- Source:
- © Nishizuka em / @doxxxem
- Tags:
- caterpillars / Comic Days / entomophilia / Horror / Illustration / Insects / invertebrates / japanese illustrator / Kodansha / loli / Manga / Morning KC / Nishizuka em
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The Enticing Entomophilia of Nishizuka em
Some people, especially in Japan, have a particularly strong aversion to caterpillars of all sorts. If you're one of them, you may not enjoy the images below. And yet, with their striking spots and stripes, and their multi-colored designs, caterpillars can be beautiful to behold. With a stretch of the imagination, maybe you could think of them as cute and endearing, the way they move around slowly with their puffy bodies and tiny feet. And if you're brave or if you're actually an entomophile at heart, you could even consider cuddling up with a giant caterpillar or wrapping one around your neck like a scarf.
Nishizuka em has perhaps entertained such thoughts. A watercolor illustrator and manga artist with a love of invertebrates, she creates beautiful, aesthetic compositions, combining girls and brooding young men with caterpillars but also butterflies, moths, bees, cicadas and other more exotic and colorful insects, carnivorous pitcher plants, mushrooms and even mollusks, jellyfish and other denizens of the sea. She's also fond of the horror genre, as you may discover in some of her illustrations and manga works.
Illustrations
With Nishizuka em's gracious permission, we have reproduced a few images from her collection below.
Portraits
With permission from © Nishizuka em
With permission from © Nishizuka em
Caterpillars
With permission from © Nishizuka em
With permission from © Nishizuka em
With permission from © Nishizuka em
Hospital
With permission from © Nishizuka em
With permission from © Nishizuka em
The Cycle of Life
With permission from © Nishizuka em
With permission from © Nishizuka em
Mushrooms
With permission from © Nishizuka em
With permission from © Nishizuka em
Exotic Insects and Parasites
With permission from © Nishizuka em
With permission from © Nishizuka em
With permission from © Nishizuka em
Mollusks
With permission from © Nishizuka em
With permission from © Nishizuka em
If you would like to see more of Nishizuka em's alluring illustrations, please see her collection on Pixiv and follow her Twitter account to get updates on her activities.
Nishizuka em's latest manga, Mushikago Kitan 蟲籠奇譚 (Insect Cage Tales) is currently serialized on Kodansha's online manga platform Comic Days (you can read the first two chapters here), and is available in published collections. Volume 2 just went on sale yesterday, Nov. 14, so if you're in Japan now, you're likely to find it on display in bookshops. You can also buy it on Amazon.co.jp, in print or Kindle versions.
If you're planning on being in Tokyo in early to mid-December, you can see Nishikzuka em's art in person at the following exhibition: