Doujin music artists

• Sound Horizon
• Akiko Shikata
• Team Shanghai Alice, creator of the Touhou Project, is also very famous for the music for the games. It is interesting to note that many doujin music releases by other groups have been arrangements of Team Shanghai Alice’s songs since around 2003.
• IOSYS, a well-known doujin group most commonly recognized for their Touhou arrangements.
• CROW’SCLAW, a popular heavy metal instrumental dōjin musician who is best known for his arrangements of music from the Touhou and Final Fantasy series of games.
• COOL&CREATE, another well-known Touhou music group, well known by the YouTube community for their U.N. Owen was her? remix
• HARDCORE TANO*C and ALiCE’S EMOTiON, two circles organised by REDALiCE focused on electronic dance music, but predominantly Hardcore amongst others. ALiCE’S EMOTiON is focused on anime and game arranges, mostly focusing on REDALiCE’s work while HARDCORE TANO*C features a wider range of artists and focuses on original compositions.
• Chata
• Rekka Katakiri
• Haruka Shimotsuki

Doujin music organization

Doujin music artists can be solo or band projects. It is very common for members of different groups to collaborate on an album. Some projects, such as Woodsoft, are collaborations of several artists contributing to a given theme for each of their album releases.

Doujin Music

Each members of a group usually have their individual site on which they release their personal works free to download and possibly give updates about their involvement in upcoming albums. Some artists actually never release albums and keep their artistic activity to this free-for-all form. The most productive groups usually release 2 albums a year which are released in summer and winter editions of the Comic Markets conventions and sold for an average of 1000 yen for full length ones. The most involved and popular artists are usually featured on their own group albums but also make guest appearance on other groups’ CDs.

The albums themselves benefit of various treatment depending on groups, from plain CD-R to fully printed packaging including the CD, with quality often similar to official products.

Aside from the Comic Market, events held in Japan for dōjin music include the biannual “M3” and the “Hakurei Shrine Reitaisai” (limited to Touhou Project related music).

Doujin music genres

Doujin music isn’t a musical genre in itself but is indicative of a particular publishing way, like the term “indie” would be.

Doujin music consists very often of video game music fan arrangements. Much original music is also created, be it music for doujin games or simply mainstream music such as pop, rock, techno or trance.

By nature, doujin music is often synthetic digital productions which allow for self-production at low costs, as opposed to studio mastering live instruments require. It is pretty common to have one live instrument such as a guitar backed up by synthetic orchestrations, though, and full instrumentation is becoming more and more common in dōjin music, such as orchestral works or doujin jazz.

Doujin game firms

Doujin game

• ABA Games: specializes in shoot ’em ups with an abstract look. Most of their doujin games are Open Source.
• Studio Pixel: one-man group specialized in retro style games, most notable for Cave Story.
• 07th Expansion: specializes in visual novels, most notable for Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and Umineko no Naku Koro ni
• Easy Game Station: produces a wide variety of games, from brawlers to role playing games to strategy games.
• French-Bread: produces a wide variety of games.
• Orange Juice: specializes in curtain fire scrolling shooters
• Siter Skain: most notable for vertically scrolling shooters such as Kamui that are considered to be of Treasure’s level of quality.
• Takase: specializes in 2D fighting games.
• Team Shanghai Alice: specializes in curtain fire scrolling shooters, most notable for the Touhou Project.
• Twilight Frontier: specializes in a wide variety of games including fighting games and platformers.
• Type-Moon: former doujin studio that specializes in visual novels.
• Studio Siesta: specializes in shoot ’em ups with hi-res and cel-shaded graphics.
• [erka:es]: most notable for the development of its popular Mega Man-esque sidescroller series, Rosenkreuzstilette.
• Capricorn: most notable for the development of Rockmen R: Dr. Wily’s Counterattack, a Mega Man game that takes place after Mega Man 9, introduces new Robot Masters and bosses, and has a story revolving around Roll.

Doujinshi artists

• Clamp started out as a doujinshi group of 11 known as Clamp Cluster.
• Ken Akamatsu, creator of manga such as Love Hina and Negima, continues to make doujinshi which he sells at Comiket under the pen-name Awa Mizuno.
• Rikdo Koshi, creator of the manga Excel Saga, originally started out as a doujinshi artist.
• Nanae Chrono, creator of the manga Peacemaker Kurogane, has published multiple Naruto dōjinshi, most of a yaoi nature.
• Maki Murakami, creator of Gravitation and Gamers’ Heaven. Her circle Crocodile Ave. created Remix Gravitation AKA Rimigra and Megamix Gravitation, which were extremely sexually graphic.
• Kazuhiko Katō, also known as Monkey Punch, creator of Lupin III began as a dōjinshi artist.
• Artist Nobuteru Yūki sells dōjinshi based on his animated works under his pen-name “The Man in the High Castle”.
• Yukiru Sugisaki, author of D.N.Angel and The Candidate for Goddess, started as a dōjinka. She released doujinshi about King of Fighters, Evangelion, etc.; all were gag doujinshi.
• Yun Kouga, a longtime published mangaka and creator of two well-known BL series, Earthian and Loveless published dōjinshi for series such as Gundam Wing.
• Yoshitoshi ABe has published some of his original works as dōjinshi, such as Haibane Renmei. He cited the reason as, essentially, not wanting to answer to anyone about his work, especially because he saw it as so open ended.
• Hajime Ueda, the creator of Q·Ko-chan and the comic adaptation of FLCL.
• Rumiko Takahashi- Began drawing doujinshi before being discovered.
• Crimson Comics, a circle (or maybe even one person) of doujinshi authors who have made well over 50 H-dōjin on well over 20 different series, ranging from the popular to the obscure, such as One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Black Cat, Final Fantasy, and more.
• Masaki Kajishima, creator of Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki, has long used the dōjinshi format to produce additional information about the series he has created, primarily Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki and Tenchi Muyo! GXP. These dōjinshi can either be completely filled with his work, or he will contribute a work to the dōjinshi title. Kajishima-sensei’s dōjinshi works break down into one (or more) types of works: manga-style (where he illustrates a new story, usually with limited text), interviews, early drafts of scripts for the series (giving fans great insight into the creative process), storyboards drawn by Kajishima-sensei that ultimately were not animated, story notes (or short stories) giving further little details of various characters, situations, or places in Kajishima-sensei’s World of Tenchi. As of this writing, Kajishima-sensei does two dōjinshi titles a year under the circle names “Kajishima Onsen” and “Kamidake Onsen”. He has also used these to communicate with fans about his current projects, namely the Saint Knight’s Tale spinoff anime featuring Tenchi’s half-brother and the GXP novels.
• Datendō, the pseudonym for Yūki Nagase, created hentai doujins for the Dead or Alive and Rumble Roses series, titling them DOA Lost Eden 00-11 and Jumble Roses 1-2, Endless Desire 00-18, Kasumi Cullus, Ayane Culls, and Ragna Cross. His website is daten.maid.ne.jp.
• Shimoyakedō, a circle created by Tokiichi Ōma, author of over 30 H-dōjinshi mostly parodying the Tsukihime and Fate/stay night series.
• Yoshihiro Togashi, creator of YuYu Hakusho and Hunter x Hunter, has authored doujinshi such as Church!
• Kazushi Hagiwara, creator of Bastard!!, and his group Studio Loud in School have published popular Bastard!!-related doujinshi such as Wonderful Megadeth!, as well as various Capcom-related doujinshi.
• Minami Ozaki, creator of the boylove manga Zetsuai, is an extremely prolific doujinshi creator who has authored numerous yaoi publications, most notably featuring characters from the soccer manga, Captain Tsubasa.
• Dekker Dreyer, creator of Tentacle Grape soda, illustrated the original label parodying La Blue Girl and other Tentacle Rape genre anime.
• Kiyohiko Azuma, creator of Azumanga Daioh and Yotsuba& started out doing doujinshi.
• 07th Expansion, creators of both Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and Umineko no Naku Koro ni.
• Dragonball AF Created by Toyble.
• naked ape, creator of switch and Dolls, draw doujinshi of Naruto, Code Geass and of their own work under the name ‘acute girls’. Most is somewhat yaoi in flavour.
• Kodaka Kazuma, creator of Kizuna, Rotten Teacher’s Equation (Kusatta Kyōshi no Hōteishiki), Love Equation (Renai Hōteishiki) and Border among others, has published several parody yaoi doujinshi as K2 Company of Prince of Tennis and Fullmetal Alchemist, as well as an original doujinshi series called ‘Hana to Ryuu’ (Flower and Dragon).
• Sanami Matoh, author of FAKE, has published parody yaoi doujinshi (mostly of One Piece) and original doujinshi as East End Club.

Doujinshi Reception

Despite being in direct conflict with the Japanese copyright law as many dōjinshi are derivative works and dōjinshi artists rarely secure the permission of the original creator, Comiket is still permitted to be held twice a year and holds over half-a-million people attending each time it convenes. However, the practice of doujinshi can be beneficial to the commercial manga market by creating an avenue for aspiring mangaka to practice, and talented doujinshi creators are contacted by publishers. This practice has existed since the 1980s. Many Japanese publishing companies sponsor annual manga competitions in which the winner is awarded the publication of their winning story. Salil Mehra, a law professor at Temple University, hypothesizes that because doujinshi market actually causes the manga market to be more productive, the law does not ban doujinshi as the industry would suffer as a result. Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at Stanford Law School, wrote in his book “Free Culture” that although authors are still to entitled to sue for copyright infringement, Japanese law firms do not have enough lawyers and resources to prosecute such cases.

Doujinshi Comiket

Comiket is the world’s largest comic convention. It is held twice a year in Tokyo, Japan. The first CM was held in December 1975, with only about 32 participating circles and an estimated 600 attendees. About 80% of these were female, but male participation in Comiket increased later. Attendance has since swelled to over half a million people. Many attendants come to exchange and/or sell their doujinshi.

In 2009, Meiji University opened a doujin manga library, named “Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library” to honour its alumni in its Surugadai campus. It contains Yonezawa’s own dōjinshi collection, comprising 4137 boxes, and the collection of Tsuguo Iwata, another famous person in the sphere of doujinshi.

Categories of doujinshi

Like their mainstream counterparts, doujinshi are published in a variety of genres and types. However, due to the target audience, certain themes are more prevalent, and there are a few major division points by which the publications can be classified. It can be broadly divided into original works and aniparo—works which parody existing anime and manga franchises.

As in fanfics, a very popular theme to explore is non-canonical pairings of characters in a given show (for doujinshi based on mainstream publications). Many such publications contain yaoi or yuri (that is, homosexual) motives, either as a part of non-canon pairings, or as a more direct statement of what can be hinted by the main show.

A major part of doujinshi, whether based on mainstream publications or original, contains sexually explicit material, due to both the large demand for such publications and absence of restrictions official publishing houses have to follow. Indeed, often the main point of a given doujinshi is to present an explicit version of a popular show’s characters. Such works may be known to English speakers as “H-dōjinshi”, in line with the former Japanese use of letter H to denote erotic material. The Japanese usage, however, has since moved towards the word ero, and so ero manga is the term almost exclusively used to mark doujinshi with adult themes. Sometimes they will also be termed “for adults” or 18-kin. To differentiate, ippan is the term used for publications absent of such content.

Doujinshi perception

John Oppliger of AnimeNation stated that creating doujinshi is largely popular with Japanese fans however not with Western fans. Oppliger claimed that because Japanese natives grow up with animation and manga “as a constant companion”, Japanese fans “are more intuitively inclined” to create or expand on existing manga and anime in the form of doujinshi . Because Western fans experience a “more purely” visual experience as most Western fans cannot understand the Japanese language, the original language of most anime, and are “encouraged by social pressure to grow out of cartoons and comics during the onset of adolescence”, most Western fans participate in utilizing and rearranging existing work into anime music videos.

In Western cultures, doujinshi is often perceived to be derivative of existing work, analogous to fan fiction and almost completely pornographic. This is partly true: doujinshi are often, though not always, parodies or alternative storylines involving the worlds of popular manga, game or anime series, and can often feature overtly sexual material. However, there are also many non sexually explicit doujinshi being created as well. The Touhou series for example, is notable for the large amount of dōjinshi being produced for it that are not pornographic in nature. Groups releasing adults only themed materials during the annual Touhou only event Reitaisai in 2008 were estimated at roughly 10%.

Doujinshi history

The pioneer among doujinshi magazines was Morning Bell, published in the early Meiji period (since 1874). Not a literary magazine in fact, it nevertheless played a big role in spreading the idea of doujinshi. First magazine to publish doujinshi novels was Garakuta Bunko, founded in 1885 by writers Ozaki Kōyō and Yamada Bimyo. Doujinshi’s publication reached its peak in the early Showa era, becoming a mouthpiece for the creative youth of that time. Created and distributed in small circles of authors or close friends, it contributed significantly to the emergence and development of shishosetsu genre. During the postwar years the publication of dōjinshi as representations different literary schools and new authors gradually decreased, substituted by literary journals Gunzo, Bungakukai and etc. One notable exception was Bungei Shuto, published in 1933-1969. Few doujinshi magazines survived with the help of official literary journals. Haiku and tanka magazines remain active till nowadays.

During the 1980s, the content of doujinshi shifted from being predominantly original content to being mostly parodic of existing series.

In 2008, a white paper on the otaku industry was published, this estimated that gross revenue from sales of doujinshi in 2007 were 277.3 billion yen, or 14.9% of total otaku expenditure on their hobby.