Flat Gloss



Flat Gloss ( フラットグロス ) has a really unique art style as you can see from these samples. The above is from a super-deformed collection, but his regular art also has an SD feel to it. Add onto that the fact that his ladies usually are packing some muscle on their bones, and that equals win. I'm not fond of tentacles, which seems to be prevalent in his works. But I'll overlook them when there's muscular manga girls involved. I really dig the sculpted back in the first image below of Reiko from Rumble Roses.

Warning: Adult content ahead



On the pages at DLsite, there's usually some sample pics below the product image. You can find these on buttons labeled サンプル画像. The artist doesn't have his own website that I can find, but does have his works avaialble at some other download paysites like Toranoana. You'll need a working knowledge of Japanese to navigate these sites and to purchase the goods. According to the Flat Gloss @ Doujinshi DB, he has also released doujinshi. If you come across any of this, let me know.

Is this artist new to you? Do you like the style? Let me know by commenting on this entry. I love hearing from people and getting input, it helps to keep me motivated to share more stuff. Hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving!

Related Links
Flat Gloss @ DLSite ( JP )
Flat Gloss @ Toranoana ( JP )
Flat Gloss @ Doujinshi DB

Eric Alan Nelson



Eric Nelson just hit 10,000 pageviews on DeviantART this week. I'm a fan of his artwork, especially some of the recent commissions he's done of Wakuria ( NSFW ) for Teri-Minx and SSW ( NSFW ) for Soviet-SuperWoman. I contacted him to see if he could provide some more information about his commercial work, and he was kind enough to update his page with it. He's going to have some work in Issue #151 of FemForce from AC Comics. He is also working with Maelstrom Media on two titles, handling inking duties for Ultra-Vixen which features art by Jebriodo, and penciling duties for Prymal.




This talented artist doesn't get nearly the attention he should from the community so check out his page, add him to your DevWatch list, and fave a few of the pieces in his gallery. Tell him elee0228 sent you. He's also currently available for commissions.

Related Links
Eric Alan Nelson
Maelstrom Media

Joji Manabe





Sometimes spelled Johji or Jouji, Joji Manabe ( 真鍋 譲治 ) is a professional manga artist with a few titles to his name. His studio and website, Studio Katsudon has tons of great artwork dating back to 1998. It's cool to see how his artwork had evolved over time. He's mostly known for his manga series Outlanders, Caravann Kidd, and Capricorn. Outlanders was one of the first anime titles that was available in English in the US. Manabe-san liberally depicts strong female characters in his works has also created doujinshi on occasion. He delves quite frequently into adult themes, so take care when browsing his website. Here's some of my favorites from his gallery:



He's also got a new manga out called RING x MAMA ( リン×ママ ), and two volumes are currently available from Amazon JP ( Vol 1 and Vol 2 ). It's currently still being serialzied in a monthly adult anthology called Namaiki ( ナマイキッ ) that's begin published by Takeshobo ( 竹書房 ). The story follows some female pro-wrestlers and a shared common guy love interest. The covers are below along with some sample images from the series. There's plenty of images of the girls working out. Since it's an adult anthology, there are sexual situations to be found too.





If you want to hunt around for some of his Doujinshi contributions, make sure to check out his doujinshi section which is separated by year. You'll be able to find images like these among his self-published works ( pixelization to protect the innocent ):



Manabe-san is definitely one of the more well-known manga artists around, and it's very cool to see his depiction of muscular female characters in a manga style. Sometimes I have issues with anatomy and the way muscle doesn't seem to be rendered accurately by some manga artists, though this issue doesn't seem to affect Manabe-san. He's got a knack for drawing gals that look as strong as they are, and that's definitely a welcome talent.

It takes me quite a bit of time to assemble all the information and get the HTML coded just right. As always, I appreciate any and all comments on these journal entries even if it's just one word. They keep me motivated to share stuff I find, and I hope that they make people want to share stuff they find too. If you stumble across something that you think people should hear about but don't want to write about it, you can always send it my way. I'll make sure to track down all the info and put together one of these journal features about it. Thanks for reading.

Related Links
Studio Katsudon: Joji Manabe Website
Saronpaman: Joji Manabe Blog
Johji Manabe @ Wikipedia
Johji Manabe @ AnimeNewsNetwork
Namaiki ( ナマイキッ ) Anthology

Bankin



I don't quite remember how I stumbled upon Bankin, but it must have been while randomly googling for muscle manga artists. He's got quite a bit of nice art on his blog and photo section. Be warned that he deals with adult themes so proceed with caution. Here's some of my favorites from his site from the gallery:



I also found this one pretty amusing:



And here's a few of the aforementioned adult themes from the Adult Gallery:
Chun-Li 1 ( NSFW )
Chun-Li 2 ( NSFW )
Julia from Tekken ( NSFW )

I hunted around a little and found that he has some of his works available for sale at DLSite and Digiket. I haven't tried to purchase any of them yet, but it looks pretty good from the samples tht you can find on those sites.

On another note, I've seen a pretty big bump in pageviews in the last 2 or 3 days. If you're a newcomer to my page, please comment here and let me know how you came across it. I'd like to visit the referrer and give my thanks.

Related Links
Bankin blog
Bankin @ DLSite
Bankin @ Digiket

ISUTOSHI

ISUTOSHI is a published manga author with a penchant for including muscle girls in his works. ISU ROOM, his website isn't updated that frequently, but you can find a list of some of his works and contributions over at his entry at the Doujinshi DB project. I first saw one of his buff characters in his manga, Tende Freeze. Another buff character appeared in an earlier series called High School Planet Prowler:



... and I continued to follow the author to his current series, Aiki ( 愛気 ). The manga is still currently being published in serial format in Young King Monthly anthology. The first chapter introduces a very tall and buff beauty. Most of the female fighters in the series are very cute and very busty, which is always a good combination. Another muscular character, a former love interest for the main character, gets introduced later in the series. Definitely worth checking this series out if you haven't yet. Scanlations of it are known to exist, but you'll get the best quality if you pick up the original books from Amazon JP. Or I recommend online shop YesAsia, which also carries his manga works. Here's some samples from the first book:



And some samples of the previously cute, busty girls:



I mentioned in an earlier journal entry about Kanesada Keishi that ISUTOSHI made a contribution to the same issue of COMIC Kairakuten Beast ( 2008-07 ) that featured Kanesada's warrior gal with the great abs. The muscular girl depicted by ISUTOSHI here is more buff than beautiful, but I'm mentioning it here as another example of his fondness for putting muscle on manga girls. This short story was also included in an adult collection of his works called Ero-Isu. Here's the cover for the magazine along with a sample page where the girl appears:



His doujinshi contributions shouldn't be overlooked either. These are a little harder to find, and he typically does more pin-ups than stories. Still, if you're adventurous, you can do some searching for his art and stories done by Doujinshi circle Gerumaru in the Renge series. Here are some samples of what I mean:



I hope this information is useful to some people out there. Leave a comment if you liked this, I like to receive comments and helps me to keep motivated to share other discoveries. Lately, I've found it harder to write these features up. It's partly because they're time consuming, partly because I spend way too much time doing research to make sure I'm not missing anything, and partly because I'm becoming a little intimidated by the backlog of items I have in my feature queue. I might start doing shorter features in order to get through things faster. For readers of my journal, what do you think? More detailed but less frequent features, or less detailed but more frequent?

Related Links
ISU ROOM: Isutoshi Website
Isutoshi @ Doujinshi DB
AIKI @ Amazon JP
ISUTOSHI @ YesAsia
Ero Isu ( エロいす ) WANI MAGAZINE COMICS SPECIAL @ Amazon JP