things we lost at dusk

·  an archive of furoku, translations, and meta chiefly on shojo manga  ·  hiatus, maybe not coming back  ·  you are not allowed to make money off stuff I post (including youtube ads and donations)

[brickme]

[nakamorijuan]

中森明菜 - 愛撫 Akina Nakamori - Aibu Akina's 28th single (MCA Victor) Composed and arranged by Tetsuya Komuro

[brickme]

The (admittedly minor) trend in English-language manga publishing that's driving me up the wall lately is huge 500-page+ softcover omnibuses (e.g. the one with all 5 vol. of Paradise Kiss, the Kamui volumes, and the forthcoming complete omnibus of Hideko Mizuno's Fire!) bc it's like...I'm not gonna wanna read this book more than once and I'm sure not going to hold it open to drink in the fine details of the art bc I don't want the fucking spine to break! I'd imagine glued hardcovers aren't that much better in that regard, but I feel like they've gotta be at least marginally more durable than ultra-thick softcovers

Don't get me wrong, those suck too! I mean it's one thing to put out cheap(er) 3-in-1 books for series that are already widely available in other formats, people can compromise knowing they're a cheap(er) alternative, but rare series or even series that are only available in this format, that is insane and honestly disrespectful. I feel like people should buy them and manually restore them into casebound hardcovers for archival purposes. I hadn't looked closely at those Fire! editions, but 900 page, 1 kg softcover? Kill me

[brickme]

driiiiives meeeeee nuuuuuuuts that US publishers are putting out hardcover "deluxe edition" manga with glued spines. while I was in Germany I had the opportunity to look at a volume of the Dark Horse "Berserk" edition (the huge black ones) and other than the fact that the cover felt like a cheap plastic toy (because it's pleather), I do think the spine was? might have been? sewn. however, apparently the US hardcovers of "A Silent Voice" and Jojo and all sorts of other titles are glued books they're charging extra for because they have cardboard stuck to them, and it driiiiives meeeeee insaaaaaane

it's a sub-par product they're trying to sell for more money by tricking people into thinking they're high quality. there's nothing wrong with glued spines in general, I'm not saying all random paperbacks should be made with coptic stitch or whatever (paperbacks being cheap and widely available to all is a good thing!), but if you're going to advertise your publication as a special, deluxe, high-quality product, you should back it up. and instead of being mad, fans are gobbling it up and asking for more!

the "Vagabond" deluxes are sewn and bound with cloth, both of which justify the price tag, btw. those will last for a very long time, unlike glue and pleather.

[brickme]

1st of all, thank you for running one of best, coziest, most informative manga blogs ever! I wanted to ask: why did you delete most of your posts? Sorry, this is really nosy, you don't have to reply. Also, i think you posted something about mangakas and assistants' bedrooms. There was something about a nazi flag (somewhat memorable). I loved these "behind the scenes" magazine scans... Thanks again!

haha I dunno if anything I've ever done can be categorized as "cozy", but thanks for the kind words, anon! as for why I deleted most of my posts, I think I'd been really tired of fandom for a while at that point. people feeling entitled to just take anything you share and pretend it's their own! people constantly spreading really dumb misinformation about manga and doubling down on it! people accusing you (and a bunch of people you've never spoken to) of conspiring against random BNFs you don't even care about! etc. I think I felt very unfairly scrutinized and villainized and didn't want to contribute anything to a community that made me feel that way, because why should I? but also, I'm not the most emotionally stable person and I periodically get an urge to burn everything down and go live as a hermit in the norwegian mountains and never have anything to do with any other living person again, so there's that. a combination of things!

I think you mean this post, which I went and made public again. it has a lot of pop-cultural artefacts of the mid-80s, which is fascinating indeed.

[brickme]

i was helping my mother sort her yarn collection to throw out 4/5 of it when i randomly found this old "gentleman's alliance cross" furoku watch, haha. background info: my mother is a hoarder* and she used to sometimes pick up stuff i'd thrown away and keep it and hide it because she thought i was being "wasteful". i'm throwing it away now, but here are some photos if anyone is curious. having "real items" furoku is normal now, but this was back when furoku was transitioning from paper items to "real" things chiefly made out of plastic, and this would have been a highly hyped item. interesting from a manga magazine history perspective. you can see an image of the box here. another interesting thing is that these "real" items have basically zero worth now, while paper furoku of meiji-taisho-showa are still valued by collectors. this is a beautiful book about that.

* for real, not the play-pretend "lol i have soooo many books" thing people say these days

[brickme]

I want to start posting disruptive and chaotic manga opinions again but also, I am old and sleepy.

edit: maybe I should warm up by just posting random crap text posts though? like let my mind and fingers wander? get back in the swing of things? maybe my aim is too high, like I feel I need to write a fully-articulated 10.000 word essay right out of the gate?

I feel like "has strong and disruptive opinions" used to be a central character trait of mine until I got too tired to express it, and now I'm just gray wallpaper. I'm having an identity cricis about this, goddamn.

[brickme]

Tokimeki Tonight "Romantic poster asamoya no naka no futari" -- Ribon Original autumn 1985 (Ikeno Koi)

[brickme]

scanned rare 1985 Tokimeki furoku poster

edited it

computer crashed, lost everything

_(:3 」∠)_

[brickme]

also got this for 6 euro from a manga/anime shop that's probably had it since 2022 and realized they'd never be able to sell it to anyone but me, haha

[brickme]

visiting @glow-wine in munich and went to a regular bookstore to look at manga, and found this german edition of the super mario-kun special selection!

スーパーマリオくん　スペシャルセレクション | 沢田ユキオ | 【試し読みあり】

【試し読みあり】「スーパーマリオくん　スペシャルセレクション 」の公式コミックス情報をチェック！ 笑い・お宝・歴史が詰まった大満足の傑作選 『スーパーマリオくん』2度目となるこの傑作選は驚愕のラインナップ！・32年前の誌面を再現した、コロコ…

i had no idea this was a thing, it has reprints of original corocoro color pages and is all around super cute and funny. great souvenir to find randomly.

[brickme]

[brickme]

hyakkiyakosho anime?

in 2026?!

[brickme]

wracking my brain to think of something fun I've picked up lately and remembering these adorable early 80s Ikeno Koi ads that are so very otome-tique inspired (Mutsu A-ko and Tabuchi Yumiko in particular) and soooooo prettyyyyyy

and this adorable self-portrait of Ikeno relaxing in a bathtub ;_; these "manga joho" pages from vintage Ribon are so rare but I picked up a few I might like to share (I believe I left the earlier scans I shared public when I made most of my posts private because I feel like they have historical significance)

oh and I picked up this Oshiete Nanoka poster that was the last missing furoku in my collection, now I have complete Nanoka and Ririka collections ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

[retrosofa]

My Ranze figure finally came in! I felt like I pre-ordered this 100 years ago. She’s gorgeous! I especially love how her eyes turned out.

I am surprised that you can uh, look up Ranze’s skirt. lol

Yoko Inu made by my lovely friend @brickme 🥰

[hotwaterandmilk]

Weddingpeach.net update

Your eyes do not deceive you, I have actually updated Weddingpeach.net in 2K26! This update focuses primarily on written content, but rest assured that visual updates are on the horizon too.

I've added a Story Summary to the Story page to give you a basic rundown on what Wedding Peach is actually about.

In addition to the above, What is Wedding Peach? has been expanded to go into its own little outline of the story as well.

What is Wedding Apple? is a brand new History article that details all the basics regarding the Wedding Apple series and includes a personal reflection essay where I ramble about it as it relates to Wedding Peach.

Aphrodite's profile has been added to the Cast page.

Cereso's profile has been added to the Cast page.

Peach's profile, Lily's profile, Daisy's profile and Salvia's profile have all been updated to include a list of their transformations and attacks (complete with images and descriptions).

I've made six new link buttons and they're now on the Website page. I'd really appreciate exchanging links with other series fansites still alive on the web!

While this isn't a lot in the scheme of things that I need to get done for this website, it felt good to be able to provide a decently-sized update. I hope you will take the time to visit and enjoy the new writings if you're interested in the Wedding Peach franchise.

[hotwaterandmilk]

Here's a fun little oddity for you, it's Fujii Midori's Wedding Peach and Jama-Pii in animated form (kind of)! It was included as furoku in a 1994 edition of Shougaku Ninensei. The printed images could be combined into a flip book to create your own animation of a simple sequence.

I thought about fixing the flaws in the images and attempting to make the animation more smooth but ultimately I think this gives a pretty decent kids' flip book "feel" which is the original intent behind the item. Enjoy!