Ink Review #93

*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.

Overview

The color/properties:

Endless Alchemy Drops of Mars is a medium red ink. It has some very faint pink undertones that are visible if you look at it long enough, but overall it comes through as a true red, and you probably won’t notice it.
There’s some shading and the color softly transitions from a slightly faded/almost matte red to a bolder, significantly darker red that really helps this ink stand out from the page. Visibility isn’t an issue here. This ink doesn’t necessarily have a sheen to it (or at least, I wouldn’t call it that), but there’s a light black/brown luster that shows up around the edges anywhere that the ink pools heavily enough. It’s the most visible in the ink droplets. You might see it in writing with larger nib sizes, but it’s pretty hard to pick out.

Rhodia

Leuchtturm1917

Performance on paper:

Drops of Mars is fairly well-behaved. Most of the test pages don’t show any signs of bleeding or feathering aside from the typical bleed-through on Kokuyo, where the bleeding was mostly limited to the largest nib sizes. There weren’t any signs of feathering around the edges of the droplets or ink splats either. It should be fine on most fountain pen-friendly papers. The dry times are mostly average, with the larger nib sizes taking between 15-20 seconds (one case of 25 seconds on Tomoe River). The dry times aren’t bad, but I had the sense that this ink might be prone to smudging if you have any residual moisture on your hands. I did some testing after the fact and, while it didn’t smudge on most of the papers, it did on Tomoe River and Maruman, and it didn’t take much effort to do so. It’s strange for an ink that doesn’t sheen, but it’s still not that bad comparatively. As for the water resistance, it’s not great and water exposure immediately clouds the ink. Anything that was written is going to get pretty blurry and illegible.

Midori MD

Maruman

Tomoe River

Kokuyo

Performance in the pen:

Drops of Mars has a medium flow and is lubricated well enough to provide a comfortable writing experience. I didn’t have any noticeable decreases in flow going into the larger nib sizes, nor did I have any hard starting, skips, or stops. It was well-behaved and pleasant. Cleaning the ink out of the pen took a little longer than normal, but it still only required 2 soaks and flushes for the nib units to run clear of ink. Initially, there was a red ring left on the inside of the pen that I was worried would require disassembly to remove, but it went away while leaving the barrel to sit with water inside. Not a big deal, but still an experience that would leave me with second thoughts about using it in a demonstrator just in case.

• Performance in a pen: 10/10

• Performance on paper: 8.5/10

• Color saturation: 8/10

• Sheening: 1/10

• Shading: 2/10

• Dry time: 6.5/10

• Water resistance: 2/10

• Ease of cleaning: 7.5/10

• Shimmer: None

My personal thoughts...

I’ve been pretty excited about Endless’ Alchemy ink set in its entirety, but Drops of Mars had my attention above all for one simple reason: the name. Drops of Mars. That’s so cool. Unbelievably cool even. As far as naming alchemy-themed inks goes, this is easily my favorite one. I was also curious because it’s not often that I buy a red ink for myself. It’s not because I don’t like them — there are plenty of red inks out there that I love, but I’ve also had a lot of misses. They might flow poorly, crust up, or even congeal into a horrible gunky nightmare inside the bottle. I’ve seen some things. Thankfully, I haven’t experienced any of that (yet) with Drops of Mars, and it doesn’t give me the impression that I will. As far as the color goes, it’s great! I love a deep, bold, true red, and that’s exactly what it is: my kind of red. So why not? It works well, it looks great, and the bottle is awesome. I have no disappointments here. It’s an easy recommendation from me.

Comparisons:

More images/info:

Tools and materials used in the writing samples:

• A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 7 nib units including a Needlepoint grind, EF, F, M, B, 1.1mm stub, and an Architect grind. All nibs are tuned to perform at the same medium wetness.

• A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad

• A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook

• A Midori MD A5 Notebook

• A 52gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook

• A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook

• A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook