is just amazing too.
Carnelian didn’t have one for comiket 81, but did release one for web order around the same time. I guess it wasn’t quite prepared for sale in time for comiket. Not quite the same degree of elaborate clothing, but a nice simple beautiful school girl one which forced its way into my budget ;(
Yeah, it doesn’t look like her fingers have knuckles or anything. Her neck also appears to be too skinny. I saw the pictures for the web order one she released around C81 time and I like it a lot; the character has gorgeous breasts. I was looking for the name of the character and I couldn’t find one, which was a bit strange. I also like the Sena wall scroll she did.
I like the front side of this dakimakura, but don’t really care for the reverse side. I like the idea of a front and rear image, but I think I would have liked it more with no nudity from behind. I don’t know how I would prefer it, but to me the nudity seems forced on this one, which is probably because the front is so clothed. I still like the character design though.
I would’ve liked even more nudity on the reverse side XD This one’s sort of on the softcore side of what I usually collect but the next few pillowcases I’m getting should be more saucy.
I also think that more nudity would have been more interesting than the current reverse.
Definitely an artist I keep up with. Good stuff!
Twitter can be so limiting at times. I might have misread your question a bit regarding Evening Call’s website. When I replied, I was basically saying that I haven’t heard any word on Paypal yet, which I’m assuming is the only way to pay as a foreigner, even if they’re willing to ship internationally now.
If that’s what you meant, then nope, haven’t heard anything. But I was eventually able to navigate through and sign up for an account with all the right information, as far as I can tell. My error was in trying to put down the address; apparently it was too long and caused the registration to fail, despite there not being a hardcap character limit. I just shortened United States to USA, and was able to sign up fine. Have several items waiting in my cart just on word that they accept Paypal, but I haven’t heard from them yet.
Someone actually replied to the message Evening Call had sent, asking them in Japanese if it was possible to buy as a foreigner now, so hopefully that will get their attention. They haven’t posted anything since the 9th, so hopefully they decide to check their Twitter soon. >_>
I’m kinda trying to wean myself off of Twitter anyway. I went to the registration page and was sorta confused by some of the fields, like the kanji rendition of the customer’s name. I held off filling stuff in since even if they do accept Paypal, I’d feel somewhat silly if I submitted an order and they shipped off a parcel to the US with all the delivery information in Japanese. I wound up just ordering the Rin pillowcase through Yokatta instead.
Hopefully they get back to the questioner; I don’t know how much business they’d get from overseas but I know I’d buy a few more of their products if it were easier to do so.
I don’t know the artist to be honest, so at first I thought this was a character from Rozen Maiden.
The goth style is pretty, gives it a more tasteful direction than other pillow cases of that kind. The black dress is simply pretty and works well with the red eyes and the light skintone.
On the backside its nice how her boobs fall out of her dress, she seems to love her chains.
Don’t loose the keys Lucrezia :p
I really like the goth style too, it’s probably the main aspect that caught my attention. I don’t have a lot of figures in that style, though I do need to review Raquel Gothic one of these days.
hmm i really like her outfit… though my favourite porn-drawing woman is still ayato sasakura.
hey how i can buy this one or one of this!!!!!
You’re likely going to have to use a proxy and buy it through YJA. The proxy will add some extra cost to the purchase price, but it isn’t currently available on the English Mandarake site (which would have been your only method of acquiring it without a proxy.)
If you’re serious about buying it, I’d recommend looking into Shopping Mall Japan for auction based purchases, since their commission is relatively fair there and if you’re based in the US it’s even better.
There are several auctions for the cover in the 10000-15000 yen range, some either bid or buyout:
http://page8.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/h161194557
http://page13.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/r82626159
http://page11.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/n102226119
There are a few others, but I just selected a few to give you an idea.
For those that were interested in this case and missed out on it, Carnelian is doing a resale of a decent number of her old and newer cases, including this one. Preorders are open for another week or two:
http://ever-green.on.arena.ne.jp/order/order_dk_201206.html