Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
Hitoshi Ashinano is hailed as the king of iyashi-kei, and rightfully so. He's most famous for his manga "Yokohama Shopping Log", and the iconic watercolours that accompany many of his works. He makes manga that display the beauty of everyday life, mixing agrarian whimsy with narrative romanticism with mechanical realism with low-fantasy worldbuilding. He's someone who understands life better than most and is able to portray how he sees the world in a beautiful way.
Ashinano started his work in the manga world as an assistant to Kousuke Fujishima (You're Under Arrest, Oh My Goddess, Sakura Wars) working on his police comedy slice-of-life manga "You're Under Arrest", before going solo with his first and seminal work Yokohama. His output is tonally congruent with his work, the amount of full manga he has produced over his nearly 30 year career is only three, but along with these three quite long stories, he has produced several other short-form manga, so the volume of his work is substantial.
I've been reading his works over the last five years or so, and have now finished everything he has made over his career, and by everything I mean everything so long as it's still obtainable somewhere or other. And so here's a quite review of all the things he's produced.
Yokohama Shopping Log (1994-2006)
Yokohama Shopping Log (Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou) is Ashinano's longest, and most famous work. Everything good about the artist is here: a pure iyashikei narrative, mysterious worldbuilding, comfy familial relationships and rural romanticism mixed with retro-tech. YKK shows us a world outside of time, where an acceptance of the world as it is pervades a society that lacks the ability to keep the old civilisation running, which is not to say its a story without hope, but rather one where individuals have a greater importance than society does: it's a "twilight of humanity" sort of setting. It's one of my favourite manga of all time and already seen as a must read and rightly so.
PositioN (1999-2004)
This is an award winning collection of short-stories. It focuses on fantastical moments in an otherwise mundane world, and blurs the line between reality and our perception of reality. It's seen through the eyes of the six-sensed Suu-chan, a character who will return in a later work, and in general this anthology is a prototype for Ashinano's most recent work. It's a very simple setup and execution, but it's the simplicity of these manga that make them so engrossing and endearing to read.
Kumabachi no Koto (2007)
Literally meaning "Bee Thing", it is a one-shot manga about another of Ashinano's recurring interests: transportation. But while this usually consists of detailed depictions planes or bikes, this time it's magic bugs with little men riding on them. It's a whimsical story which isn't much more than a single strange idea put to paper, but somehow without ever pushing into absurdism.
Cub no Isaki (2007-2012)
"Kabu no Isaki" is about a future where the primary transport is by small propeller plane, settlements are few and far-between and the roads have all but been overtaken by nature. We explore the Kanto basin from the wings of a Piper Cub, with most arcs being about the various ways people live in this different world. We also get some sweet romance, and although it is never developed far its enjoyable to see the highly conscientious characters of Ashinano bounce off each other in this way. The characters are great in this one and the world is intricately detailed, although I think the ending went too far for my liking.
Kotonoba Drive (2014-2017)
His most recent manga, Kotonoba Drive sees the return of Suu-chan from PositioN, along with the format that previous story had. We follow the adolescent on her rather aimless life working at a small restaurant and riding her scooter around the surrounding towns. Just as before, this manga focuses heavily on the magical moments in everyday life that can't be explained reasonably, experiences that although fantastic are also relatable and very human experiences. The everyday things that we usually ignore the beauty of are highlighted and it takes it's time to tell its little story. It's cosy.
Ashinano has also contributed to several fanworks over his life, both published and doujinshi works. The only three of his published fanworks are here, although I think there may be a few others out there I couldn't find.
Natsuki Miyuki (199X)
These are a set of two wacky short stories starring the duo from You're Under Arrest, which if you remember Ashinano was assistant on. There's not much to them but it's excellent seeing the girls wear Ashinano's distinctive expressions.
Turbo Type S (200X)
This is a short tribute to Enomoto, a manga I don't know anything about and this short did nothing to alleviate that problem. It absolutely doesn't seem like a similar tone to his own work and to be honest I have no idea what is going on. A very silly one.
Shimmering of the Sea (2014)
This was part of a longer anthology of Mushishi tribute manga. It's a story about a girl watching the light fish that live on the sea's surface. Personally I don't think much of Mushishi but this is a very Ashinano premise, with a tone akin to Kumabachi.
There are a few other works of Ashinano, although none of them are particularly long or interesting. He participated in "Manga Surprise", a collection of stories compiled into an American magazine in the '90s. These just consist of excerpts from YKK with new text. The meat of his miscellaneous work however is the stuff he has done under the moniker "Sukke" with the eromanga doujinshi circle "Toufuya". While he certainly contributed to many of the circle's works, he mainly just did cover and insert art along with a few pages of comedic intervals. But this is surely the best place to look for Ashinano fanart of various characters. The publications are all uploaded to sadpanda, but if you're looking for them I suggest using the "group:toufuya$" tag because most of it doesn't have Sukke listed as a contributor.
List of fanworks he has drawn as Sukke: