Sailor Kingdom Note "crustacean Series" Cambaroides Japonica

[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 "Crustacean" series were/are:

Cambaroides japonica "Zarigani" — a blue ink

Uca arcuata "Fiddler crab" — a light olive green ink

Birgus latro "Coconut crab" — a dark brown ink

Marsupenaeus japonicus "Prawn"— a light brown ink

Macrocheira kaempferi "Giant crab" — a light red ink

This species is listed as "threatened" in Japan.

http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/153751/0

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. Only the blue and light olive green 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.

I couldn't find anything wrong with the ink but it didn't excite me. From my original notes I liked the Jellyfish blue more. Other than the waterfastness of this ink, I'm sure there are inks with the same look as this one.

The ink blot of a paper towel indicates that this is a single dye formulation.

The waterfastness test showed this ink to be completely water resistant. Which was a great surprise.

[tealeaf_egg]

I like this ink. Not sure if I was primed via the Crustacean name, but it really reminds me of lobster blood. In a good way.

[visvamitra]

Not especially exciting I think

[Jackokun]

I like the shading, but is not the type of ink that I would reach for on a given day, I dont dislike it, but is not a favorite shade

[amberleadavis]

Thank you! I'm inking up with these.

[inkstainedruth]

Thanks for the review.

It looks like a pretty color, and the water resistance is a nice bonus -- but this does not seem sufficiently different from other inks in that color range to justify the difficulty in getting it. If someone got me a bottle, I would used it; but I don't think I'd go out of my way to get it for myself unless it was at a tremendously good price. Which I'm not holding my breath about....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

edited for formatting issues

Edited December 1, 2016 by inkstainedruth

[EdeIstein88]

the color is quite nice, and also water resistance,,