- 18 hours ago
Thinking about buying an anime body pillow? Wouldn't be caught dead with one? Either way, come learn about the Japanese dakimakura industry and the grassroots artists who power it! Learn how to avoid bootlegs, where to find & bid on legitimate covers, tips for taking care of your pillow, and what it's like to commission your own design.
This panel was presented at Nan Desu Kan in 2024. Follow along with the slideshow here: https://ndk2024-daki-panel.nots.co
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E-Mail: jacob@nerdonthestreet.com
This panel was presented at Nan Desu Kan in 2024. Follow along with the slideshow here: https://ndk2024-daki-panel.nots.co
---
Anime blog: https://mountains.moe
Discord server: https://mountains.moe/discord
Subreddit: https://reddit.com/r/nerdonthestreet
Facebook page: https://facebook.com/NerdOnTheStreet
Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/NOTS_Network
E-Mail: jacob@nerdonthestreet.com
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00All right, cool. Welcome everyone to the fluffy world of Dakimakura collecting, our panel about
00:19anime body pillows. Glad they let you all in finally. Quick show of hands, who in here already
00:25owns a Dakimakura, at least. Okay. And then the rest of you don't, so it looks like about
00:30half and half. I was really glad we were able to do this panel at NDK this year because Dakimakuras
00:35are something I think is kind of misunderstood in a lot of both the anime fandom and just
00:39in general, because Dakimakuras are a niche of a niche, right? Anime has been becoming
00:44more mainstream over the past couple of decades, and it's getting more and more accepted, but
00:48people who own Dakimakuras, you know, even within the anime fandom, there's kind of an
00:52image that you have, right? If you don't own one already, think of somebody who would
00:56own a Dakimakura. Who are you thinking of? You thinking of, like, someone like that guy
01:01walking down the street with one? You might be thinking of someone who has multiple of
01:05them. You know, this person has three on their bed. Where do they sleep, right? Just makes
01:10you wonder. This one's even worse because you can see it extends into the hallway. You know,
01:16some people make three course meals and share them with their Dakimakuras, right? Not just
01:20once, but, you know, multiple times. Or if you're particularly cheap, you can just straight
01:25up take them out to McDonald's. And then you got the people who collect these things, right?
01:32This person, this was a Reddit post. They said it was titled 2023 year-end collection, 151
01:38total covers, six not pictured. They were able to fit 145 in there, but those last six, they
01:43just couldn't squeeze into the photos. So why do people do this with all of this stigma
01:48around it? Why do people get into this? It's because Dakimakuras and Dakimakura covers
01:52are a form of art. And they are, you know, they're a unique medium, just like any other
01:57medium of art in anime. So let's talk a little bit. Absolutely. Let's talk about what is a
02:04Dakimakura, just for the half of you who came in here sort of blind and are wanting to learn
02:07a little bit about them. So the etymology of the word Dakimakura, we've got the Japanese
02:13verb daku actually means to hug. And if you look at the kanji for that, the radicals are fingers
02:17and wrap. So it means to hug or to embrace. The last character, makura, that's pillow. So the
02:24radicals don't really line up for that one. Japanese doesn't always work that well, but
02:27it translates into hug pillow literally, or body pillow, like we often call them here in English.
02:32And just talking about the form and function of your typical Dakimakura, the standard height
02:37for a regular collectible Dakimakura is going to be 160 centimeters. There are also 150 centimeter
02:44covers that you can find. Those are usually bootlegs. I'm going to talk quite a bit about
02:48bootlegs here because it's a lot of people when they get into this hobby, they get into
02:52it by either accidentally purchasing a bootleg or coming close to doing that. But yeah, the
02:58standard is, like I said, 160 height, 50 centimeter width is the normal collectible size. The weight
03:04ranges anywhere between 3.6 kilograms and 6.5 kilograms. They can get quite heavy. It's about
03:098 to 14 pounds. Still much lighter than a real person, of course. And you can see there are
03:14some other sizes. You know, you can get down to like 3 foot mini Dakimakuras. If you're walking
03:18around to the vendor hall at MDK, I was actually pleasantly surprised this year. There are a
03:22lot of legit 160 centimeter covers out there. You're also going to see some that are smaller.
03:26Those, you know, they might not be bootlegs. They can be official merchandise, but they're
03:30not what Dakimakura collectors would typically consider your standard form factor for. They're
03:35more just for show. Sometimes the covers don't come off of those. So yeah, talking about Dakimakuras,
03:51before we get into the covers, just the actual pillows themselves and why you might want to
03:56use them. They've got some posture benefits and just health benefits when you're sleeping.
04:00It can help prevent tossing and turning if you're using one of these when you're sleeping. It can
04:03help keep your spine and hips aligned. If you're someone who sleeps on your side a lot, you know,
04:07you're normally twisting around. This kind of helps keep you straight. They provide firmness
04:12to lean on to when you're sleeping, but they're still very lightweight since they're pillows.
04:15They're very comfortable. And they also usually have a cool temperature since, you know, the stuffing.
04:19It depends on what kind of stuffing you've got and what kind of cover you've got. But yeah, I wanted
04:23to talk about the actual pillows separately from the covers, because even if you're somebody who doesn't
04:27necessarily want a waifu or a husbando on your bed at home, you can still use a Dakimakura.
04:31The inner pillow is usually sold separately for these, you know, collectible ones, because
04:36you don't want to have to replace the inner pillow every time you want to change out the look.
04:40And you also, you know, anytime that you want to wash the outer cover, you also don't want to
04:43have to replace the inner. But you also want to be able to replace the inner when it wears out without
04:47losing all of your favorite covers for it. So this is what it looks like when you order one of
04:52these online. They come kind of vacuum sealed, and it was folded in half, as you can see. They come with
04:57some extra stuffing a lot of the time, so you can kind of adjust it or top it up once it starts to
05:02wear out. Talking about different types of the stuffing inside of pillows, there's a few different
05:08options. These are from a Western website called Dakimakuri. And this is one of the great websites that
05:12you can go online and order legit Dakimakura stuff here in the States. We're going to talk about how to
05:19get stuff from Japan in a little bit. But this is one of the easiest ways to get an actual pillow,
05:23is Dakimakuri. And they've got four different types of or four different selections of the
05:28stuffing there. So they've got descriptions. You know, they used to sell a few different weights,
05:33the same type of stuffing just by putting different amounts of stuffing into it. At this point,
05:37they've developed different blends of the fabric that goes into the stuffing that lets them make
05:42them heavier without altering how much it's actually in there. So yeah, the two inner pillow sellers
05:49you're going to see here in the US are Dakimakuri and Kudli Octopus. We're also going to talk about
05:54those for covers later. But again, if you're just looking for a pillow, either of these are
05:58reputable options. Honestly, people say the Dakimakuri options are just as high quality as
06:04Japanese options or very, very close. Kudli Octopus, they're just, they're more expensive and they
06:08don't have as many options for their weights and stuff. So I haven't heard as much about those.
06:12But yeah, there are also Japanese inner pillows you can get. ANJ is one of the Japanese Dakimakuri
06:19brands. They make the inner pillows. They also make a lot of covers. There's also a more budget
06:24option called Komodo. As you can see, there's different products that they both offer. You can
06:31get fluffier, heavier, lighter, squishier pillows. Yeah, I'm not going to go into quite everything here.
06:38We got kind of cut off, so I'm flying through the beginning here kind of quickly. But yeah,
06:43like I said, I wanted to point out that if you don't want an actual anime cover on your pillow,
06:47I would still highly encourage you. These have helped me sleep better. And they can also help
06:52other people sleep better. You can get these overcovers. You can put them on without an anime
06:57cover under them. Or you can put an anime cover there and put an overcover on. I've never had somebody
07:02come into my home and see my Dakimakuri with an overcover on and say, are you hiding something under
07:07there? Nobody's going to assume you're hiding something underneath a pillow cover, whether
07:12you are or not. I normally just lean it up against the bed. People lay back on it like
07:15it sort of turns the bed into a couch. So yeah, Cut the Octopus offers solid color covers
07:23with normal zippers. Dakimakuri is the company that offers the overcovers specifically. And
07:28the difference is the one that's meant to be an overcover, the zipper actually goes long
07:31ways. It makes it easy to quickly put on and off. So if you do have an anime cover, you can
07:36quickly throw that overcover on if you're having guests over and take it back off afterwards.
07:40Yeah, and the overcovers are a little bit rougher than a normal inner cover that you're going
07:47to get, but it's still perfectly comfortable for sleeping in my experience. So let's talk
07:52about the covers then, since this is an anime con. Who draws these covers? I'm going to break
07:56this down into two major categories. We're going to talk about Japanese Dakimakuri covers drawn
08:02by Japanese artists. Then I'm going to talk about basically everyone else. I'm going to call
08:05them Western, but it also includes Chinese artists or just artists elsewhere in the world
08:10who aren't part of the legit in-group of the Japanese Dakimakuri producers. So the Japanese
08:16covers, they are going to be produced a lot of times by dojin circles or independent artists.
08:22Sometimes anime companies will put out official merchandise, but a lot of the time they don't
08:25want to put this kind of product out. And depending on what the art is specifically, yeah, like
08:30that Love Life one there, that's not an official, that's a non-bootlet cover. That's a legit
08:35cover from an artist, but it's not endorsed by the company that makes Love Life, you know.
08:39It's Japanese.
08:40So yeah, Japan has this sort of dojin culture where, and this doesn't just go for dakimakuras,
08:46it also goes for like manga and lots of other things. But they sell these things usually
08:50at conventions in Japan. Kamiket is one of the bigger ones, but there are a few others. And they're
08:56usually going to only have one variant. If you're looking at a Japanese dakimakura cover,
09:00there's going to be one type. You can see over here the blonde there, Lily Sato from
09:04Karawa Shoujo. I've got two outfits of her that normally doesn't happen with Japanese covers.
09:08Since they're selling these at conventions, they need to have these printed in limited quantities
09:12before they go to the convention. And if they get multiple types, that basically doubles or triples
09:17how many they need to meet the minimum order requirements from the producers. And then they don't
09:22know who's going to pick, you know, what they're going to sell out of and what they're going to have
09:25extras of. So they normally just go with one version of the design if you're looking at those.
09:30And yeah, Japanese covers are great to get because if you get legit ones, they are very high quality
09:36materials. They're sourced in Japan. We're going to talk about the materials too. So over on the
09:41western side or the rest of the world side, still going to be individual artists or groups. The rest of
09:46the world is more likely to sell direct online and more likely to sell print on demand, which almost
09:52never happens with legit Japanese covers. I don't know if that's because we're a little bit farther
09:57away from the reach of Japanese IP laws or if that's just, you know, we're catering to a different
10:02market. We're not as many people are buying these. But yeah, western covers, since they do print on demand,
10:07they're more likely to have multiple variants since they don't have minimum order quantities.
10:10Now they do often use Chinese printers regardless of location. The big legit U.S.-based
10:16dakimakura organizers, they use factories in China since they are willing to print on demand,
10:22and the Japanese ones aren't typically. So the materials are going to be a little bit lower
10:26quality. If you get a legit one though, it is going to be very close. You know, much softer than like
10:31the over cover that I said. At the end of the day, it's a pillow. So, you know, it's going to be soft
10:35no matter what. So if you want to try getting an actual Japanese dakimakura cover, how do you find it?
10:42I want to give you an example. And if you guys forget everything else from this panel, this is the
10:46biggest point I wanted to make with this panel. So I'm going to zoom in a bit here. This is search
10:51results on Google for a Nico Yazawa dakimakura cover, character from Love Live. She's very well
10:57known. So this is 10 results on Google. This is the first page of search results for this dakimakura
11:02cover. Does anyone want to guess out of 10, how many of these links lead to bootlegs?
11:06Yeah. Every single one leads to a bootleg. I'm glad that was intuitive to all of you.
11:14You know, a lot of people just Googling for these things and looking to get their first one aren't
11:17going to realize that unless they do a little bit more research. So some of the ways you can spot
11:22bootlegs and just to kind of look at some of these, you know, the AliExpress options here,
11:28that's pretty obvious that it's probably not official. But, you know, some of these websites,
11:32AnimeDakimakuraPillow.com, you know, DakiHeaven.com, some of these sound like they could be actual
11:38businesses. But yeah, like I said, how you can spot that these are bootlegs? Bootlegs are going
11:43to offer you something called peach skin fabric. Now, most legit dakimakura covers use a type of
11:49fabric called two-way tricot. It has to do with the materials they use and how they stitch them
11:53together. Peach skin is a much cheaper fabric option. Legitimate websites are not going to even offer
12:00peach skin as an option. So if you're seeing that a website is trying to sell you peach skin,
12:04usually it's quite a bit cheaper. You know, a legit dakimakura cover, it can start anywhere,
12:10you know, 50 to 60 bucks. They can get up into multiple hundred dollar range if you're looking
12:15for like one that was kind of rare. But yeah, these websites, sometimes they offer like a 20 or
12:2030 dollar option and people say, oh, that's great. But it's peach skin and that's, you know, the fabric is
12:26not going to be as soft. It's not going to look as good, the printing on it. So yeah, it's inferior
12:32product. So bootlegs also, they're normally not going to name the artist of the design.
12:38If they have hundreds or thousands of designs available on their website and they're telling
12:43you we have all of these in stock, we will print on demand. There are a couple of exceptions that I'm
12:47going to talk about. Those are the Western companies. But in terms of the Japanese designs,
12:52if you're seeing a website that's got thousands of these things, chances are those are all stolen.
12:56You know, that's how they get that many designs. And then if they offer many different sizes of
13:00docis or weird sizes of covers, that's also a sign that you might be looking at a bootleg. Like I
13:05said, there are smaller sort of not meant to be slept with, but more just meant to be a novelty items,
13:13smaller dakimakuras that you can find that are sometimes official merchandise. So I'm not going to
13:18say that every single time it's not 160 by 50 centimeters, it's always a bootleg. But if they're
13:23offering 150 centimeters as an option, and if they're offering lots of other options, then it might be
13:28a bootleg. It's rare that an artist would like make one design that's meant to go on many different
13:33sizes of pillow. So yeah, this is one of those bootleg websites just to show you an example. We can tell
13:38that it's a bootleg. It's got a pretty generic listing. They've got no artist or release info.
13:43You can see they've got peach skin as the default fabric option. The default size is 40 by 120
13:50centimeters, but they do offer the common bootleg 50 as well as the actual 60 by 180. And you can see
13:57they do offer two-way tricot and they offer 60 by 180. It's still not going to be non-bootleg just
14:02because you pay for slightly better materials from the bootleggers. But yeah, this also, this website's
14:08got the classic. They've got a convenient sale, right, when you click on the website. You've got six
14:12days left to make your purchase before the sale ends, and then I'm sure they'll start another
14:16one right after, right? If we scroll down a bit to the product details, I thought it was funny.
14:21It says, buy the original artist of exquisite animation design, but it doesn't say who the
14:25original artist is. It could be anyone, like Da Vinci. Yeah. So yeah, if we click back to the
14:31Love Live category on that particular website, this is a, once again, bootlegger website, Sekume.
14:36They've got 71 cover options for one show, and they've got tons of other characters from other
14:42shows also listed. They've got thousands of stolen designs on their website. This is another website
14:47selling the same design that we just saw, which normally doesn't happen if you've got a legit
14:51print-on-demand setup. Typically, the print-on-demand seller is going to have exclusive rights to the
14:56artwork. So if you're seeing it all over the place, those are probably mostly bootlegs.
15:00So this one, same stolen design, another convenience sale that they're running.
15:03$8. That's a good deal. Still got the various non-standard sizes. We've still got the best
15:07material as peach skin. Yeah, and then the brand, it was funny. This was a website called
15:13Dake Makuta Store, and then they actually, in their product information, they list the brand
15:18of this cover as anime-dake-makutashop.com, which is another bootleg website. And it's actually no
15:24longer running anymore, so they may have just switched their domain name over and forgotten to update that.
15:29But yeah, if you just read through, you know, this is good stuff to know for any anime merchandise,
15:34or merchandise in general, how to avoid bootlegs, but it is especially prevalent with with body
15:39bills. Absolutely.
15:40When you're talking about the peach skin, does that apply to other anime things as well, or is that different?
15:47So like other anime products other than Dake Makuta covers? Yeah, so I mean your materials, if you think
15:54of like a figure, I don't know what different materials figures can be made out of, or like prints.
16:00It's absolutely possible that like if you get a bootleg, it's probably going to be inferior materials,
16:04but I don't know that it's so easy to spot as it is with Dake Makuta covers, since we've got names
16:10for these instead of just like it's this type of plastic versus this type of wood for figures.
16:14There's also high chances of mistakes being made on printing.
16:17Yeah.
16:17Like if you get a figure, the figure can have like a misprint or something like that,
16:21which is not that going to be common for an actual one. But for Dake Makuta, you're missing it not
16:26being that far as a print.
16:27Right. I don't think I covered that explicitly in here, but some Dake Makuta are a little bit
16:32explicit. You know, this is an all ages panel, but a lot of times bootleggers, when they go to
16:36de-sensor designs, because they won't be able to find the originals, they'll have to use sensor designs that they
16:41were able to scrape off of other websites, and they don't do a very good job uncensoring them.
16:44So you would do end up with like graphical artifacts and just weird quirks like that,
16:48similar to bootleg figures or anything else.
16:53Yeah. So this is just one other bootleg website, another crazy sale banner.
16:58Two different sizes listed for this cover. The previews are completely different for the different
17:01sizes, which doesn't make any sense if they're selling a single design. So that website's just
17:05kind of defying logic. The front and back characters here are entirely different character designs.
17:11Again, we've got base materials, peach skin, size is 150 centimeters. And then in the more related
17:18products, we've got the same stolen design in the middle as the other two websites that
17:22was a common one that came up. So let's talk about finding a legitimate source for design that's being
17:27bootlegged. And again, these are skills that will help you even if you're looking for other types of
17:30merchandise. But for DocuMarketas, let's say that you want that particular Nikko cover that we looked
17:35at on a couple different websites. The first thing that I would recommend doing is reverse image
17:39searching that image. Take a screenshot of the bootlegger's website, put it into Google. You can
17:43also try Bing. There are more specialized search engines like SauceNow is one that will try to look
17:48up anime images specifically. But it's a little bit more limited in terms of what websites that will
17:52turn up. Google and Bing are pretty good for just general stuff. So yeah, as you can see, when I did that
17:59with this particular design, Google returned. I did have to scroll because you can see that top row
18:04there that's kind of cut off. Those were all bootlegger websites or just other stuff.
18:08But eventually I got down to a, it's a Twitter archival website with some Japanese text and I
18:13happened to click into that. So you are going to have to go digging a little bit. So here on this
18:18random Twitter archiving website, underneath the questionable game ad, we've got some tweets with
18:23DocuMarketa Designs. One of the handles on those DocuMarketa Designs contains C104.
18:28And you may know if you see Japanese artists putting C and then a number in their Twitter
18:33handle, it probably means they're at a Kamaket convention. That was Kamaket 104 that off,
18:37yeah, that particular artist happened to be on. It was just last month and on August 11th and 12th.
18:44So those were recent tweets. But yeah, if we scroll down a bit, you can see this particular,
18:48I found the exact, I found tweets with the design that we were looking for. And the artist's name
18:53there is Yuta. I clicked through back to the original Twitter post and I, you know, you can just click
18:58translate on Twitter. And this artist is talking about their new front side of the body pillow cover
19:04is done, they say. So they, we can tell this is the person that drew this cover. So now you have
19:08the artist's name, which makes it a lot easier to actually find a legit copy of it if you want one.
19:13Now it's still going to be difficult because this thing, again, it's not offered for print on demand.
19:18It was offered for a limited time. If we go searching with the artist's name, I just searched the name
19:22of the character and then the name of the artist basically.
19:29Scroll down a little bit. I found them on an image board and I found another tweet that they
19:33had made about it. They've got a link to where they actually originally were selling this on a
19:37website called Airbox. But when I click through to that link, you can see I put it in there to see
19:42what they were saying because my Japanese isn't amazing. But when I click through to the link though
19:47that they were originally selling it on, we got an error message that says,
19:49you cannot use this page. So that website is long gone. That website appears to not even be
19:54selling anything anymore if we follow it back up to the root domain. So that's kind of a dead end
19:59there. A lot of the times, if you want a legit Japanese Dokumako to cover, you're going to have
20:05to go to third-party websites. And basically, you're getting them from people who are collectors
20:09or who are possibly scalpers, depending on how you look at it. You know, people go to these
20:16Kamiket conventions. Some people buy covers and they keep them for a while and then they sell
20:20them. Some people buy them and immediately sell them. It's difficult to know exactly who you're
20:24interacting with on the other side of the world. There's not much we can do about that
20:28if we're here, unless you're actually going to go to Japan and try to go to Kamiket yourself.
20:31But you're still not going to find a cover from the past if you go there. But there are places where
20:36you can go and people are reselling these things. And usually, they are unused when you're
20:40purchasing a Dokumako to cover. So I know it's a concern for some people. And you can't put these
20:47things through the watch. But yeah, normally, they're sealed when they're being collected and
20:50passed around by collectors. So the most common website that people use in this hobby is Yahoo Auctions
20:55Japan. Yahoo is still big in Japan, which is always crazy to look at. Their website looks just like it
21:02did 20 years ago here. And it's basically their version of eBay. They've got a lot of Dokumako
21:10stuff that gets passed around on Yahoo Auctions Japan. You are going to have to go through a
21:15proxy shipper if you want to use that website because Yahoo doesn't let you sign up for that
21:19division of their website without a Japanese address and phone number. And we can't get a Japanese
21:23phone number here without being there. Yeah?
21:25Baie is one of the best websites you can use for this example. Another website is whiteflabbit.com.
21:31Yeah, I've got a slide with some of the proxy shippers in a little bit. But yeah, another one, Rakuten is
21:36kind of an Amazon equivalent over there. So it's going to be more not auctions like you're going
21:42to get on Yahoo Auctions. But people selling used stuff still happens on that. You've also got
21:47trading shops. Some Dokumako does are sold on Mandrake, which is sort of a buy and sell trade
21:53company that operates in Japan. And then Mellon Books is another one that kind of uses that business
21:57model. So just taking a look at Yahoo Auctions Japan. So we're looking for that Nico cover,
22:02just the example. You want to try searching with the character and the show name in Japanese.
22:07If you try searching in English on this Japanese website, it's not always going to pick that up.
22:12Because the people selling on it don't always tag it with the English. So look up your character on
22:16your favorite anime's wiki page and find what the original Japanese ones and just copy and paste it
22:20into the search box. You can see it sort of worked here. We got some Love Live Takimakudas coming up.
22:26We can scroll down a little bit. We didn't find the particular Nico one that we're looking for. I went through a few
22:31pages of it and it just wasn't there, which happens because nobody happened to be selling it at this
22:35time. I also tried searching for the artist's name, Yuta, and you can see I am sort of on the right
22:39track because we've got a couple of Dakimakudas covers by Yuta listed there. So this is, you know,
22:46we've got the artist's name correct for someone who makes Dakimakudas. But at this point you have hit
22:52a little bit of a dead end and that can be really frustrating and it's one of the reasons why people are
22:55tempted to use those bootleg websites even though you shouldn't. Because it's so much easier to just buy
22:59something and have it printed and sent to you immediately. But you're not supporting the
23:02original artist if you do that. You're not helping their work retain its value and you're not getting
23:07the one that they handled themselves. So yeah, at this point what I would do if you were looking for
23:13that particular cover is you would return to this website every couple weeks or every couple months
23:17and search for it again and see if it pops up. You can also check out forums. r-dakimakudas on Reddit is
23:23a very active community and it's got people who scour the web for these things and also trade their own
23:29collections. So you can always make a post saying, hey, I'm looking for this particular cover. Does anyone
23:34know where I can find it or does anyone have one they might be willing to sell me? So yeah, these are some
23:39of those proxy shipping services. I went through this process one time for a Japanese cover. I used
23:43Remambo myself. We mentioned Baie. Some of these websites will not always let you buy things that
23:50are 18 plus. Some of them will cut you off from that. Remambo was one that happened to work for
23:55me for the particular cover I was looking at. But yeah, these are all websites. CD Japan has a proxy
24:00service. Aledo and Zen Market are other ones that I've heard of. But yeah, Baie is a very popular one too.
24:05So yeah, just a couple examples. This is a Remambo listing. So I searched Yahoo Auctions Japan using
24:13Remambo for Love Live covers. And I happened to find this particular cover that I just purchased
24:18off of someone from Reddit recently. This is another variation of it. So this was one of those rare
24:23cases where it's a Japanese cover, but it did have a couple variations that were produced. But yeah,
24:29we can also take a look at it. This is one that I actually, this is the first cover that I purchased
24:33when I was figuring out this whole, how this whole process worked. So you can see when you go to do
24:38this, it's going to ask you to put in a bid. Basically, if you're using one of these proxy
24:42websites, usually since it's an auction, you're going to have to charge up your account before
24:46you can actually place a bid because they don't want to win an auction and be responsible for paying
24:50and then have you disappear. So you need to pay up front and then you place the bid and it's going to
24:55tell you you're responsible for buying this if you win it, you know. And then after you win it,
25:00if you win it, and often with Daki Makita covers, fortunately, these things aren't typically hot
25:04button. Everybody's searching to get the same one at the same time. So pretty good chances if you do
25:08find it, you're going to be able to get it. But yeah, basically the proxy shipper is going to have
25:14them ship that within Japan to their warehouse and then you tell the shipper when you want to
25:19send that to you. And you can order multiple things to the same proxy shippers warehouse. Again,
25:23this is all stuff that applies to other anime merch as well. But yeah, when you're ready to do that,
25:29you tell them, go ahead and send it to me. Here's my address. You can see I actually put a comment
25:34in when I did this since it was my first time doing it. I wanted to make sure they left the
25:37original packaging from the domestic shipping intact. Oops. Because I was curious what that
25:42looks like. Yeah, you want to, can you grab like something? I don't know. No. Okay. All right. So yeah,
25:50I asked them to just repackage the domestic packaging inside of the international packaging. And they did that.
25:56You can see they sent me a box and inside the box I had the original envelope for this cover from
26:00Japan and then it started that. How do they do that? Do they not do that? It depends on the proxy
26:05shipping website. Some of them to try and save, like they're trying to help you by saving costs. You
26:10know, this was extra weight that they had to ship and extra size by leaving that envelope. So sometimes
26:14they'll try to be nice and unpack it and repack it for you. So that's the only reason I just asked them not to do that.
26:20This website should be charged by pounds and not the size of the objects because they already make
26:26the objects smaller for you. So it all goes by weight. For example, buying goes by weight. Another example
26:33they go by weight. So you want to spend extra money to make it cost more, but it makes it safer.
26:39Yeah. DocuShipping definitely does go by weight often. These covers, I had a question about whether they
26:45had sent me 150 or 160 centimeter covers when I first got one of them and they were able to confirm
26:51to me partially using the weight. They said, no, that's the weight of 160 centimeter cover. If it
26:55was 10 centimeters less, that would have been this other weight. Like they're very accurate with it.
27:00See, I'm sort of related to that. Once you get the cover on the bottom right there, that's the sticker
27:04that was on that particular ducky. You're normally going to have a sticker. If you're getting it in the
27:07original sealed bag, it's going to tell you the product code, possibly some information about what
27:12fabric that it's got. So yeah, that's how you get a cover from Japan. It's like I said, it's a lot
27:21of the same stuff for any other anime merch or anything else. If you're trying to search for it from
27:25a foreign country, yeah, auction websites and things like that. But I wanted to go through it because
27:30if you're just getting into this and Googling body pillows, you know, a lot of that would not be
27:34intuitive. I also do want to talk about if that's all too much, if you don't want to go through waiting
27:39that long, you know, to possibly get the cover that you want. The legitimate Western print-on-demand
27:44websites that are out there for getting original covers. And these are basically the two options
27:50that we have right now here in the West. Daki Makuri and Kuddle the Octopus, they are both reputable
27:55websites. They both, you know, they pay their artists. They both take commissions from individuals
28:00if you want to commission one of the artists they work with. Now, I do want to note some independent
28:04Western artists might not be on either of these. They might be going through Booth or other general
28:08merch websites. They might be selling themselves if they've figured something else out for production.
28:13But just in terms of you as a consumer going out and getting it, these are the two websites you'd
28:17want to go to if you want something print-on-demand. So yeah, this is an example of a Daki Makuri
28:23cover. You can see they've got at the top there the artist illustrated by Moki and they've got a link
28:28there to where you can get that artist's other designs and their social media and stuff.
28:33And same thing on Kuddle the Octopus. You can see down in the description there it says artist
28:36bro rep. And yeah. Let's see. Yeah, so Daki Makuri, just for an example, they also partner with
28:48companies who, you know, especially like Western VTuber companies or companies like that that might
28:52want their own Daki Makuri cover designs.
28:55HoloLive.
28:55Yeah, HoloLive doesn't partner with Daki Makuri in particular. But yeah, some,
28:59I think V Shoujo partners with Daki Makuri and some other companies do. So they sell some like actual
29:04official merch that's official in every sense and not just in the sense of getting it from the artist.
29:08Bless you.
29:09Cut the Octopus. Cut the Octopus, like I mentioned, they've got a commission service and I actually
29:16used that for the Lily Daki here. You can see I worked with the artist and it's really fun to do
29:21that. It is a bit expensive. The whole thing was about $17.50 when I was done with it. But I got like
29:27six different variants of the design. And yeah, you get to go back and forth. They give you the sketches.
29:32You can point out if there's any, if they're going in a direction that wasn't quite what you wanted,
29:36you can tell them. And you get to see it progress from the initial rough sketches all the way to a
29:40rendered final product. Yeah, I wanted to show you this. This is a picture I took in my backyard from
29:45the deck of the two covers next to each other. I'm sure my neighbors are wondering what the heck I was
29:51doing after taking these photos. I wanted to show you this though, because like I said, these were
29:55actually both 160 centimeter covers. If you'll notice, the Hanukkah one there is, it looks much longer.
30:01That's why I inquired with the person who sent it. I said, hey, are you sure you didn't accidentally
30:04send me the shorter ones? And the deal here is the fabric will actually stretch out if you've
30:10got these on pillows and are using them. Like I said, some people just collect dakimakatas and they
30:14don't, or dakimakata covers, and they don't actually put them on pillows. If you buy a used one, typically
30:20people in the hobby when they're trading, they will tell you if they've ever put it on a pillow or not.
30:25And that doesn't even mean they used it and slept with it. That just means they put it on the pillow to look at.
30:28Just because the act of doing that does stretch the fabric out a little bit.
30:32The Hanukkah one here is one that was actually on a pillow for months and I put it through the wash
30:35several times and things like that. So that all obviously degrades the fabric and everything.
30:39I did that with this one because it was printed on demand. So I could always get another one if I
30:43wanted to. Those original Japanese ones, people don't actually use them as often. There's no reason
30:48why you shouldn't. If you find a design that you really like, you know, they're there to be enjoyed.
30:52That's the purpose. But some people do collect them because there is a limited amount that will
30:56ever be out there. But yeah, that's why the Hanukkah cover on the right there is so much longer and
31:03also why it's partially discolored. You don't notice it when you're just looking at one cover,
31:07but when you put them next to a brand new one, then notice it a bit more.
31:12All right. And then last slide here, we're going to talk about fabric types.
31:16So the major Japanese fabric brands, if you're looking for one of those used Japanese covers,
31:20or not used, but you know, legit original Japanese covers. ANJ, like I said, is one of the big
31:25documentated companies. Basically, one of the best fabrics you can get is called Lyktron. And there's
31:31a couple different ways you can spell that because the original spelling was Japanese and we don't know
31:34how to transliterate it here into English definitively. But yeah, they've also got other brands.
31:41Lyktra is another option that ANJ has. And I listed some other brands here.
31:45All of these brands are basically selling variations of that fabric called Two-Way Tricot,
31:50which is typically a polyester, polyethylene blend. And the different manufacturers,
31:56basically they're going to distinguish themselves by what that particular blend is
31:59and how they're putting them together. But Two-Way Tricot, it's a great fabric,
32:03it's stretchy, and it fits snug beyond the pillow. One thing I didn't mention earlier,
32:07the inner pillow itself, you really do need at least an over cover if you're going to use it.
32:11It's not like a head pillow where it's kind of just a normal fabric,
32:14if you take the cover off. These daki pillows, they're typically a very rough fabric on the inside,
32:19and they're rough so that the covers, when you put them on, don't slide around. They're supposed
32:22to stay sort of oriented to match the pillow. So yeah, some shops do have proprietary fabrics,
32:29especially here in the West. We've got Cagli Octopus and Daki Makati,
32:33their own fabrics that they work with their producers for. Yeah, and then we've got,
32:38yeah, Pixiv is a common, it's a Japanese website, but people here in the West can also use it. And
32:43they've got their own fabric. Pixiv Factory fabric is actually also used for booth commissions and the
32:48HoloLive official covers that they offer through their own merch store. They commissioned that out
32:52through the Pixiv Factory. It's also an official website where you can buy stuff straight from
32:57the proxy. It's a proxy website or also being the official website? Yeah, you're saying it could
33:02be official for some designs and then they offer proxies for other ones. Yeah. So yeah, I know I kind
33:08of flew through that just because everything is kind of running late today, didn't want to make that
33:12worse. There are a couple of pages of links here. I'm not going to read all the links to you, but there's a
33:16QR code if you want those links. You can just scroll to the end of the presentation and I've got some
33:21different guides and stuff. So yeah, I hope this introduced new things to some of you. Does anyone
33:26have any questions or discussion topics? Yeah? I found that it's a pretty good option. If you can find
33:32a Western artist who you like, it's a good option compared to getting an official Japanese artist
33:39because they're in such high demand, but I found it really challenging to actually obtain it. Because
33:43like you said, you can get from sculptors and you really have to be able to sit and sculptors,
33:47as many of us can't be able to talk to an artist, then that's what I've been made. Have one made.
33:52Yeah, and it depends on the artist if they're going to be able to have one made or if they're
33:56just going to give you the design. And like Cut the Octopus and Document Cutty will print designs if
34:01you've got one that the artist has allowed you to use. But yeah, that's a good point. It's both in
34:06terms of demand and in terms of communication. It can be easier to work with Western artists versus
34:10Japanese ones. When I was buying that Japanese cover, I actually, when I found the Yahoo Auctions listing,
34:14I tried messaging the artist asking if they could tell if it was a bootleg or not. Like I said,
34:20can you tell if this is legitimate? And I tried to say it in Japanese, you know, used several
34:24different translation websites to try and cross-check and they just didn't even reply to me, you know.
34:28Which is very common. Japanese artists, they get, you know, stuff from people who aren't in Japan,
34:33don't speak Japanese. They're like, this person, I'm not getting any money from them. I'm not going to
34:37waste my time on them just because so many people are messaging them. But yeah, Western artists can be a
34:43a much different experience. It is also interesting to consider, um, some commission, you know,
34:47the artists that are in those circles of Dakimakuri and Karoli Octopus, they are Dakimakura commissioners
34:53regularly. Um, they kind of have a style and they know how to draw those. Um, you know, there's,
35:00there's not a lot you can do in terms of poses on a Dakimakura cover. You know, there are some
35:04different poses you can do, but you kind of have to be at least in a straight line. Um, and so they,
35:09they can play around with accessories and stuff, but it's a really interesting medium compared to
35:12other anime art, just because you are a little bit more constricted, um, with how you're portraying
35:18the characters. Um, any other questions or, yeah? Well, that's not much of a question, but also a
35:24nugget of wisdom. Yeah. If you know the artist's name, you can also try checking on Etsy. Uh, they
35:29recently started using Etsy more for international shipping. Interesting. So that's, uh, I grabbed one that
35:34was, uh, actually selling on Etsy. Cool. What was it? Uh, personally, I'd rather not say.
35:41It's all right. But it, but it is legit, so. Yeah. Cool. That's good to know.
35:48Can you talk about how you wash that one and it's drenched and all that stuff? Yeah.
35:52Is there a better way to maybe clean them? Um, so yeah, what they say, you know, you're getting,
35:58if you're actually sleeping with these things, then they're going to get dirty over time. And, um,
36:04yeah. And so the, I mean, the gentlest way to wash something is to properly hand wash it,
36:09which like, I don't even know how to wash cloth by hand. So like, I've got a washing machine. What
36:13I personally do is I put them in the wash. I turn it to tap cold. I put it on delicates mode. Um,
36:19and then for drying, drying is where a lot of the wear comes in. So I just hang it up to dry in the
36:24basement. Yeah. It's things like that. Um, my, my housemate happens to have like a line in the basement
36:28already. So I am not a detergent connoisseur. I use Tide pods. Like I'm a, I never got past the
36:38college level of doing laundry. So yeah. Um, but yeah, it's a good question. It's something you would
36:47want to research if you want to wash them. Like I said, if you really care about it,
36:50some people, when they're looking, they get two or three. So, you know, you've got the
36:53one to use, one to trade, and one to, you know, that thing. Um, but yeah. Uh, anything else? Yeah.
37:00I just wanted to say that one of the best resources for me for finding like anything is um,
37:07going on my figure collection, and you can look up like the character, and then you can like just go
37:13to the dot category. Yeah, filter by linens. Yeah. Yeah, I did that for that Maki one. That can be helpful.
37:20Um, and then on the item page, it will have like the release date of the artist. Yeah.
37:25I know I've heard from some people, and I found some designs that aren't on my figure collection.
37:31It could just be because it's a user contributed website. They're not on there yet. I've also heard
37:34things that they used to have different standards for like, it had to have been at a convention. If
37:39they were just offering it through their booth, then like it used to not be allowed to put it on
37:43there. So some stuff might be missing. Um, but no, that's a great point. Um, if you, if you just don't have
37:48a lead, put the character in and see if anything comes up. Yeah. Um, yeah. Anything else?
37:55Um, I did write, I've written several very detailed, oh, uh, I'll get, I will answer it. I've written
38:01several very detailed blog posts that go into a little bit more depth about both getting the
38:05Japanese cover and commissioning the Western one on my blog, mountains.moe, if you want to
38:09um, check that out for more info. Yeah, what are you? Who are you? Who's your wife? Who's your wife?
38:14Uh, what are any dakimoras? Well, I commissioned, uh, the Lily Sato dakimakura, so I guess she would be
38:22mine. Uh, Karawa Shoujo is a free visual novel, um, if anybody doesn't know about it. Enough about
38:27waifus. Let's talk about husbandos. Now, there was a Gojo dakimora going for $15 for a cover in the Artist
38:35Valley. Now, that's a steal of a deal. I think they are out now, yeah. No, he was in line. The
38:41person in front of him got it. He was trying to convince them not to get it, just so that he
38:44could buy it and bring it to this panel. I'm glad they got it because he wouldn't have used it other
38:48than this panel, but they will hopefully enjoy it. He looked jacked. Yeah, um, so yeah, we're,
38:54we are just a, anything else? Like, they're going to kick us out in a minute here, but any, anything else?
38:59Well, we can hang out outside too, so feel free to stop us if you see us around. Basically,
39:03it's easier to get the fake stuff, but don't do it because that's not cool.
39:06It does not help the artist. Yeah. Uh, thank you everyone for coming. Thank you.
39:10Thank you. Thank you.
39:20Thank you. We hope you win stuff. Yay.
39:24Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want to, I want to help them get back on track.
39:28Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, how do I show you the like 4chan made?
39:34It is the, uh, disability. Yeah, that's awesome.
39:36It's a very, oh, you fight? No, but my friend who, I, I highly recommend it.
39:41Yeah, I got it. It totally will. Yeah. It's now Steam.
39:44Well, the Steam version is, well, Steam version is censored, which I don't just say that like
39:48it's weird, but it affects the story. No, no, no, no. I don't think I'm going to get back on track.
39:54No, I'll check it out. Uh, wait, so where do you need to look it at?
39:56Uh, yeah, it's their official website. Okay, cool. Thank you. It's a great panel.
40:00Thank you. It's basically the Fate and Tsukatime remakes. They took away the, those scenes.
40:05I haven't seen Fate. Uh, yeah, yeah. Wait, what was your name?
40:10My name's Jacob. Nice. That was awesome. Yeah, yeah. Super appreciate it. Have a great time.
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