The process of filling in the gaps from the past two months has to start somewhere, and there could be much worse places to start than the esoteric world of the hug pillow. In addition to standard retail releases this summer’s Comiket once again brought a bumper crop of doujin works to the field, so many that it would be impossible to cover them all here – so I’ll content myself with hitting a few of the more awesome highlights:

Character goods maker Axia produced this original To Heart 2 Kusugawa Sasara dakimakura cover for advance release at Comiket 74, with general release via online shops coming in late August. It features original illustrations by Urotan, comes in “smooth knit” fabric, measure 160 cm x 50 cm, and retails for 10,500 yen.

As Axia is a Cospa affiliate, their items are available internationally via such shops as CDJapan and Hobby Search (both of which appear to be sold out in preorder – watching their listings around August 31st might yield a few extra copies when the item goes up for retail sale).

Happoubi Jin is on design duty for this new all-ages OVA, and his original illustration work graces this pillowcase from Cospa as well, depicting the show’s heroine Iseshima Aya. As with other standard Cospa releases this one is 150 x 50 cm and retails for 9,450 yen, scheduled for release in late October. It’s available from Hobby Search here.

Cospa follows up on the release of their Donne Anonime pillowcase with a case featuring the second heroine from Nitro+’s Niθ-designed eroge Zoku: Satsuriku no Jango. This Lily dakimakura cover features more original Niθ art, in the standard Cospa configuration (150 x 50 cm, 9,450 yen retail) and is scheduled for wide release in early October. It’s currently available for preorder from CDJapan and Hobby Search.

The Will games booth at Comiket 74 featured an original Sei Shoujo-illustrated pillowcase of Mitarai Yuuna, the main heroine from his upcoming Empress eroge project Starless. It was available for 8,000 yen at the con, but I didn’t find out about it until after the fact and ended up jumping through some very painful hoops to snag a copy on Yahoo Auctions. Anyone else interested is advised to hit up an auction proxy as soon as possible, as it’s unknown whether this item will ever see a wide release.

Several other new pillows have been announced over the past several weeks, the international availability of which can easily be checked at a glance at the CDJapan and Hobby Search pages devoted to the purpose.