review: pilot iroshizuku ajisai

Taking a look at yet another blue from Pilot Iroshizuku. Hey, that rhymes.

You've already heard my Pilot Iroshizuku thing right? I won't repeat it here, except to tell you that Iroshizuku comes in two bottle sizes. This, the 15ml, is the smaller.

To be quite honest, at first, I thought Ajisai was a very boring color. It kind of looks like the washable blue you get in cartridges with pens.

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This scan is more purple than it should be, but of course I'm going to give you a picture in natural light!

Ajisai takes a little while to dry, but not too long. You get a fairly strong blue line under water, so you can salvage some or most of your writing if you get Ajisai under a faucet or, more likely, a cup of water. This ink does not shade much: you can see a little bit of it, but it's not enough for me to call it a shading ink. I can get a very light amount of sheen in heavy applications, but this is not a sheening ink, so I wouldn't try to push it.

In my collection, I've got nothing close to Ajisai, not even a little! I don't have anything this kind of blue-purple, because it honestly doesn't make me excited or anything.

I've had this ink in a number of pens before, but most recently in my Taccia Staccato. It's a wet pen with a broad Nemosine nib. Ajisai performs perfectly in this pen: no hard starts, no skipping, no nib creep... This is definitely a very dependable ink.

This is a short review, because honestly I wouldn't buy Ajisai again. It's a very well-behaved ink, but it's not the kind of color that I reach for. Honestly, the only reason I got it was because I had to pick three to fit in the box set and I didn't know about how pretty Ina-ho was yet. That's my own fault!