Beneath all the harem characteristics there’s actually an okay story, following Suguru who was dumped by his girlfriend after failing to get into college. Then whilst feeling dejected he has one of those “chance encounters” you find in a lot of manga, whereby he meets and befriends a hot girl. But it doesn’t end there, because that same girl happens to move into same apartment Suguru’s uncle promised him, so the two end up living together. These turn of events, being rather common and cliché for any harem or romance manga in general, can actually be forgiven thanks to the intriguing developments (except regarding Ulala's ridiculous search for her mother) that nicely popped up whenever we aren’t too busy tossing off. Unfortunately like in most hentai manga, there’s a sex quota that must be met, so during those 8 or so sex-filled pages the story kindly takes a backseat and waits for the inevitable climax.
Sure this is a hentai manga, so a lot of the sticky handed readers would embrace the sexually explicit moments; but I find it a problem when it affects the character development and even replaces some interesting character developments with annoying sluts. As I stated earlier, this manga unknowingly tackles an interesting issue whereby Suguru wants to start anew with his girlfriend but is also in love with this other girl. If those 3 were the only involving characters then this would have been a great manga however the bloody sluts always appear, to remind whoever is dumb enough to give a damn that it’s only a hentai harem.
The artwork is a tough one to judge because no matter how much I love the way it shows the characters using their bodies, I just cannot ignore all the flaws. I guess that’s what happens after reading so many hentai… you begin to nitpick at every little thing. Even with its flaws; the backgrounds are adequately detailed, the panels nicely arranged and the girls look amazing when playing “hide the sausage” with our protagonist.
All in all Kininaru Roommate is a good hentai, not a great one but definitely one that’s worth your time and attention. This really did seem like a moment I would discover a diamond in the dirt of hentai, yet all I found was some coal to help fuel my increasing frustration with the harem genre. I felt like the mangaka should have named this “Kininaru Sluts”, because the story does a fair job of developing then out of nowhere one of the sluts emerge and proceed to have intercourse with our protagonist, thus impeding any progress. Well for the average reader my opinions don’t matter, because you’re really just here for the sex.
