Iwa ni Hana

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Huang Shan [黄山], the king of cosplay from the PRC, is to release his second album of cosplay entitled “溯时” soon.

From what I gathered on the internet, Huang Shan is an arts graduate born in 1985. His first cosplay album entitled “浮岚” was released in 2007. It caused quite a stir and propelled him to semi-celebrity status. As you can see from his works, he is obviously someone born with an innate sensitivity to beauty and the endless drive to pursue it. A while ago, I was even beginning to come across a newly coined term shan liu mei xue [山流美学], which may be taken to mean “the Shan school of aesthetics”. I have also been following his blog posts and understand that he is currently located in Shenzhen. I am sometimes gripped with the mad impulse to run to Shenzhen and interview him. His blog can be found at: http://hscos.blog.163.com

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Tankouban release of Nokemono to Hanayome [ノケモノと花嫁]

To those of you who wonder what ever happened to Ikuhara “Utena” Kunihiko [幾原邦彦], I gathered from his blog that a tankouban of his manga collaboration with Nakamura Asumiko [中村明日美子] is to be released in December. This manga is serialized so far on a fashion magazine called KERA. I will be sure to place an order and write more on this when the time comes.

Ikuhara-sensei’s blog entry with a photo of this announcement can be found at: http://www2.jrt.co.jp/cgi-bin3/ikuniweb/tomozo.cgi?no=504

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New artbook of the PRC illustrator Eno. (何何舞)

News reached me that Eno’s new artbook entitled Anemone (银莲花) is to go on sale early next month. This is her second artbook since Marquee Moon (华盖之月).

Eno. is by far my favorite illustrator these days. I adore that androgynous, ethereal beauty and that delicate, graceful touch in her illustrations. I see that she is also trying her hand at manhua these days – namely a series entitled Ling Miao Qian (零秒前), which seems to be a sports series set in a Chinese high school.* (Personally, I wish it had been a manhua series set in premodern China, so that you get to see in spades the sort of beautiful, flowing black hair which she is so good drawing. But that’s just me.)

Earlier last year, she also did a series of illustrations on the theme of Lan Ling Wang (兰陵王), a prince of the kingdom of Qi (齊) who lived in 6th century China. According to legend, he was a skilled soldier, but his extraordinary and somewhat feminine good looks did not seem to strike much terror into the hearts of his enemies. So he devised these scary-looking masks to wear on the battlefield. His siblings were jealous of him; he was poisoned and died at the young age of 30 or thereabouts.

Rumour has it that the novelist Tanaka Yoshiki (田中芳樹) also has a work in progress on the theme of Lan Ling Wang.** If the novel(s) – assuming they are not aborted efforts (as is so often the case with Tanaka Yoshiki) – were illustrated by Eno., that would be quite something to behold indeed.

* You can see the details from her blog here: ttp://blog.sina.com.cn/enoeno

** You can see the details from his editor’s blog here: ttp://a-hiro.cocolog-nifty.com/diary/2009/02/post-ae8d.html

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