Sailor Kingdom Note "jellyfish Series" Porpita Porpita

[white_lotus]

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.

[visvamitra]

This one doesn't look particularly thrilling

[lapis]

I find it more thrilling than the magenta creature. Also, it looks more like the jellyfish I've seen.

[Ghost Plane]

Nope.

[saskia_madding]

They were out of this one when I went to buy some inks, and I'm torn about whether or not I'm disappointed. It looks nice, but I feel as though I have a few inks from Sailor in this coloiur range.

 

Either way, thanks for the review!

[haruka337]

I'll walk on by--not for me.

[gylyf]

Glad I didn't succumb to temptation on this one - not my kind of blue at all... thanks for the review!

[lgsoltek]

Seems to be somewhat greener than Entoloma virescens? I adore EV but this one doesn't look as attractive.

[white_lotus]

It's only slightly greener than Entoloma virescens. Nearly indistinguishable in person.

[inkstainedruth]

Thanks for the review. This doesn't look too bad, but I've been on a turquoise ink exploration of late and I can get inks that are similar for less money and which are a whole lot easier to get hold of....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Tinjapan]

Though living in Japan and a weekly visitor to KN, I have not been able to get a bottle of this ink. However, when you buy a used pen from KN, they fill the pen with the ink of your choice. I have a Delta Seawood with a medium steel nib and a Delta Capri Marina Grande with a medium 14K nib with this ink.

 

It does not inpress me in the Seawood but has wonderful shading with the Capri.

[Mew]

Though living in Japan and a weekly visitor to KN, I have not been able to get a bottle of this ink. However, when you buy a used pen from KN, they fill the pen with the ink of your choice. I have a Delta Seawood with a medium steel nib and a Delta Capri Marina Grande with a medium 14K nib with this ink.

 

It does not inpress me in the Seawood but has wonderful shading with the Capri.

Talk to the staff, they are really nice. Since you are a weekly visitor, I'm sure they'll be able to arrange this for you.

 

I had requested them for 3 colours and all of them were delivered to me when they had all 3 of them.

And I haven't been there more than 2 times.

 

Edit: about the ink itself, nah. I like darker colours with few exceptions, and this won't be one of those exceptions. Kingdom note tally stays at 4/25.

 

Edit 2: thank you for the review.

Edited September 2, 2016 by Mew

[amberleadavis]

Thank you so much for sharing!!

[estie1948]

Thanks for the reviews. I am trying to find a blue ink to use to break out of my life time use of black or blue-black inks. However, this ink seems too light a blue for my taste. I guess it is a good thing I am going to pass on it since it is so hard to come by.

 

Thanks again for the good review.

 

-David (Estie).

[amberleadavis]

Though living in Japan and a weekly visitor to KN, I have not been able to get a bottle of this ink. However, when you buy a used pen from KN, they fill the pen with the ink of your choice. I have a Delta Seawood with a medium steel nib and a Delta Capri Marina Grande with a medium 14K nib with this ink.

 

It does not inpress me in the Seawood but has wonderful shading with the Capri.

 

 

Show us the ink! (please)