Maruzen Athena Eternal Blue
This line of inks is really great. They’re also really hard to find. Sorry about that. I don’t make the rules. Maruzen does. They are only sold in-store and I have heard that they limit the number you can buy at once. So, if you can find it in the USA it’ll probably run you upwards of $50.
Maruzen is a Japanese department store, and they have this legendary line of inks made by Sailor. I only have a few of them, and I’d buy as many as they’d allow if I ever get to Japan. I don’t think they come in the vase-bottles any longer, but I bought this bottle pre-pandemic from a friend who had an extra at a pen show. We were splitting a table at the Philly Pen Show, and I’m glad I snagged this awesome ink from her. It’s an ink with a story and a lineage and that’s fun.
Okay, enough jabber. Let’s look at this amazing blue.
Seriously. The shading is beautiful. The sheen is awesome. The flow is perfect. It’s just an all-time great ink. I had this ink in this pen for literal years. At the time I did this video review, it had been in there for 2.5 years. This pen is literally in my to-be-cleaned box right now. in 2026. I’m forcing myself to change the ink now that I’ve run it dry, yet again. It’s that good.
The only caveat is the smell. Sailor inks have a very particular scent, and some folks don’t like it. It’s very chemical-forward. The upside to that is that I’ve never once had a Sailor ink go bad on me. Their biocide isn’t messing around, and anything that takes over that bottle deserves the bottle.
Click the images below for more close-ups.
This is the chromatography. It’s blue.
It’s well-behaved on this bad copy paper. You don’ t see the sheen, but that’s to be expected. You also get a little bit of bleed-through, but that’s always expected on this paper.
Maruman’s Croquis paper really shows off the character of this ink. It’s one of my favorite papers to use.
This is old-school Tomoe River paper.
This ink journal is using wheat straw paper. That stuff is really hard to find these days, but it’s a nice, uncoated paper that works really well with fountain pens.
Lots of blue comparisons! Nothing is quite like it, but that Colorverse Kepler is trying hard. Tsuki-yo is also sort of close, but it doesn’t get deep enough.
So, yeah. I love this ink. It’s hard to find. It can be pretty expensive if you can find it. That said, I would buy it again.
