左之トリウムへようこそ
Welcome To The Sano-torium
A Celebration of Sanosuke Sagara Doujinshi!
Sanosuke

UPDATED 12/03/2003

Have a cool Yule, and see you again after January 4!

Who, me--obsessed with Sanosuke Sagara? Could be!

My fondness for Sanosuke had been quietly brewing for years, ever since I saw about the first half of the Rurouni Kenshin anime series in 1996-97. Something seems to draw me to secondary characters--especially those with an attitude that can be photographed a mile away--and Sano shot to the fore of my pack of favorites.

Unfortunately, in mid-'97 our local Japanese video rental shop stopped carrying TV anime, abruptly ending my monthly RK fix. I snapped up the manga tankoubons and all the CDs and nifty knick-knacks I could find...yet when it came to doujinshi, I seemed to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time; either the book had little to do with Sano, or it looked like it was drawn by Mrs. Michiguchi's third-grade class. So I contented myself with the hope that someday, glorious someday, I might get the chance to do some serious searching for worthwhile doujinshi featuring Sanosuke. They had to be out there!

In August 2000, my lifetime dream of being able to work in Japan came true at long last. Two weeks after I moved here, a friend invited me to a doujinshi event in Osaka. There, hurrying down an aisle toward our meeting point, I got shin splints lurching to an instant stop when I glimpsed a drawing of you-know-who looking you-know-how...and "someday" had arrived!

That sent my long-simmering fondness for Sano boiling over into a crazed quest, journeying to doujinshi shops and events around Japan...and having wonderful luck at it! The goodies are enshrined in my tatami-floored "Sano-torium" (a room I pray the landlord will never check in on...!), where I can sit at the kotatsu enjoying doujinshi and the art on the walls, and find some distraction from worrying about my loved ones and dog on the other side of the planet. In March 2001 the Sano-torium even got a lively live-in mascot: a pet Hokkaido squirrel named Sano--complete with his namesake's spiky 'do, thanks to his wildly tufty ears! (I haven't yet taken a picture of the little guy, but in the meantime check out Ezobon, a Hokkaido squirrel who looks almost exactly like him, by clicking here!) All in all, the timing really could not have been better for this obsession to roar from simmer to super-nova.

That doesn't keep me from feeling silly--even guilty--about it. But what the heck, you've got to do whatever gets you through the night...so I'm going to shrug "Just can't help myself!" and plow ahead with this virtual version of The Sano-torium, in the hopes that others might find the doujinshi information useful! Included are: