This arrived yesterday — carried back from Japan for me by an awesome friend. She gave me the bag, folder and sticker it came with. Total price was a $38 and some cents. I found out about this pen from a thread on Reddit. It was available online, but currently seems to be sold out, luckily a friend happened to be in Tokyo and picked one up for me.

Here’s the packaging. The plastic box is pretty lightweight and flimsy, but seems to do a decent job protecting the pen, but it has no cushioning. The pen also comes with two black Sailor cartridges.

A close up of the nib. A cute bow, it’s wider than my other sailor nib (comparison below) but also much shorter. The only part of the pen that indicates that it’s made by sailor is the gold ring on the lip of the cap — it says “SAILOR – MADE IN JAPAN”.

A writing sample comparing the pen against a Metro and my Sailor Pro Color 500. It’s wider and wetter then the Pro Color (which I hear is notoriously dry), but pretttty close to the Metro. As reference, the Pokemon pen is inked with the Sailor cartridge it came with, the Metro is Noodler’s Heart of Darkness and the Pro Color with Sailor Tokiwa Matsu.

The pen is pretty close in size to the Pro Color, though the nib is much wider and shorter. I suppose I should have put a Metro in this picture.

Overall — it’s a cute pen (yay Pokemon!) that’s not bad. It writes with a little bit of feedback, but I don’t mind that at all. It’s a wider nib than the Pro Color, and is, unsurprisingly, a little smoother. But it does have the same type of feedback, not the smoothness of the Metro. It feels pretty light and cheap in hand — and I’m not sure how durable the design will be. If it wears off overtime, I wouldn’t be too surprised. I wouldn’t worry about it for daily use though. But I bet it can be removed with a solvent or scratched by keys. Pokemon aside, for $38ish, it’s not bad value, especially if you like nibs with a little feedback — but the Metro is a far more durable and solid pen for less than half the price. I suspect I’m going to enjoy writing with it quite a bit since I like feedback, and for $38, as a Pokemon fan, I think it’s totally worth it.