12 Color Girls is a collaboration doujinshi between Spice and Wolf light novel illustrator Ayakura Juu and an artist I was previously unfamiliar with, Daizan. This full color collection features girls making use of various everyday school supplies like staplers, paper, tape and so on, in rather creative ways.

When I bought it, I didn't realize it was a collaborative effort, due to the Toranoana page only listing Ayakura Juu as the artist, and only showing illustrations by Ayakura as the sample pictures. While I would have liked it all to have been his illustrations, Daizan manages to hold his own as well with a different but strangely complementary style. I should also mention, I'm not sure of the gender of these two artists so I just default on "he."

The doujinshi is 16-pages (if you count the covers), staple-bound and B5 in size. Above, only the center images are by Ayakura Juu, the illustrations on the left and right of both rows are by Daizan. Even though all the girls have school supplies with them, they're also color themed, hence the title 12 Color Girls. Though it may seem that they're repeating, colors like blue and light blue, as well as yellow and yellow-ish green were each included as individual colors. Another favorite, red and antique red. I'm guessing neither artist wanted to sacrifice the aesthetic factor in using odd colors.

Above are my two favorites, both by Ayakura Juu. The way the girls are using their school supplies as weapons just had a very Bakemonogatari style to them. I also have a feeling the girl with the box cutters wearing a hoodie isn't a coincidence...

I'm a big fan of Ayakura Juu's's work, so I'm glad to finally have a color collection of his art work. Discovering Daizan was an added bonus. There are still copies on Toranoana too, if this is your kind of collection ^^

• Title: 12 Color Girls
• タイトル: 12 COLOR GIRLS
• Release Date: 12/31/2009
• Pages: 16 (including covers)
• Buy: Toranoana, Mandarake