After pressing under the textbooks for the past couple of days, I took out StarDust and found it to be as flat as Suika’s chest with no defect. Before even opening the manga (doujin manga), I noticed that paper quality was………pretty good. Good paper, definitely. It’s my first printed doujin work, so I really have nothing to base that judgment on except the licensed manga that I have. But to describe it as best as I can, the cover is about the same kind of cardboard cover that you would have on most manga except with better finish. Not to mention that StarDust was about the size of a magazine. The paper is also quite smooth. I’m not sure if it’s the same as the mythical “manga paper” that Wong talked about at one point, but I was quite impressed that it was such good quality paper which an equally good printing. Maybe that’s why the Advent Cirno scans are usually pretty good.
Another thing I noticed is the nature of the double pages. If you’ve seen the Touhou scanlations, you may have also seen in some doujin that double pages are stitched together to make one seemless, panoramic page. In the case of Advent Cirno, you don’t see that panorama even if you bend the book which explains why there are such huge gaps in the scans for Advent Cirno whenever they come by. Regardless, it becomes digital media as soon as the pages are scanned and are treated as such. Double pages are still pretty fun to put together since it does provide (at least for me) a challenge and an opportunity to give the reader something to look at.
On the subject of paper, I opened up the Silent Sinner in Blue Tankobon again and investigated the paper quality on that one. It’s rough like your normal licensed manga paper but maybe the matting (if there is matting) gives it the roughness rather than the actual paper quality. Tankobon paper is good paper and feels good to the touch overall~
Funny thing, the paper and print quality was also the first thing I noticed when I first had a doujin in hands. You’d think they would be kind of lesser quality, being amateur works and all, but that’s not the case at all, at least for the major circles.
Doujinshi are self-published (for the most part) and thus are made at the equivalents of Kinko’s in Japan. Therefore, the paper quality is really up to the writer/circle producing it. I’ve had ones with paper like newsprint, and others with the same kind of paper the comic was drawn on (tsurupettan would be a good description).
Also, doujinshi are usually A4 size (similar to letter) because this is the same size as the drawings themselves (pro comics are usually drawn on B4, about 20% larger than A4, shrunk to A4 for anthologies and then shrunk again to A5 for manga volumes). Generally, the shrinking for professional works make the lines look more delicate and perfect, and allows for greater detail.