Tucked away in Little Tokyo was a curious gallery, the Yabai Gallery, presented by JAST and J18. Free to enter, the only cost was somehow making your way to the LA Artcore building during the very busy Anime Expo weekend, a task easier said than done. The gallery ran for all four days of Anime Expo but I only managed to get there on Sunday. Present at the gallery was famed artist Shiwasu no Okina, who also came to Anime Expo in 2023, and San Diego Comic Con in 2024.

The contents of this article are intended for adults over the age of 18. Images have been censored as necessary.

Shiwasu no Okina was both signing and drawing sketches, and at roughly five minutes per sketch, had a line going out the door. An ominous "40 mnutes from here" sign was placed just around the corner from his table so fans could be there for multiple hours if a sketch was their goal. For me, while I would love a sketch, I was sadly short on time. Perhaps going earlier in the weekend would have been wiser but due to the nature of Anime Expo, impossible for me.

As you might expect from its organizer, the Yabai Gallery had a lot of things of an adult nature in it. Instead of its usual booth inside Anime Expo, J18 had elected to have its wares on sale alongside the imagery displayed on the walls.  "Yabai," for those of you who don't speak Japanese, can mean a multitude of things, but in this case, refers to the standard definition of "dangerous" or "risky."  You do have to be careful of who you talk to about these things, even if it's safe to assume that almost everyone you talk to knows of it and probably looks at it as well.  You can also assume that everyone coming to this particular building during the weekend was here for a similar reason.  

Featured were some one-of-a-kind shikishi drawings by Shiwasu no Okina with some eye-watering prices. Yes, that's a four-digit number. Something he learned at Anime Expo is that certain degenerates have a lot of money and would be more than happy to throw down thousands of dollars on art. I am not among those people, but I can understand the sentiment.

The Yabai Gallery featured a number of artists alongside Shiwasu no Okina including Oyari Ashito, Atahuta, Okito Endo, Mignon, Kotomi Youji, Karasu Chan, Ohagisan, Ceesalt, and Shoonia. This is a multinational effort with artists from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and beyond, and each artist has their own specialty. Some pieces were printed on paper and framed, with others on canvas or aluminum. I think it would have been cool to see some pieces that started from paper but given how so many artists are digital only (myself included), that might be a reach. Shiwasu no Okina, having started in the classical manga production style, did supply a few but they were tucked away on his side of the gallery, which was not the most accessible for viewers. They were also some of the most explicit in the gallery and I've decided to exclude them from photos.  If you must know, they are from his book "They'll Make a Man out of You."

One artist I would like to point out is Senukin, a Vietnamese artist whose work has quickly grown on me. I'd be lying if I said that Senukin being part of the gallery wasn't a factor in my decision to visit. Senukin draws a variety of shorts and one-shot images, and has also branched out into longer form content with "My Coworker is an Eldritch X." A lot of his works involve subculture and memes including "Brainrot Girlfriend," which I'm a little ashamed to say I can somewhat understand.

I can say I enjoyed visiting the Yabai Gallery. While the bulk of its contents are not new to me, perhaps they are to others, and getting things in front of people is one of the hardest parts of any creator's lifetime. The Yabai Gallery gave artists the opportunity to do just that and I hope that each gained new fans as a result of being featured. Time will tell whether or not this will be a one-time thing or if in the future we will see more iterations of the Yabai Gallery.

I do regret not being able to get a sketch from Shiwasu no Okina but, alas.

Thinking about it, I might have been one of the few people actually interested in just looking at the art.