Sailor Manyo Haha

Sailor Manyo inks are a new release of 8 inks from Sailor, available to the international market. I received mine from a pre-order I made last week and I’m super excited to share a quick review of these inks with you.

I purchased 3 of the inks – Haha, Nekoyanagi and Yomogi – they seemed the most unique and usable (to me, based on what I have in my current collection). I reviewed the first of the 3, Nekoyanagi a few weeks ago, click here to see that review. 

The Sailor Manyo inks are based on flowers found in the Manyoshu, an collection of ancient Japanese poems. Luckily, they are permanent and not limited edition.

Haha was the second most interesting ink to me prior to purchase, but after using it for 2 weeks in my daily carry, I think it’s the best out of the 3 that I purchased. It’s a blue, green, purply-pink mixture to my eye and seems to perform more consistently compared to Nekoyanagi, which seems to exhibit slightly different colours depending on the pen used. Haha seems to look the same across all of the pens I’ve used it in. Only in the TWSBI fine nib is the purply-pink colour less prominent, likely as it’s the driest nib I’ve used the ink in.

I get the feeling that Haha is a bit drier than Nekoyanagi. Nothing in the ink’s performance suggests this, only that I had problems wicking the ink through the nibs during testing. I normally fill the TWSBI pen body then just change the nib during ink reviews. I noticed with Haha that for some nibs, I had problems getting the ink through the nib unit – I’m not sure if that’s just me being impatient or if the ink was drier, but I left the pen for the same period of time between inkings and I’ve not really had much of a problem before.

As with Nekoyanagi, I don’t see any sheen with this ink, only different undertones in the colour. It’s a very unique ink to my mind and I love that purply-pink that shines through in wetter nibs. This colouring seems to be more prominent in the wider stub nib and on Tomoe River Paper. To my eye, I don't see it as much in finer nibs on the Air, Fabriano or Rhodia. Once again, I apologise that I have no comparison swatches, this is a unique one in my collection – I don’t typically go for inks of this colour.

This is such a stunning ink. I really love it and cannot recommend it enough!