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ribbonstrawberrysurprise · 3 months

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Possible Mia Ikumi Doujin Penname

First off, thanks to @berrychanx who found the initial doujin listing and @kuro93 who I know also looked into this and bought some of her works! Second off, warning for some suggestive doujin covers and other art, although there's nothing truly explicit.

First things first, I want to say that I sat on this information for a little bit considering if it was appropriate to speculate since Ikumi never chose to make this connection publicly. Ultimately I've decided to go through with it since imo the artstyle is instantly recognizable, so it'd come out eventually. I also found some still-up online accounts associated with this penname, and I know that's a thing the fandom has wanted to see for a long time. I'd ask that you please be respectful with this info and keep in mind it is NOT confirmed and that Mia Ikumi has passed away.

I'd also like to make clear that I'm totally uninterested in trying to figure out her birth name or track down any other personal info on her life that she didn't choose to share in doujin, her website, manga notes, interviews, etc. That feels very out of line. Finding other pennames can help us fans catalogue more of her work, but finding her real identity does nothing but violate her privacy.

So that's kind of where I'm at right now. If you feel differently about whether it's right to speculate on Ikumi's doujin works, or if you don't want to see anything even a little suggestive, please turn back now.

We know for sure that Mia Ikumi was a penname, since that was confirmed in ads for Re-Turn when she changed one of the characters.

征海美亜＊征海未亜よりペンネーム変更されました Ikumi Mia *Ikumi Mia yori penneemu henkou saremashita Mia Ikumi (征海美亜) *[Her] penname was changed/altered/revised from Mia Ikumi (征海未亜)

Prior to her return to Nakayoshi with some TMM anniversary art and then the 2020 Re-Turn short, the last work she published under that name was Koi Cupid, way back in 2005-08.

There's always been speculation as to whether she continued drawing manga under a different penname, but there was never any official word from her once her website went down, since she was not active under that name under any social media or on Pixiv. We also had no idea how her art might have evolved in the years since her last official release, so there was no guarantee we'd recognize any work of hers if we saw it. The first anyone saw of her art post-website was back in 2015 when she drew some art of Ichigo and then Ichigo, Mint, and Lettuce for the 60th anniversary of Nakayoshi.

https://hikayagami.tumblr.com/post/132481043559/more-nakayoshi-60th-anniversary-mew-mew-art-from https://hikayagami.tumblr.com/post/118704238761/ichigo-momomiya-in-her-cafe-mew-mew-uniform-drawn https://hikayagami.tumblr.com/post/130755109662/new-picture-of-ichigo-minto-retasu-drawn-by

As you can see, this art featured a pretty different art style than she'd had 2 decades back.

(Sidenote: it seems she also did some art for the 55th anniversary, back in 2010, but this is much closer to the dates when she was working under the Mia Ikumi name and has roughly the same art style as OG TMM: https://hikayagami.tumblr.com/post/151430694480/doodles-of-ichigo-and-berry-drawn-by-mia-ikumi )

Obviously, starting in 2019, she then went on to release the two-shot manga TMM 2020 Re-Turn, some miscellaneous promo art (Blu-ray bonus comic, Alice in Wonderland merch, Smewthie fanart, etc.), and finally new covers and bonus comics for most of the rereleased manga volumes before her passing. Between the works she published in the 90s-early 2000s and all of this new art, we have a pretty good sample size of her artstyle over time. So it was only a matter of time before someone stumbled on something familiar looking…

Berrychanx found a listing (https://jp.mercari.com/item/m11046282201 ) for an Idolmaster doujin called Room Fight! created as a collab between 2 doujin circles/artists: Nameless Color (ねーむれすからー) and Komomo+ (こももぷらす), published by Poco Poco in 2014. The seller specifically noted that the style looks very similar to Mia Ikumi's, and it's very hard to argue! The hands especially look the way that Ikumi has always drawn them, and the eyes, facial expressions, and hair shading is pretty much one to one for Re-Turn.

Nameless Color has some other works, but they aren't in this same artstyle at all. Therefore, the one whose style matches Mia Ikumi's is Komomo+.

https://doujinrepublic.com/product/tag_page.html?tags=85361&ref=product_page&type=rel_tag_circle

As far as I can tell, the doujin circle is named Poco Poco, and the artist's penname is Komomo Kozakura (小桜小桃) or later Komomo (小桃) or Komomo+ (written as こももぷらす). There's a lot of variation in which spelling is used across doujin sites, and sometimes Komomo is listed as the circle name rather than Poco Poco, but I'm unsure as to whether this is a change in how presumed-Ikumi branded herself or just a lack of organization in the websites. Also, the Room Fight! doujin is categorized under komomo+ (https://www.suruga-ya.jp/product/detail/ZHORE153927) and under Komomo Kozakura (https://ecs.toranoana.jp/tora/ec/item/040030276511/ ), so I’m sure they’re the same person and not just 2 people in the same circle.

Here are the titles I could find under all of these names across various websites in approximate publishing order:

https://www.suruga-ya.jp/search?category=&search_word=&ck=true&inStock=On&person_id=1051050 https://www.suruga-ya.jp/search?category=&search_word=&ck=true&inStock=On&person_id=2874482 https://www.suruga-ya.jp/search?category=&search_word=&person_id=2864627 https://ecs.toranoana.jp/tora/ec/cot/circle/LUPA2D6P8476d16Qd687/all/

The main fandoms are Idolmaster, Kantai Collection, and Strike Witches. It's immediately obvious how much they look like Ikumi's style, from small details like the faces to larger things like how she tends to pose characters on her covers. They range from 2008-2016, and you can see that earlier works look a little more like her TMM-era art while later stuff is way more Re-Turn.

So is that all the new info? Do we need to track down and buy these doujin to get any more new info on Mia Ikumi? Well, that’s definitely a thing you can do! But there’s one other avenue.

You see, the title page of Girls Fight! does lead to a now defunct webpage: pocopoco.sblo.jp

https://web.archive.org/web/20081201000000*/pocopoco.sblo.jp

The Wayback Machine has 5 captures for this website: 12/31/08, 2/25/11, 6/3/13, 4/25/16, and 3/14/23. The latest one just shows the same error page not found message as if you try and go to the site now, but the others all have blog entries ranging from 2008 to the end of 2015 (i.e., starting RIGHT after the end of Koi Cupid/Mia Ikumi's professionally published/official manga career).

https://web.archive.org/web/20090103031628/http://pocopoco.sblo.jp/article/20797588.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160425011557/http://pocopoco.sblo.jp/article/170290508.html

Mostly these posts are either drawings or advertisements for a new book she's selling at a con or online by mail order, so there’s a whole bunch of new art. (Warning: there's nothing outright nsfw, but some of these images are probably the most suggestive ones I link in this post, moreso than even most of the doujin covers. Use your own judgment!) The rest of the posts are personal diary entries.

(Sidenote: I am NOT going to translate this whole blog because there’s a whole bunch of text! I looked through the available pages, and the auto-translated version is fine for getting a basic understanding. If you have questions about a specific post, feel free to ask, though! Right off the bat, the text on the big image at the top of the earlier captures, the one with the green-haired catgirl in a red outfit, is just a paraphrasing of the post where she explains her categories/tags to help you navigate the site https://web.archive.org/web/20090103030651/http://pocopoco.sblo.jp/article/21376253.html )

This website, crucially, also links to Komomo's pixiv account (Username: 小桃/Komomo), which is still up!

https://www.pixiv.net/users/3966440

(I was logged in when I accessed the page, so it's possible you may need an account to view it. Please do keep in mind this is not an account publicly associated with Ikumi/TMM and that the owner is likely deceased. We don't need to leave random comments and messages.)

The oldest picture is from 2012, when she created it (she posts about this), and the most recent picture is from 2018, so you can really see the artstyle shift here as well. There is no reference to TMM or Mia Ikumi anywhere.

The blog also links to her NicoNico page (Username: 小桃/Komomo), where she posted a few Vocaloid covers from 5/16/10 to 6/4/11.

https://www.nicovideo.jp/user/16890918/

She talks about uploading these covers on her blog under her utattemita/”I tried singing” tag: https://web.archive.org/web/20160425011607/http://pocopoco.sblo.jp/category/907578-1.html

So, the art definitely matches with what we know of Mia Ikumi’s art, both from published works and stuff posted online to her official website, ikumimia.chu.jp (Hika posted some of the website art here and here if you aren’t familiar)

(As a tangent, that website seems to have been created at or before 5/7/07 and gone offline sometime between 7/1/10 and 7/27/11, so there was definitely a period where she was working under both identities at once…)

But is there any other info linking Komomo and Mia Ikumi?

The site doesn't give much personal detail about Komomo irl, but it does say she was born in spring, and Mia Ikumi's birthday was March 27th.

プロフィール名前小桜小桃です。一言:春生まれです�� Profile My name is Komomo Kozakura. In a word, I was born in spring.

There's also a diary entry about her getting a Scottish fold kitten for her mom in 2008 after the family cat passed away 2 years back. We know from the bonus comics in the TMM manga that Mia Ikumi had a Scottish fold.

スコティッシュフォールドという種類のキャリコなお嬢さん。 A calico lady called a Scottish fold.

https://web.archive.org/web/20081231223544/http://pocopoco.sblo.jp/category/627816-1.html

Komomo also says she’s interested in gothic lolita clothing and that she dresses up at events. We know Mia Ikumi also dressed up for events, since that’s in her bio, and she drew her outfits in manga bonus page.

＊ゴスロリの部屋＊小桜小桃の趣味のページです。主に持っている服やアイテム、欲しいモノの紹介、ゴスロリに関する事とかも書いていこうと思います。 *Gothic Lolita Room* A page about Komomo Kozakura’s hobby. Mainly I’ll write about clothing items I own, stuff I want, and things related to gothic lolita fashion.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160425154652/http://pocopoco.sblo.jp/category/627812-1.html

今回のコミケはカゼのため、コスとかせずに防寒重視でいったのですが Because I had a cold at this Comiket, I went without any kind of costume to focus on keeping warm

https://web.archive.org/web/20160425154658/http://pocopoco.sblo.jp/category/627816-1.html

Between the art, the timeline of when things were posed vs Ikumi's public career, and the small bits of overlapping info on the artists' lives, I'm very confident that Mia Ikumi and Komomo Kozakura are two pennames for the same artist.

As for why, we can only speculate. I will say it's pretty common for artists to use a different penname for doujin work vs professional work, although some keep it more secret than others. It's especially common if the doujin work is more risque than the professional, which is the case here. I'll also say that almost all of Ikumi's post-TMM works were fairly short. Only One Wish may have been imagined as a one-volume anthology from the start, but it seems like TMM a La Mode and Repure may have been canceled early based on rushed endings with a lack of follow-up on plot points. Comi Digi +, the magazine in which Koi Cupid was published, got discontinued in 2008, presumably ending that series early as well. Ikumi also seems pretty annoyed with her editor in the a La Mode bonus comics, so possibly she was frustrated with baggage of the Mia Ikumi identity and wanted a fresh start.

Possibly she stopped putting out work around 2018 or possibly she started working under another penname. Maybe that was when Nakayoshi got in contact with her to begin planning for ReTurn, Ole/Au Lait, New, the TMM Blu-ray, the manga re-release, etc.

In conclusion, it seems like there are many more works by the artist known as Mia Ikumi than we'd thought previously, plus slightly more of a web presence, although this seems to have ended years before the TMM 20th anniversary renaissance. It's possible there are more accounts under the Komomo/小桃 name or under another penname that might be found in the future.

#Tokyo Mew Mew #Mia Ikumi #Meta

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