Blue Eyes, vol. 3

By Tohru Nishimaki
Published in the US by Icarus Publishing


Slugline: An actual boyfriend! Admittedly a cheating, manipulative one, but still!

Tatsuya has seduced both his girlfriend Maria and her best friend Lisa to be his lovers, but he does not want to sneak between them as he has to with his liaisons with Maria's mother. So her sets up Maria and Lisa to accept sharing him openly in a menage atrois. Tatsuya then discovers that there are other women in Maria's family he has yet to seduce when visiting England and begins taking steps to correct this terrible oversight.

Tatsuya comes close to being a paragon of virtue for porn manga, for he is merely manipulative and arrogant when the standard is cruel, distant and abusive. Sure, he has to seduce every large breasted woman that wanders by, especially if they are related to his girlfriend, but the ogling and horndog behaviors are almost typical for teen boys. The art is rigid and the dialogue is stilted, but few porn titles had any worthwhile dialogue to begin with and women who merely violate the laws of biology/physics in breast size seem refreshingly normal. If this review seems overly forgiving perhaps it is because the last few adult titles that were in the review queue for Prospero's Manga were not finished once started because they were creepy and/or disturbing. This is a tolerable porn manga in which the characters' kinks and fetishes are not the stuff of crime dramas.

Blue Eyes, vol. 1 has been previously reviewed on Prospero's Manga - Mature.



Blue Eyes, vol. 3 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in manga and anime.

-Ferdinand

Extract

Presented by Kazu Shimao
Published in the US by Icarus Publishiing


Slugline: Meh. Can porn be boring?

An anthology of unrelated stories that span the many genres of the manga pornography, with the only major exception being there is no hermaphrodites lurking about. None of the stories are too offensive but neither are they particularly memorable. I suspect that in this case the shortness of the stores worked against the creator, for in most stories the characters are fixed in the mind with very little space given to create them. If there had been more pages devoted to some of the stories the characters could have emerged as more than just placeholders. The art was okay, a little busy, but no one appeared to be triple-jointed or had geysers of gallons of bodily fluids. It is a very workmanlike volume, not so bad I got offended for the characters but neither anything to look for or forward to.



Extract is available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

-Ferdinand

After School Sex Slave Club

Presented by Tuna Empire
Published in the US by Icarus Publishing


Slugline: Sigh. pure PWP. As in Plot, What Plot?

You know, I realize that it seems that every student in a Japanese school seems to be part of a club, I don't know, for socialization reasons if nothing else, but I think there has to be limits. And this club is it. Confident, strong women who enjoy being humiliated, made into toys and used (in the literal sense of the word) by dozens of male students at the same time? That is not interesting or attractive to me at all, and this is one of the volumes that the squick factor overcame any sexiness factor the stories may have had. Basically they are all about women in high school and since they are members of this club, get to be sexual slaves for groups of male students, losing all sense of self and individual worth. I really, really didn't like this, but this I didn't give it a single star because while I find the characters being treated horribly and a complete lack of story, well, this probably appeals to someone out there.

After School Sex Slave Club is available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

-Ferdinand

A Wish of my Sister

Presented by Masahiro Itosugi
Released in the US by Icarus Publishing


Slugline: A porn that acknowledges emotions and relationship problems? I could cry.

I was feeling pretty annoyed at myself earlier this week, feeling like that I was asking too much from a porn title and feeling a touch guilty for unloading my ennui onto Icarus Publishing. So when I got my review copies yesterday, I saw that Icarus had sent me another one and I felt that the fates were mocking me. But after Monday's review, I thought I would at least flip through it and see if there was anything positive in it. And lo, the skies opened up, the light came down and my faith in porn was restored.

Skip past the cross-dressing fetishes and the art style that makes everyone look prepubescent, to the emotional consequences of the character's actions that actually mattered! As I read it (and I actually read it) I stopped seeing those annoying fetishes and watched the characters deal with the fallout of their actions. Including the fact that incest is an inherently emotionally dangerous rather than seductive! Bad decisions are not ignored but explored! Doomed relationships are acknowledge as doomed! The climax (of the story arc!) of the title story of the volume is emotional rather than sexual. A character realizes that pressuring another into sex is wrong! Exclamation points were finally on sale!

I almost, almost gave this a four star rating, but one of the one-shot stories that filled out the volume were weak enough to drag it down.

This has turned into a really porn heavy week, I'll try to review something rated All Ages on Friday.

A Wish of my Sister is available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

-Ferdinand

Innocence, 2nd ed.

By Kamogawa Tanuki
Released in the US by Icarus Publishing


Slugline: The standard assortment of porn fetishes, only now with women drawn as prepubescent girls.

Porn has a different goal in mind that most manga, which is why I rated this as high as I did despite disliking most of the fetishes than are on display here. Humiliation, servitude, the diminution of the female self in the pursuit of sex, perceived infantilization of the characters, especially the women, all do very little for me.

Of course, for some readers, these are positives. Does Innocence execute these fetishes in an interesting way? Reasonably well, and the art is well done. For the 2nd edition, there is a new short bonus section with more detailed art. The only story that captured my attention was My Girlfriend's Feelings, My Sister's Feelings, because it actually tried to be funny, as the girlfriend has to listen her boyfriend's sister disparage him despite knowing (through flashbacks) that he is anything but how she describes. Not brilliant, but a welcome different kind of story.

Innocence, 2nd ed. is available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

-Ferdinand

Please Miss Yuri

By Syowmaru
Released in the US by Icarus Comics


Slugline: What is it about nurse's offices?

Once again the school nurse's office is a den of iniquity. What is it about them that invites depravity? Probably because there are the only places in a school that has a bed and privacy, but really, can't people meet at their homes? I mean, it seems that everyone's parents are working a continent away, I think it would be more convenient to take care of these urges at home.

It's porn. It's teacher-student porn, with the punishment kink (oh, I am such a bad teacher, punish me) sort of stuff, but at least everyone seems to know that people are faking it in order to feed their kinks. The art is relatively nice and straightforward, without triple joints or violations of the laws of fluid dynamics. There are a couple backup pieces that spin off it in the back, but honestly, I was sort of blah about the whole thing. It's porn, it's competent but there wasn't anything there that really grabbed my attention.

-Ferdinand

Blue Eyes, vol. 1

By Tohru Nishimaki
Released in the US by Icarus Publishing


Slugline: Never have I been impressed by so little.

Note that Blue Eyes is a PORN title and makes no apologies for that.

Blue Eyes is a strange porn title. In that there are actually characters, which most porn stories usually don' bother with, but they are curiously flat. And there is the fetish for big breasted women in the volume, but if you look at the cover art (as seen below), the fact that the women featured are in dire need for breast reduction surgery is minimized. But most shockingly all of the women in the volume are engaging in the porn of their own free will and volition. What has the world (or more specifically Japan) come to? It is the face that there is a continuing story, the setup of a romantic triangle, these are all things that I suspect would not be out of place for most of the risque romance novels, but here, in manga, it is different and new. Which is why I gave it the slugline I did. If you want some plot and rationale for your sex, this has it, and so despite the characterization being a little flat, and the characters themselves not triple-jointed like they are in many other titles, this a solid, uninspired read.



Blue Eyes, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in manga and anime.

-Ferdinand