Shinkon-san ~ Sweet Sweet honeymoon

Last weekend included a truely joyfull bit of announcement for fans of Boys Love Soft – BaseSon SPICE*  finally unveilled the release date for their debut work Shinkon-san ~ Sweet Sweet honeymoon  !
As already mentioned back in the Visual Novel Outlook entries (more recently here) the Shinkon-san project originally was intended to be the debut work by Doujin Soft circle SPICE*  consisting of Hinata Katagiri (responsible for the art) and Hanana (in charge of scenario/story writing), originally slated for a 2006 spring release postponed over and over again. However (probably “inspired” by the success BaseSon had with their more recent Koi Hime†Musou  ) the Doujin project has been picked-up by BaseSon as debut work of their newly founded Boys Love Soft brand BaseSon SPICE*
Without much talk the announced specs for the release:

Shinkon-san ~ Sweet Sweet honeymoon

Brand: BaseSon SPICE*
Release Date: 2007/12/21
Price: 6,800 Yen (excl. tax) / 7,140 Yen (incl. tax)
Media: CD-ROM 2 Discs (scheduled)
Genre: Love Fuufuseikatsu AVG (Boys Love Work)
“Target Age”: 18+
+ Staff:
Art: Katagiri Hinata
Scenario: Hanana / Yasaki / Aoki Kanako
BGM: MASA (Dreaming Rabbit)
Theme Song Lyrics: sawamurah
Theme Song Composition & Vocal: Takumaru
+ Cast:
Kuga Soutarou (CV: Okino Yasuhiro)
Yaesaki Haru (CV: Sorano Taiyou)
Madoka Ayase (CV: Shimazaki Hiro)
Ituki Odagiri (CV: Aoshimamaru)
Taichi Kuranuki (CV: Suzuki Chihiro)
Shuuhei Ichikawa (CV: Puroguresu)
Kiou Inuduka (CV: Sugawara Eiji)
Satsuki Kamiya (CV: Kono Kanami)

Some stores (i.e. Amazon.jp) already put up the soft for pre-order, personally though I will wait a little bit longer before getting a pre-order placed as shops like Tora no Ana, Messe Sanoh & Co. might add some store exclusive bonus (read: Telecards ^_~).
Generally speaking though the announcement of the release for Shinkon-san ~ Sweet Sweet honeymoon makes this BL soft fan more than happy. I guess it was already shining through in my “recent” Visual Novel outlook entry for 2007 that there’s just so litte to almost no soft of this genre that I can truely say to look forward to, however BaseSon SPICE* is obviously aiming to grand us starving BL fans a nice holiday season ^_~
The “news” (as far as you call something announced over a week ago news to begin with ^_~) part of this entry aside, I thought in order to make this entry a little bit more worthwhile (though that again depends on what one considers worthwhile on this silly little blog to begin with as well ^_~) and to get some more thoughts/impressions on Doujins typed up and posted as well, that I may as well include some thoughts/impressions on a Boys Love Doujin release at last fitting for the topic of this entry. So the usual warning, in case you couldn’t care less about this fanboys’ opinion/thoughts you better end your reading of this entry now ^_^

** Edit 2007/12/08:
Those fellow BL Soft fans looking forward to the release of BaseSon SPICE* debut work Shinkon-san ~ Sweet sweet honeymoon probably knew long before anyways, but I really wanted to get back and update this blog entry with mentioning / pointing-out the truley sweet updates the Official site for Shinkon-san recently had. Most importantly (to me at least ^_^) among those updates is, that the site now features (for about 4 weeks now, so that’s not really what one might consider news to begin with…) a special Wallpaper corner as can be found here. The especially noteworthy thing in regards of this section of the site is that it not “just merely” includes illustrations one (confident BL fan) can graze her/his desktop with, but moreover these illustrations are contributed by “guests”. Among the list of contributors Shinkon-san wallpaper illustrations by artists like CARNELIAN , Suzuken (of Masquerade ~ Jigoku Gakuen SO/DO/MU fame), Maruki Bunge (who’s probably best known for the 2nd PIL/SLASH project Koibito Yugi) and to me most importantly so far her highness Itaru Hinoue (which I *so* had hoped for to see a contribution by for the desktop corner especially with the Official pekoe/Visual Art’s site having added a link/banner to the BaseSon SPICE* recently). Wallpaper images available in different resolutions and generally the weekly updates in this section of the HP (updated every Friday so far) makes it even more enjoyable to drop by the BaseSon SPICE* webpage).
Last but definitely not least for the fellow BL fans that are still indecisive where to place their pre-order for Shinkon-san the Official site added a neat little subsection unveilling the rough art for some of the pre-order shop exclusive Telecards planned for the release. Before entering the site though be warned – it contains highly impressive Hinata Katagiri Telecard concept art and if you’re a Telecard collector you might find yourself in an even bigger misery (like me and I’m not referring to that the site presents one to partwise 18+ NSFW BL art) once having entered that page and faced the beautiful Telecard illustrations this release will receive – I want them all!  ^_^ While I most definitely will try to get my hands on some of them past the release seperately I’m torn between the Messe Sanoh, Gamers, Tora no Ana and Livret Telecard…decisions, decisions. At least there’s still little more time left ot decide on one way to go for Shinkon-san.

Shinkon-san ~ Sweet Sweet honeymoon ~ Preview Book
Release: 2006/08/11 / Re-Release: 2007/08/17
38 pages

- Content sample art (Color art)
- Content sample art (Rough art)

This Doujinshi was part of Hinata Katagiri’s publications for Summer Comic Market 2006 (Comiket70) originally released with her latest Hinadamari Doujin flower*life (the Bishoujo Doujin part of the Katagiri Comiket70 goodness ^_~). However with Shinkon-san having turned into a commercially released full-fledged Boys Love soft with the founding of the BaseSon SPICE* brand rather than the BL Doujin soft that it was originally intended to be, BaseSon decided that it probably would be good publicity for a newly founded brand and re-released the Shinkon-san Preview Book for this Summer’s Comiket72 again (as far as I followed their Information on the re-release of the Doujinshi it’s the very same Doujin with no additional content added…so gladly no reason to double-dip on this one for those that already purchased the original release and another chance to go for the Doujin for those that missed out on the original and sold-out publication ^_^).
The Shinkon-san ~ Sweet Sweet honeymoon – Preview Book opens with about 4 color pages featuring the characters of this soft in more particular giving the two male main characters Haru Yaesaki and Soutarou Kuga the spotlight. There is some color art with the rest of the cast of characters featured as well  however generally speaking the major focus in this Doujinshi has been given to these two characters. The opening color pages are nothing less than amazing though. In more particular there’s one illustration (the final color art page) featuring Haru wearing a shirt only which is a wonderful example of what color techniques artist Hinata Katagiri is capable of. The whole coloring scheme and lightning/shadow technique she can come up with is gorgeous and especially looking at the job she does on her character’s eye coloring a comparison with coloring art technique of artists like Noizi Itou comes to mind (ironically Itou did already team-up with Hinata some years ago by releasing a fujitsubo-machine x Hinadamari Doujin Telecard set ^_~).
As nice as the intro color pages are, these four pages in total are the only color art one can find in the Shinkon-san Preview Book as the rest of this Doujinshi is all in black and white. Again, that’s nothing I was really bugged with as (aside of the Hinadamari Comiket70 Doujin flower*life being all color ^_~) one of the most remarkable features of Katagiri’s art that made her gain a top spot among my personal ranking of favorite artists is her monochrome “coloring” style/technique. While as mentioned, I do enjoy Katagiri’s color art a lot as well, the way she manages to “hatch” monochrome illustrations that they almost look like b/w photographs impressed me (an example of this that instantly comes to mind when thinking of this technical feature of her art is the Tohsaka Rin guest art she contributed for Itaru-sensei’s TYPE-MOON themed Doujin Gekkou Yoku). Speaking of Katagiri’s drawing style and techniques I may also add that I stumbled over and got hooked by her art via her contributions for the guest gallery section of Itaru-sensei’s SOLDIER FROG Doujins (Katagiri is contributing guest art for SOLDIER FROG Doujins at least since the aforementioned Gekkou Yoku with her most recent one being the lovely Bokukoi illustration for Yasashii Kimochi *also a Comiket70 release*). I mean, I did know about her or better said the work she’s done on BaseSon soft like ONE2 but in the end I guess I can blame it on Itaru-sensei for getting me addicted on yet another artist ^_~
Back to business, the section that follows the intro color pages is focused on the characters. As can be expected by a section like this, it gives you the basic data about the cast of Shinkon-san covering in total the following characters (btw. romanization of the names straight out of the Doujinshi so yeah I did notice some tiny little differences in regards of these comparing it with the Official site’s character section ^_~):
+ Haru Yaesaki
+ Soutarou Kuga
+ Madoka Ayase
+ Itsuki Odagiri
+ Taichi Kuranuki
+ Syuhei Ichikawa
Six characters covered in total and looking at the aforementioned Character section of the Official Shinkon-san homepage one can see that two of the cast have obviously been added laterwards, namely Kiou Inuduka and Sat(s)uki Kamiya (shown as the final character profiles displayed on the site). Moreover the information one receives about the characters is *basically* kept in the same style as shown on the Official page with data like date of birth, age, blood type, height, weight, etc. plus some basic info on the character.
Next section in the Shinkon-san Preview Book is the four pages in totall so-called “Rough illustrations” part. One might wonder why they did actually bother with a rough illustration part if this Doujinshi is from the first ’till the final page almost exclusively kept in b/w however these are (in contrast to the character section) rough art featuring various expressions/poses of the characters from this soft instead of the monochrome art of the previous section. On these four pages the coverage sticks to the “character order” of the Character section meaning that it starts out with rough art of Haru and Soutarou, continues with Madoka and Itsuki and so on. Given my love for Katagiri’s monochrome drawing technique this is definitely one of my overall favorite parts the Shinkon-san Preview Book includes and moreover I must admit that I’m glad that SPICE* didn’t decide to make this color art instead.
The third section of this Doujinshi consists of a six pages long short story titled “Starry Summer”. This short story has been written by Hanana and illustrated (just some little art on the “page edges”) by Katagiri-sensei. You could say this is the novel part of the Preview Book. Unfortunately I can’t comment much or give a summary on the story itself as I haven’t had the time to read through it yet. Yeah I know, only a six pages long short story and here the guy is coming up with excuses like “haven’t had the time to read yet” but on the other hand I still have Doujin Novels like Itaru-sensei’s Paradise Lost and merely started through the prologue of Fate/Zero due to the limited spare time in recent times ^_^” At the end of the short story a comment by author Hanana (as mentioned above she’s in charge of SPICE*’s scenario/story writing) takes up another page.
The final section of the Shinkon-san Preview Book Doujin consists of a *v-e-r-r-y* lovely short manga (!) by Hinata Katagiri. Consisting of eight pages in total, the manga tells a short (and turning out in what gives this Doujin the “for Adults only” labeling ^_~) scenary between the two main characters of Shinkon-san Haru and Soutarou. Once again, this is Hinata Katagiri monochrome art one’s presented with, so you can guess that I was simple amazed gazing at the lovely art before I noticed/realized that there’s actually a short story to read through as well ^_^”
Certainly the best way to get this Doujinshi ended and just like it was the case with the previous section’s Short Story the manga ends with a comment by the artist as well.
The concluding page of this Doujinshi presents a short Shinkon-san 4-koma strip as Omake.
Overall the Shinkon-san ~ Sweet Sweet honeymoon – Preview Book Doujinshi did succeed in giving you a taste as well as rising the anticipation by BL fans for this soft. On top of that I must admit that in regards of content and presentation I enjoyed this Doujinshi quite a bit more than the actual Hinadamari release for Comiket70 flower*life (not trying to say that this one is bad at all, but just not as rich in terms of content despite it consisting of more pages). For fans of Hinata Katagiri a must buy (even if you’re not into Boys Love works the art on its own is worth it and besides the only 18+ content is contained in the short manga and yeah the risque Haru color art I mentioned earlier) and generally speaking recommended to fans of Boys Love Doujins (is it just me or is this Doujin genre missing some unique artists anyways?) and those who enjoy beauitful monochrome art!