Review of “OH NO! My Boyfriend is Stuck Inside of a Hentai Manga!!”

 The Manga Driver’s Ed Remedial Pass/Fail Class presents:

Review of “OH NO! My Boyfriend is Stuck Inside of a Hentai Manga!!”

Can the bar for ecchi isekai possibly go any lower this year, or are we now and forever confined to dropping off the teenagers at the veritable gates to hentai pursuits, instead adding to the shanty town constructed from scraps we found along the way? That seems to be the question begged by the title I’m presenting today.

OH No! My Boyfriend is Stuck Inside of a Hentai Manga!!, by Chika. First published in 2010, first published in North America in 2011.

For the record I’m only writing this because my wife refused to review any of my suggestions for her own blog. In her defense, none of them were manga and one was technically a book of matches. So instead you get a manga review from me, someone who hopes by the end of this you’ll learn why I don’t write reviews and wonder whether I have ever even read a manga. Presumably, someone will physically threaten me for being critical of this series even if they themselves have never heard of it. Well then boo on you, let’s get this farce off the ground.

[PLOT]

Highschool students Jagaimo Tsumaranai and Yuka Nanimono are dating, but almost immediately Jagaimo-kun gets pulled into one of his countless hentai mangas and hijinks immediately ensue as Yuka attempts to steer him away from actual erotic encounters. Despite the heavy emphasis on fantasy elements in each manga’s world, the events in each one all exclusively revolve around going to high school and/or eating food. That, and looking at manga boobs and butts. This makes sense as the manga’s target audience is likely unfamiliar with any other activity. 

[STORY]

Although Chika has maintained throughout multiple interviews over the decades to be an actual eight-year-old dog - and that graphic designer and doujin artist Ichiro Shigatsu is merely his owner - we need to set aside this patently-absurd pseudonym explanation for a moment and cut straight to pointing at the elephant in the room: this manga-ka is a veritable pervert. In only his most recent case in 2014, Shigatsu was charged with three hundred and seventy-seven counts of child pornography and sentenced to ninety minutes of public service and an apology letter.*

Keep this in mind as this volume jumps from one convoluted lewd scenario lacking anything resembling erotica to another.

It technically maintains an almost general audience level of content while alluding to some of the most obscene material I’ve seen, and I used to download some weird shit. Chika’s favorite means of self-censored nudity is covering the girls in excessive thick fluids. Cake batter, mayonnaise, white house paint, a ghost ecstatically turning into a stream of ectoplasm, dog fertility medicine, et cetera… somehow it’s all here. The girls Jagaimo-kun encounters wear more piles of goop than the Victorians wore clothes. I dread to think how the series keeps up this pace.

Yuka is barely seen in more than a couple panels after the first issue, regulated mostly to shouting at her boyfriend while being ignored. Already in this volume are signs that Chika either immediately grew bored of exploring its premise or realized it was beyond the scope of his limited imagination. He is a dog, after all.

[ART]

The art is surprisingly lavish when it comes to the hentai manga covers, but within the volume itself the characters are composite-image levels of generic. Although this may be in part due to the girls sharing the exact same face and single expression of terrified, vapid lust, like a doe caught in the headlights of a semi-truck it desperately yearns to fuck. 

Chika likes to draw the girls consistently with both their breasts and butt-cheeks in the same frame, even if it leads to non-Euclidean pretzel-like anatomy. The sole exception to this style is our male protagonist, who is rendered as some kind of potato-person with a flap for a mouth. I can only suspect it’s a form of commentary. Overall expect confusing and difficult-to-decipher levels of ‘artistic license’. 

The backgrounds are clearly photographs from within a small apartment, with cardboard boxes Standing in for furniture, buildings, and the like. Not sure if this choice was done for style or to save money.

[PRESENTATION]

Despite its out of print status, this series is surprisingly easy to obtain at clearance prices, as Stuart Levy allegedly demanded over a hundred thousand copies be printed during the final week of TokyoPop’s 2011 shutdown.

*(Note: this sentence was later reduced to half an hour and a character sketch after it was confirmed the depicted minors were demon space aliens, all over ten thousand years of age).

[RATING]

I’m giving this one a fail, which means you also should not read it. Print is dead.

I would recommend every copy be recycled into packing material.

This series was published in 2011 by TokyoPop. This series has one hundred and eighty-seven volumes, none of which were ever published.