Kuretake Zig Cartoonist Menso Brush Set for Manga and Calligraphy

The quality here is very good. I've now got 2, of the sable brushes from this line and both are great. Fine tips, springy, solid construction. It was hard to understand at first but with this kit, you use the goat hair brushes for washes and imprecise work. The sable works wonders for precise line art I've found.As an aside, to save others time and trouble- you can find higher quality sable brushes but from what I've seen they're not on Amazon or most Western style art shops. Try Pigment Tokyo. Now, you can find high end western inker brushes. Raphael and winsor Newton sable comes to mind. These, In my experience are superior as a product but also about 5 times as expensive (especially as sable becomes more controlled and banned). This is a great deal, and id recommend them highly.

These brushes are GREAT!!!! I started out with the medium brush which is a combo goat and horse hair. I was amazed at how much paint it held and how I could easily go from thick to extremely fine lines - unlike any other brushes I've used before. (I've always used synthetic brushes.) I can get such fine lines with the medium brush, I no longer need my 000 detail brush. I tried this brush with watercolor, India ink and Noodler's Eel black ink. It works fantastically for all those media. I have to admit - I never got around to trying the Kolinsky brush because I'm so happy with the combo brush. The medium brush does everything I need a brush to do.

These brushes are objectively very nice, well made Japanese ink brushes, but for my purposes they are just too soft, and there is not enough variation between the brush sizes. The bristles of these brushes are very soft and flexible, but have very little springiness, meaning that when wet they will not retain the brush's shape very well. I wanted to use them for inking illustrations, and if you have a very light, very steady hand, these would work well for that purpose, but I have a mild tremor in my hands that only lets up when I apply a bit more pressure on my brush, and I've found that soft bristles don't allow me to get the super fine details I need when I'm inking. This extra pressure also means that these brushes ended up producing lines that were much closer in width than I was hoping for. The extra small brush appears to have a similar amount of bristle volume as the small, but the bristles are longer and taper more gradually into a very sharp point. When used with a light hand, this means the extra small can produce extremely fine hairline strokes that they small and medium brushes can't, but due to the softness, I have a difficult time managing to keep the line that fine as the bristles provide no resistance to pressure, so the average line width of the extra small ends up being about the same as the small. They may work better for me when inking on a larger scale, and I'm sure they're wonderful for calligraphy as well. Like I said, these are good brushes, and I have found uses for them, but I have to deduct a star since I'm not able to use them for the purpose I wanted them to.

The hairs keep shape very well and hold a great amount of ink. Easy to clean too.

The extra-fine kolinsky hair brush is wonderfully detailed. I can produce very thick or thin lines, it holds tons of water, and pigments wash off easily. Everything one could want in a brush. I bought a case just so I can carry it with me.

Great brushes! I use them with pan watercolors rather than inks. They are so nice and lightweight, the bristles soft yet easy to control and clean. You can easily get beautiful hairlines and wide strokes for brush calligraphy with these. Very pleased with my purchase.

I just don't know where to even start. This product is not terrible, but it's so below par for a brand like Kuretake that I'm even considering not making another purchase from their company again. This product cost me 36 USD for a trio of three brushes not counting delivery, which was an additional 10 USD. These were all delivered (late) to me today after placing my order on the 29th of last month.At first, I wasn't thrilled about the body of the brushes. They seem cheaply made. The wood is more like compacted wood pulp and the outside is just a coat of plasticky paint-like substance. I could snap it just by bending it in one hand, which is something I can't even do to a pencil. That's how fragile these brushes are. From the make of these, it's almost like the factory mass-produced the brush bodies by creating one long stick with a hollow center, cutting them to a uniform length, attaching the bristles, and then filling the hollow center in with glue. Perhaps that is how they are made, because that is exactly what it seems like to me.MAYBE if I took them home and cleansed the bristles, surely they'd perform as well as I hoped they would? But no. I was completely wrong.First of all, I take very good care of my paint brushes, even if they are belong in the cheaper, more durable range. When a brush comes in with protective sizing on the head, I soak them in warm water for about 5 minutes and gently pull on the bristles to take off the loose ends, then leave them to dry upside-down. When I checked back on the brushes, not only were the ends frayed and splayed, some of the hairs are even kinked and stick out of the rest of the head like a sore thumb. I was originally intending to use these brushes to lend more detail to my works, but after using these for a test, I observed my Princeton Neptune no.4 brush (which has a larger brush head) doing a better job at detail. And not only are they frayed, they KEEP SHEDDING. I had to pull hairs from my inkwell with a needle because these brushes weren't done shedding after I pulled the hairs during the initial cleanse. All of my brushes prior to ordering this set was made of synthetic hairs, and I never had a problem with cruelty-free bristles, ever. Even if I had high expectations, I would have still been happy if the bristles performed well.The only reason I'm leaving one star (beside not being able to leave less in the first place) is because the Kolinsky head is at least not as frayed when wet and still manages to write fine lines while retaining a fair amount of water. However, I would not have paid 40 USD for 1 'okay' brush with a cheap body.Bottom line, I would not recommend these and would instead suggest looking at Princeton Brush Co or Trekell Art Supplies for scripts, riggers, and round liners.

Like this set, especially the kolinsky brush much more than the WN Series 7. Better quality, more consistent lines and more line variance. Some might want more weight, but that's an easy fix with pen grips or tape.