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Skin musk, white amber, ambergris, orange blossom, ylang ylang, and coconut milk. As incredibly pumped as I am for this year's Shungas (my absolute favorite favorite favorite thing and I am SO happy they came back for another year), my ability to go nutz and write for pages on end likening scents to boy band boys and unicorns is at an all-time low. So this review may actually have to be somewhat substantive. I tried for a while to think of what this smelled like to me. What I want to say is powdered skin, but that sounds much more boring than this actually is. It's extremely expansive powdered skin - the beanfolk are not so much in the vaginal vicinity as they are elsewhere, preparing. The scent is very evocative of clean upper thigh skin. I can't say I've ever noticed the smell of upper thigh skin and thought "I want to smell like this," to be honest, but like many BPALs this is how it OUGHT to smell, even if it doesn't in practice generally smell this nice. I really like that this is suggestive without being SUGGESTIVE. I loved Giant Vulva last year, and this is about as opposite of that as you can get in mood, though it actually smells a little bit similar to it. This is softer and gentler. It's really beautiful and I actually will probably end up wearing it a lot more often than Giant Vulva, considering that it is more, shall we say, subtle, and there are many times when you really don't want to smell like a giant vulva. Edited to add: two seconds after hitting post, I just realized what this reminds me of, that I couldn't quite put my finger on - snow white. It's a springier, slightly skankier snow white. Snow white's upper thigh, perhaps? I also realized that, despite my best intentions, this still wasn't all that substantive. But hey, comparisons to snow white and giant vulva - it's exciting at least, if not specific!

LUCY IN DARKNESS And then insensibly there came the strange change which I had noticed in the night. Her breathing grew stertorous, the mouth opened, and the pale gums, drawn back, made the teeth look longer and sharper than ever. In a sort of sleep-waking, vague, unconscious way she opened her eyes, which were now dull and hard at once, and said in a soft, voluptuous voice, such as I had never heard from her lips, "Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me!" Denn die Todten reiten Schnell. Black opium poppy, laudanum, blood, and a chaplet of garlic flowers. So, to give some background, I should admit here that my undergrad thesis was on Dracula, one of my all-time favorite books. Specifically, my thesis (the thesis of my thesis, if you will) was that Dracula was Jonathan Harker's penis. Yes, I got a degree for this. It makes sense when you think about it (sort of). I mean, it gives a reason why Dracula's reflection doesn't appear in the mirror (because his reflection WAS in the mirror BECAUSE HE WAS SECRETLY A PENIS). And it explains all the ridiculously flagrant phallic imagery, talking about how he is alternately flaccid/limp/pale and gorged with blood "like a filthy leech" (my favorite quote - I put the thesis title on my CV to this day, even though it has nothing to do with what I do now, just because I want to have "like a filthy leech" and "penis" on my CV). Anyway, that gives you some background on my enthusiasm for Dracula and all characters contained within, even those that aren't secretly a penis. So can I just say how super happy I was to see a collection devoted to Lucy. I am eternally sad that I missed the Dracula series from back in the day, and I am pumped x1000 to get to go nutzz over some Lucy-themed awesomeness. After that extremely lengthy prelude, here are my feelings about Lucy in Darkness: For serious, this is awesome. I feel like all of my reviews are overflowing with praise, but it's because I never review anything I hate because my review for something like Malediction would just be "BARPH" and that would be it. I can only go on like this about things I luv. And I luv Lucy in Darkness. Allow me to finally get to the stuff y'all actually care about (thanks for putting up with me until now; it made me happy to write about Dracula and penises). This smells amazing. I'm not sure how I'd feel about it if it were a perfume or anything other than a room spray. But as a room spray it is seriously amazingly evocative. Wantonly voluptuous, one might go so far as to say. It definitely does make me think of the scenes of her changing, lying in bed while a bunch of her buds forcibly insert their "blood" (ahem) into her for her own (supposed) good. It is very womanly and kind of old-fashioned smelling. In fact, it reminds me a bit of Red Lantern and Chrysanthemum Moon insofar as the opium poppies and laudanum make the smell feel very languorous. The blood really adds to it, too. Other people may not be too pumped to have their living rooms (or wherever) smell like the aftermath of a metaphoric bizarro blood-rape, but in my opinion this is about the awesomest thing ever.

Yup. Chocolate brown sugar smut. It's incredible. Also, incidentally, it matches really well with all of the light and airy Shungas (which of course I was frantically testing at the same time as soon as I could rip the boxes open, haha).

I get vanilla and leather with a teeny bit of smoke and flowers. It reminds me a lot of Western Diamondback, except much more feminine, and Boadicea except much more subdued. Vanilla and leather go really well together, I think, and this one is somehow simultaneously simpler than the other two oils I mentioned but somehow striking enough to stand out amongst two of my all-time faves. I probably wouldn't have been interested otherwise, but there was no way I wasn't getting an oil that literally had my name on it. And I'm really happy I did. I have a feeling I'm going to wear this a lot.

This is sooooooooo creepy. Probably the creepiest smell I've ever smelled - it reminds me of Nosferatu or Black Annis in feel - it has the same kind of vibe. It really captures the scenes in the crypt very well. Layered with Sarah it is a total knockout, both in creepiness and good-smellingness, and is very evocative of her death scene. Since Lucy's death scene is pretty suggestive (not just to over-analyzers like me - seriously, spewing fluids and writhing around and screaming while a dude thrusts a phallic object into you while looking "like a figure of Thor" and "driving deeper and deeper" is pretty dang suggestive) the red musk mixed with blood makes perfect sense. It is also extremely creepy. That it is so pretty, mixing the musk and blood with rose, makes it even creepier. It's much more of a seduction by evil sort of scent than an out-and-out sexy scent. Whatever is doing the seducing is definitely dead. I'm not as nuts about it as I am Lucy in Darkness, which is now officially one of my Favorite Things Ever, but I really like it. It captures its subject well and is perfect for this time of year.

I think I'm on record here as having asserted that ghosts are invariably moist and that there is no such thing as a ghost that is not moist, so I won't belabor this point anymore than I already have. They are just two concepts that go together, no matter what. Ghosts = moist. Period. I will not be convinced otherwise, ever. So I'm pretty pumped that there is an aquatic vampire oil! Vampires are close enough to ghosts for me to be happy. Sarah reminds me a lot of J-Horror, which I also love, except that one is saltier. This is moist air like there would be in a cave or crypt, not the salt watery air I got from J-Horror. The mist and marble are most prominent with hints of everything else coming and going. It's very pretty and soft, so you can be spooky without being scary. Like everyone around you will be vaguely creeped out but not know why, and also they will think you smell good, never putting the two together. Also, this layers with the Lucy oil and Lucy in Darkness room spray EXTREMELY well, if you want to smell extra scary and vampirey.

I love cherry blossoms! So here's my take on the ones I've tried: Voyeurs among the cherry blossoms: fluffy pink cherry blossoms, like the cartoony kind you see on futons. Fabulous and sweet. One of my all-time favorites. Spirit of the komachi cherry tree: cherry blossom + pear. Pink + lavender. Just about the most beautiful thing imaginable. Extremely girly in a really not-irritating way. Aizen-myoo: beautiful and amazing but very very soft on me, or I'd love it more. Citrusy cherry blossom fabulousness. Jingu is a lot more plum blossom to me, but is very nice. Spell of amorous love is gorgeous and smells like the hama rikyu gardens in tokyo to me, so I have happy honeymoon memories wrapped up in it. It's very fruity and floral. But it's much more of a bunch of japanesey outdoorsy smells mixing together, like in a garden, rather than the smell of cherry blossoms falling. Fox woman was kind of nondescript to me, but that might just be my skin chemistry. So, basically, voyeurs is one of my top favorite favorite favorites of all time, and komachi cherry tree is way up there, too. Those are much more obviously cherry blossomy. Aizen-myoo and Jingu and Spell of amorous love are awesome blends of cherry blossom with other stuff.

So. I should begin by stating that I am terrified of J-horror ghosts and Sadako in particular. I'm a huge fan of the genre because it appears to have been crafted specifically to pinpoint most of my many complexes and does so extremely effectively. The original Ring is one of my favorite movies (even though it has without a doubt traumatized me for life and scarred my psyche irrevocably) because of the incredibly consistent and amazing symbolism. Pretty much everything in the movie that had any emotional resonance was extremely feminine and vaginal and all wrapped up in dark mother symbolism - volcanoes erupting, descents into and ascents from deep watery circular wells, a woman brushing her hair while looking in an oval mirror, a faceless woman in white with long black hair, endless inky black oceanic depths, etc. I could go on and on. So, that said, I had to get this oil. Even though the art is terrifying, J-horror ghosts have a huge emotional resonance for me. The thing I notice immediately is how salty the scent is, which makes perfect sense. Angry wet girls are the bread and butter of J-horror, and the ocean is generally associated with femininity and the unconscious so the salty undercurrents of this really add to the feeling of being engulfed back into some primordial uterine sludge. It has a definite feel underwater caverns or dark, dank wells. I also really like how cold it is - it's extremely spectral feeling. Instead of a hot explosive rage, this is white, cold, otherworldly rage. And it is BADASS. I'm not sure what's making the smell I'm interpreting as salt - it's a wet beachy smell that isn't exactly salty but has a salt water feel, if that makes sense. So if I had to sum this up in two words, it would be "moist ghosts." Because ghosts are ALWAYS moist, and I actually find myself getting freaked out when I go places that are overly moist because I am thinking in my head "holy shit MOIST we are talking GHOST MAGNET oh my god I gotta get out of here." This is a very moist and salty and cold smell. It would make a room smell really beautifully spooky. But the thing is that I like it, just like I like all these movies, because even though I get scared I know that I'm scared because it's something I'm not dealing with that I ought to. There's a lot of good stuff to be learned by dealing with one's shadow and trying to come to terms with dark mother archetypes. I always feel like I've just missed something really important whenever I have a horrible nightmare about faceless moist lady ghosts and wake up terrified right before they get to me. One of these days I'll rustle up the cash to go see a Jungian therapist and figure all this business out, but in the meantime these sorts of things hold an endless fascination for me. And so then so does this oil. I think it provides a feeling very similar to that made by the visual symbols in the really good J-horror films. Also, to me it kind of smells like Beach, except (of course) spookier and moister. So I had to try layering it with velvet unicorn since Pink Sugar/Beach combo dupes are among my favorite things in the world and it seemed like Lisa Frank unicorns/Spooky moist beach spectre would be similar but even awesomer. Verdict: you know those pictures of horses all running in the surf on the beach and stuff? This is if they were actually MOIST UNICORN SPECTRES OF DEATH. Pretty rad.

I love the Spell of Amorous Love because it reminds me of the Hama Rikyu gardens in Tokyo, which was the last place we went before leaving Japan on my husband's and my honeymoon. So it brings back really good memories (also the smell of the moisturizer/sunscreen I used for the two weeks we were there does the same, but smells much less interesting!!) Speaking of which, I had a lot of fun just going into Don Quixote (the awesomest store ever, esp the one in Osaka with the ferris wheel on top by the river) and trying different lotions/shampoos/stuff like that. Don Quixote has all sorts of fun, cheap stuff, so I'd also recommend checking it out for additional smelliness. Aizen Myoo is also very very pretty and light and refreshing, which would be a nice pick me up when you get completely exhausted, which will happen occasionally. And I second the recommendation for some of the warrior queens. Jingu looks fantastic and like it would be perfect for your trip.

So, I'm a big fan of unicorns. But there are different types of unicorns. There's happy pastel nice unicorns, and there's purpley-black evil unicorns with names like Moonshadow who play guitar (okay, so maybe there aren't unicorns like that anywhere but in the extremely self-indulgent unicorn novel I've been writing, but I digress). Where was I? I was listing types of unicorns. Apparently there are also Americorns and Texicorns and Soviet Unionicorns. But then there is the type of unicorn represented by this oil. A unicorn that has, unfortunately, been thrust from the spotlight for far too many years. I think many of you will know what I'm talking about when I say how sad I am that this previously ubiquitous Trapper Keeper mainstay has been shoved aside by obviously less awesome folder fare like kittens hanging off tree limbs or whatever (nothing against kittens hanging off tree limbs, but that's not really so much awesome and just plain old cute). We are talking serious Lisa Frank unicornism here. We are talking pinky lavendery swirly girly dolphins jumping through clouds mermaids that are also princesses giant cupcakes that turn out to be baby seals in disguise LISA FRANK UNICORNS. And I am SUPER PUMPED ABOUT THIS. Plans for this evening: I am going to layer this with Giant Vulva and fantasize about riding a rad unicorn with a ridiculous boy band boy behind me while we are serenaded by dolphins and baby seals wearing bow ties. Then my husband will come home and ask "why do you smell like candy?" and then "why are you drunk?" Then I will wink in the general imagined direction of other forumites and it will be like we share an exciting unicorn secret.

This one actually makes me feel really wistful. It smells just like my cat used to, growing up. My dad would pick him up in the morning right after putting on cologne, then let him outside, so in the morning he always smelled like men's cologne and dew and cat fur. That cat has been dead a few years and my dad isn't in the best of health, so it's very weird to suddenly smell something so nostalgic. So even though it makes me sad, I'm happy to have smelled this. It's really comforting and bittersweet. It reminds me of being too young to really know what was going on and feeling like my dad knew everything and was invincible and that my cat would be with me forever.

I am the kind of person who has the crayon problem with LE oils. Much like my favorite color crayon when I was little, I can't use the ones that are my favorite because I don't want to run out of them, which is of course self-defeating but that's how I am. I have the crayon problem with Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, because I LUV it x1000 but I don't really wear it that much. The good news is that I can start wearing it because tissue is a worthy substitute and in fact maybe even better. The throw is very similar, but the smell on my wrist with this one is more papery whereas fisherman's wife was more watery. I do have to say, this is totally evocative of various sweet, viscous liquids oozing all over the place and being soaked up at my skin into a softer, blunted version of themselves. Love it!!!

You know those evolutionary psych experiments where dudes sweat on tshirts and then women smell them later and rank their hotness based on the pit smell? And that women who are ovulating are totally into the stank of dudes who are extremely symmetrical (which apparently translates to "hot" in psych-speak)? This smells like totally symmetrical dude sweat if dude sweat smelled good, which it doesn't generally, but maybe if you were ovulating and he was super-hot it WOULD smell good. I'm not a big ovulator myself, so I don't know for sure, but I am imagining the combined effect of ovulation and hottness on stank perception as like the effect of miracle fruit on sour taste. Not only is previously gross nast no longer gross, it is actively awesome. What I am saying here is that this smells good, in a dudely way, and there is a faint hint of sweat smell in the background that really sets this apart and makes me luv it instead of just liking it. Also that I've read too many abstracts lately and I am super jealous that people are getting funding for these totally bizarre studies. It smells a lot like last year's citrusy shungas, but more subdued. The closest thing in feel to it is probably Men Ringing Bell with Penises. Both are confident, masculine but subtle smells that could be worn by just about anybody. They smell outdoorsy in the way you can smell outdoorsiness on someone's clothes when they've just come inside. A hint of trees and night air and a teeny bit of sweat. Really, really nice. A little woodsy, and little airy, a little sweaty without the usual stank accompaniment. At the beginning it smells like someone spilled apricot sake on a wood table, which is also awesome, but I think I like the dry down even better.

I never really understood what people meant by "second skin" or "my skin but better." Like I vaguely got what they meant but never really GOT it. I totally get it now. Most every other BPAL I've tried has smelled like something so much that I would never be fooled into thinking "hey that's me! I smell like a good smell!" It's always more like "that oil is rad. I am wearing it. I am rad." This is a totally sneaky one, though, because it fools my brain into thinking that it's actually me that smells like this, like I conveniently forget that I had help smelling this good. It's not that it's light or subtle or anything like that, because it's not. There's just something about the mix of notes that smells naturally unnatural, or normally abnormal. Like it smells like skin, but skin after you just finished being completely awesome someplace exotic. I didn't just finish doing that, but now I sort of think I must have because I totally smell like I did. It doesn't hurt that the notes blend together really well. It smells sort of like incense and dried flowers and a little bit of not at all unpleasant sweat. Like an older lady spy whipping ass in some bazaar or market while extras fling themselves into fruit stands, knocking over all sorts of spices and dried flower bits and incense. There's not really any fruit (because it rolled away when the stands got knocked over, I guess) but there's a sort of musty smell like old, untouched things had just been upended. And it smells mature in the best way possible, hence the lady spy being older rather than younger. I dig it! It makes me feel like I have just finished doing exciting things and now I want to take a nap. (Lady spies need naps, too)

To me, this is basically the exact opposite of Giant Vulva. Whereas that one sent my imagination into all sorts of feverish overdrive and felt kind of mysterious, like it was always changing ever-so-slightly, this is simple and sweet. I love it, but it feels totally different from the other shungas I've tried so far. It feels very pink and gentle and soft. When I was on my honeymoon in Japan, we spent a few nights at the house of some friends of ours. They gave me a futon to sleep in that was basically the pinkest, fuzziest, most amazing thing you could imagine. It had big, fat, watercolory cherry blossoms all over it. I came home every night we stayed there totally exhausted and happily overwhelmed (I'm from the South. We don't really walk there so much as we don't. Ever. So my energy expenditure was roughly 1000x normal). And I slept like a ROCK. So feelings of happy, fuzzy warmth while wrapped up in fluffy pinkness are forever associated with cherry blossoms to me - but big fake fluffy ones, not real ones. At the time, I wrote that it was "like it was made of unicorn dreams." So this oil smells less like real cherry blossoms to me than the "unicorn dream" equivalent of cherry blossoms. Like a dream field of fluffy pink. Like if there existed a snuggi made of that futon material (god I would DIE. Right after I bedazzled unicorns all over it). This is a good thing. I've smelled other cherry blossom smells and I like them alright but they feel more fresh than this does. I'm not always looking for a fresh, plant-y, flower-y smell. Sometimes I'd much prefer a really langorous, sweet, dreamy smell. This is that. So if you like that (and if you like pink and unicorns and the like), you'll probably really dig this.

So. I'm generally a lurker, and my nose is pretty unsophisticated. But I'm completely nutzz for the shungas from last year and bought a ton this year. Since they just arrived and I know people are anxious for reviews, I thought I should try to contribute something useful for once. Unfortunately, I'm a lurker for a reason because, as I said, my nose is pretty not-so-great at this. So I'm going to not even try to talk about notes or whatever, but rather provide you with my thought process as I put this on. To begin this sort of review, a brief story. Yesterday, while looking for downloads of my favorite Japanese boy band's TV show (yes, that is my other hobby and yes, I am a huge nerd), I came upon something. You know how sometimes fanfiction writers just go nuts with things, and have tag lines like "The quintessential what-if: what if the WWE was at the Battle of Fredericksburg??" Well, I got sucked in by the boy band equivalent - basically, what if these five pretty boy idols were samurai back in the warring states period. Now, I don't even like samurai, particularly. I studied Japanese and I'm obsessed with pretty boy idols (I call them boys even though they're in their 20s because "man band" just sounds silly), but really all I want to see is them getting attacked by animals or maybe eating things or something. I'm not really into all the historical and samurai business. But for whatever reason I was intrigued and started reading. And kept reading. And couldn't stop. Because you know what? Somewhere amongst all the yukata fabric-clutching, tatami mat burn-getting, soulful staring, candlelit library-sitting, provocative shamisen-playing, and (of course) hott hott historical man-on-man action, I realized that even though I am usually super-embarrassed by my penchant for romance novels and their ilk, IT WAS AWESOME. And I read the hell out of it. So, then today rolls around. I get my box in the mail (yay!) and immediately rip it open and bust out mah beloved Japanese old tymey porn oils. I put on Giant Vulva. For the first few minutes, it was a dead ringer for the Illustrated Woman, as Cheri said above. Then it starts to dry. Then it starts to waft around. Then my imagination starts to go into overdrive. Even though it's inspired by a vulva, to me this is the scent of the pretty, pretty servant boy furtively sneaking into the samurai quarters with a dim lantern, snuffing it out as he closes the paper door behind him, crawling through air thick with that little bit of smoke and a faint scent of the trees outside the open window, then accidentally knocking over a vase full of flowers and waking up the pretty, pretty samurai boy. Followed by lots of clothes doffing and futon mussing and embarrassed fumbling. And then they totally do it. And then the room smells like my wrist does right now. Whew! Where did that come from? This is by far my longest post (and most embarrassing), but if it'll convince anyone to buy this oil it'll have been worth it. Because seriously. Buy it. Buy it and wear it and then write lots of idol boy erotic fanfiction that I will pretend to ignore but actually read feverishly in secret. For real. Go buy it.

This was really masculine and dark on me. It smelled a lot like the darker wood scents. I liked it a lot, but it faded quickly. I was trying some imps of oils that I thought were a little too sweet and feminine at the same time, and discovered that this layers extremely well with them. So if it's too much by itself, or if you have something lying around that you thought you didn't like, try layering. It really added some extra oomph and darkness. I tried it with verdandi (I think I just accidentally displayed my extreme nerdiness by revealing I'm trying these in alphabetical order), which I'd thought was too appley for my tastes. The two of them together created a scent that still had the light and airy notes of apple and white musk, but was grounded with really awesome, deep patchouli. Trying it with other things has created similar awesome reactions. So my recommendation is that this is one that really begs for experimentation, because I think I like it as a base for other oils even more than I like it on its own.

This is my first review. I've de-lurked in order to freak out at length about how insanely fabulous this smell is. It is, without a doubt, the greatest smell that ever smelled. Seriously. So maybe that wasn't "at length," but it got the point across. To be slightly more helpful, it starts off very creamy and heady, but it's never overwhelming. It's just strong enough so that you can smell yourself smelling fantastic and remember how great you are. Then it gets more floral as it dries, but it always has a creamy and relaxed feeling. Perfect for breezy spring days. I don't have the most sophisticated nose ever, being new to all this, but I know what I like. And damn, do I ever like this.