Kuretake Zig Letter Pen CocoIro Pen Refill - Super Fine - Blood Red

This is a nice burgundy color, but it's a little too transparent to pass as real blood -- it's got a sort of watercolor quality to it. It's very close to the Marvy Uchida burgundy, but a little more transparent. It's roughly the same deep red with a hint of purple as partly-dry blood (not as red as freshly-spilled blood, not as brown as old dried blood) but not as opaque as real blood. (If that's your thing, you might want to try using an opaque acrylic paint instead.)

The Zig pens have a bit of a brush quality to them (with a small, mostly-stiff point) that gives a line quality similar to a Tradio/Pulaman/Fountain Pentel, but the Zig has many more color options. The Tradio/Pulaman/Fountain Pentels go "scratchity scratchity scratchity" when you write -- and sometimes "spit" little droplets in a random direction. The Zig writes more quietly, and has similar thicks and thins, but without the occasional spitty surprise. I personally prefer writing with the Tradio/Pulaman/Fountain Pentels, because their scratchiness grips the paper firmly and their ink is a bit darker, but I suspect most people will prefer the Zig's predictability and wider range of colors.

I wouldn't quite call it blood red, it has a bit of a... mauve, maybe? tint to it. It's still a nice shade of red, and it writes beautifully. The super fine tip makes it easy to write very small, but you can also write a little bit thicker with it. Really looking forward to trying out more colors!

It's more like slightly dried blood than fresh, bright red blood. It's a little darker. The tip is a lot thinner and stiffer than I thought it'd be. When I opened this up, some of the ink had spilled in the cap a bit, but I guess that's normal... can't wait to start using this more though :)

Almost scary how very much this ink looks like blood. There seemed to be a lot of ink in the cap on arrival (which I thought might have been due to Winter shipping) but looking at the pictures of the refills online, mine isn't noticeably drained after all.