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Some time last year Kingdom Note came out with two new lineups of bespoke inks from Sailor. They were the "Jellyfish" and "Crustaceans" lines and these pretty much replaced their previous collections of "Wild Birds," "Mushrooms," and "Insects". This was at a time when obtaining these Sailor inks became difficult for even those living in Japan. Some stores discontinued selling online, or even began limiting purchasers to just one or two bottles of ink, and another chose to raise prices over 100%. Kingdom Note is not one of those stores, but availability of their inks has been quite limited, and some have simply remained "SOLD OUT", perhaps seemingly forever. That's the way the sushi roll falls apart. The five inks in the "Jellyfish" series were/are: Chrysaora helvola "Yanagikurage" — an orange ink Porpita porpita — a blue ink Thysanostoma thysanura "Purple jellyfish" — a purple/red-violet ink Mastigias papua "Kite jellyfish"— a pink ink Aequorea victoria — a light green ink Recently I decided to check the Kingdom Note site, and found a few of these inks and their Crustacean cousins available. The writing samples shown there are decidedly unimpressive, seemingly using a XF nib. This would probably be fine if you were going to write Japanese characters, but many chasers of ink seem to want to use it in medium to broad to stub nibs and go to town with it. So there were few takers here when they came out. But I decided to take the plunge. The orange, blue, and purple inks were available. This is a review of the purple/red-violet ink. Just fyi, the stash of this ink KN had is sold out, but it is listed as "in negotiations". Perhaps that means they're trying to have Sailor make more. One can always hope so. The ink now comes in a standard Sailor Jentle box with a custom sticker pasted on the front. The bottle is standard Sailor Jentle with the dumb insert. The images of the box and bottle taken with iPhone4. As always, I test inks on papers I use and these are Mohawk via Linen=MvL, Hammermill 28 lb inkjet paper=Hij, and Tomoe River=TR. The images of the reviews taken with a Nikon Coolpix P50, so a bit dated, but it seems to do better than the iPhone in representing the ink color. My basic view is I liked this ink and was pleasantly surprised. But some people are probably going to hate this color. It's not really a purple as in a blue with a lot of red in it, but a magenta pushed towards violet. This ink didn't seem to be "less saturated" per se than other Sailor inks, in fact it seemed quite saturated. On the MvL the blue shows up more, but on the other papers the magenta dominates. In fact, it's almost identical to KWZI Violet #2. It's certainly a very reasonable good ink with very good flow and lubrication, some shading from light to darker orange. A bit slow drying on the MvL, but quite fast on the inkjet paper. I didn't notice any problems with hard starts, and the like, and it cleaned out of the syringe-filler pen I used quite easily. So I'm glad I got this ink and am not disappointed. The ink seems made up of two dyes, a turquoise/light blue, and a magenta. It's quite possible that under the right conditions you may see some sheen. The papers and pens I use don't typically bring that out. A lot of ink was laid down and while some washed away, there was much that stayed in place. The ink seems to be water resistant to some degree, more so than many other Sailor inks.

Some time last year Kingdom Note came out with two new lineups of bespoke inks from Sailor. They were the "Jellyfish" and "Crustaceans" lines and these pretty much replaced their previous collections of "Wild Birds," "Mushrooms," and "Insects". This was at a time when obtaining these Sailor inks became difficult for even those living in Japan. Some stores discontinued selling online, or even began limiting purchasers to just one or two bottles of ink, and another chose to raise prices over 100%. Kingdom Note is not one of those stores, but availability of their inks has been quite limited, and some have simply remained "SOLD OUT", perhaps seemingly forever. That's the way the sushi roll falls apart. The five inks in the "Jellyfish" series were/are: Chrysaora helvola "Yanagikurage" — an orange ink Porpita porpita — a blue ink Thysanostoma thysanura "Purple jellyfish" — a purple/red-violet ink Mastigias papua "Kite jellyfish"— a pink ink Aequorea victoria — a light green ink Technically this species isn't really a jellyfish, though it looks like one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porpita_porpita Recently I decided to check the Kingdom Note site, and found a few of these inks and their Crustacean cousins available. The writing samples shown there are decidedly unimpressive, seemingly using a XF nib. This would probably be fine if you were going to write Japanese characters, but many chasers of ink seem to want to use it in medium to broad to stub nibs and go to town with it. So there were few takers here when they came out. But I decided to take the plunge. The orange, blue, and purple inks were available. This is a review of the blue ink. Just fyi, the stash of this ink KN had is sold out, but it is listed as "in negotiations". Perhaps that means they're trying to have Sailor make more. One can always hope so. The ink now comes in a standard Sailor Jentle box with a custom sticker pasted on the front. The bottle is standard Sailor Jentle with the dumb insert. The images of the box and bottle taken with iPhone4. As always, I test inks on papers I use and these are Mohawk via Linen=MvL, Hammermill 28 lb inkjet paper=Hij, and Tomoe River=TR. The images of the reviews taken with a Nikon Coolpix P50, so a bit dated, but it seems to do better than the iPhone in representing the ink color. My basic view is I liked this ink and was pleasantly surprised. The color is almost identical with the Sailor Kingdom Note Entoloma virescens from the "Mushroom/Fungi" series. It's certainly a very good ink with reasonable flow and lubrication, though it actually seemed a little bit drier than usual for many Sailor inks, but I've found that light blues and turquoise inks can tend to be dry, some times agonizingly so. That's not the case here, but it's slightly drier than the other two jellyfish inks I've reviewed. This was more noticeable on the inkjet paper which is a drier paper in general. There's some shading here, but not dramatically so. I didn't notice any problems with hard starts, etc, and the ink easily cleaned out of the two pens I tried. The ink appears to be made from a single dye. This is the second ink in this series that seems somewhat water resistant. Some ink did wash away but a solid amount remained on the paper.

Some time last year Kingdom Note came out with two new lineups of bespoke inks from Sailor. They were the "Jellyfish" and "Crustaceans" lines and these pretty much replaced their previous collections of "Wild Birds," "Mushrooms," and "Insects". This was at a time when obtaining these Sailor inks became difficult for even those living in Japan. Some stores discontinued selling online, or even began limiting purchasers to just one or two bottles of ink, and another chose to raise prices over 100%. Kingdom Note is not one of those stores, but availability of their inks has been quite limited, and some have simply remained "SOLD OUT", perhaps seemingly forever. That's the way the sushi roll falls apart. The five inks in the "Jellyfish" series were/are: Chrysaora helvola "Yanagikurage" — an orange ink Porpita porpita — a blue ink Thysanostoma thysanura "Purple jellyfish" — a purple/red-violet ink Mastigias papua "Kite jellyfish"— a pink ink Aequorea victoria — a light green ink Recently I decided to check the Kingdom Note site, and found a few of these inks and their Crustacean cousins available. The writing samples shown there are decidedly unimpressive, seemingly using a XF nib. This would probably be fine if you were going to write Japanese characters, but many chasers of ink seem to want to use it in medium to broad to stub nibs and go to town with it. So there were few takers here when they came out. But I decided to take the plunge. The orange, blue, and purple inks were available. This is a review of the orange ink, my first orange! Just fyi, the stash of this ink KN had is sold out, but it is listed as "in negotiations". Perhaps that means they're trying to have Sailor make more. One can always hope so. The ink now comes in a standard Sailor Jentle box with a custom sticker pasted on the front. The bottle is standard Sailor Jentle with the dumb insert. The images of the box and bottle taken with iPhone4. As always, I test inks on papers I use and these are Mohawk via Linen=MvL, Hammermill 28 lb inkjet paper=Hij, and Tomoe River=TR. The images of the reviews taken with a Nikon Coolpix P50, so a bit dated, but it seems to do better than the iPhone in representing the ink color. My basic view is I liked this ink. I'd stayed away from orange inks fearing they would be overly bright or too light. This ink definitely was neither. This ink didn't seem to be "less saturated" per se than other Sailor inks. It's certainly a very reasonable good ink with very good flow and lubrication, some shading from light to darker orange. A bit slow drying on the MvL, but quite fast on the inkjet paper. I didn't notice any problems with hard starts, and the like, and it cleaned out of the syringe-filler pen I used quite easily. So I'm glad I got this ink and am not disappointed. ps I forgot to do a waterfastness test on this ink. Sorry. The poem here is from Robert Burns. From the ink drop on a paper towel it appears that the ink is made up of an orange and either a yellow, or a very light yellow-green. It's quite hard to tell. I think a yellow even though in the picture you could imagine it's yellow-green.