We Love Mow Mow Art Book

Reading Time: 3 minutes

We Love Mow Mow is a collection of charity illustrations drawn to raise money for farmers who lost livestock during the 2010 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the Miyazaki Prefecture of Japan earlier this year. Thousands of cattle and pigs were slaughtered to curb the spread of the infection, and farmers bore those costs. All of the profits for We Love Mow Mow were donated, the bulk of which were received during Comiket 78.

Several artists professed to being big fans of the Wagyū beef that comes out of Miyazaki prefecture on their websites when talking about We Love Mow Mow. The opening illustration is by Kaya Kuramoto, and the illustrations above are by Koge Donbo (cover), Kodomo no Jikan’s Kaworu Watashiya, and Itoh Ben.

The illustrations feature girls wearing cow and pig costumes, or girls next to cows and pigs. There are several illustrations featuring girls eating beef and pork. But there are a few pictures with mermaids, girls with lemons, and other illustrations of school girls that seem to have nothing to do with the overall theme. But seeing as it’s all art, and there are a number of ways to interpret any illustrations, I’m sure they somehow fit in. Pictured above are illustrations by Tendou Kirin, Takigawa Yuu, and Fukasaku Emi.

We Love Mow Mow is B5-sized and 104 pages including the covers. It’s packed from start to finish with an impressive total of 97 artists. The full listing of artists, along with links to their twitter accounts is available on the We Love Mow Mow website. They also go over how much they’ve been able to donate along with their actual production costs, which is pretty interesting. Some of the more well-known artists featured were Blade, Kouga Yun, and Mutsumi Sasaki, whose styles are clearly visible in their illustrations.

In total, 6,500 copies of We Love Mow Mow were printed, of which 4,618 were sold at Comiket 78. Another 1,500 were sent to consignment shops like Melonbooks, where they agreed to sell it at retail without taking a profit for themselves. It’s really refreshing that so many people can come together for a good cause.

A few others from some of the more recognizable artists: Chisato Naruse and Mamoru Yokota.

The illustrations were excellent and even the works from artists I didn’t recognize were well done. It’s not often that you see this many recognizable artists in a doujinshi production. And it’s quite nice to know it was all done for a good cause as well!