Ink Swatch Wednesday: Sailor Manyo Hinoki

I got a sample of Sailor Manyo Hinoki as part of the "Slackvent" ink exchange I participated in last December, so named because it was an inkvent for The Pen Addict Slack group. 🙂 I really love its dusky blue-purple-gray multi-shading color.

I was curious how close Hinoki might be to the Ancora exclusive "rainy day" ink that Sailor makes, since Hinoki's base color somewhat reminded me of Ame No Ne, in writing, at least.

I realized they're quite different. (It's been a while since I've used the rainy day ink.) Hinoki is more blue-gray and its purple chromoshading appears in writing, while Ame No Ne is more of a straight medium foggy blue without chromoshading. I was hoping that Hinoki could be a lookalike for the rainy day ink since it is harder to obtain, but it's not. But Hinoki looks lovely on its own. I will have to pick up a bottle later.

I don't have many lookalikes in my ink library for Hinoki, even though I do have several chromoshaders that have blue, pink, and purple tones:

Comparing swatches, I figured Hinoki's base color kind of looks like these other inks, but much less saturated. However, Troublemaker Abalone doesn't have as much purple chromoshading. And the other two inks – Robert Oster Grey Seas and Diamine One More Sleep – are more blurples than saturated blues with purple chromoshading, so maybe I'm just makin' s*** up. 😝

Regardless, Hinoki, unsurprisingly, works really well in my only Sailor fountain pen, a Pro Gear Slim winter collaboration with PLUS, called "First Snow", with a MF nib.

I like using this pen a lot, but its obvious winter theme is clashing with our current spring season, so I decided to explore other pens in my collection that might offer a similar nib feedback, that famous "pencil-like" feedback Sailor has. I figured my pens with EF nibs would probably be closest, but most of them felt either too smooth (TWSBI ECO EF), or too sharp (Franklin-Christoph needlepoint, or Pilot Kakuno EF). My simple Platinum Preppy with an EF nib still feels smooth relative to the Sailor, but in certain cross strokes I can feel feedback that approaches what I was looking for.

I ended up leaving the Preppy inked with Hinoki also, which I don't usually do. It seems like a waste to have multiple pens filled with the same ink, but in this case, I like Hinoki so much that I'll allow it.

I'm actually surprised I don't have a ton more Sailor inks in my collection. I really like most of the Sailor inks I've tried, and have a couple new Shikiori inks I want to get – Tsurubami and Yuki Usagi – but given my self-imposed low-buy period, I'll wait on picking these up. I'm also slowly working through my ink samples before I go on another ink sample binge. 😅 But Sailor's going to be at the top of the list, most likely. Their chromoshading inks are so lovely.