So, lets get right to it: ACTUAL REVIEW
As is to be expected of the porn/adult romance genre, there are tropes. And lots of them. And oh boy, it is fun! Right at the beginning we got the hot and sexy firefighter male lead, but oh, surprise! He is also the main Heroines childhood friend! Some damsel in distress situations ensue and cue the sexytimes.
The rest of the story is predictable, as expected but not as bad as could be in this genre. The artwork is actually quite good and the story and characters get slightly more depth in later chapters. (More romance and relationship than pure sex scenes) Its great fun to read when you enjoy(albeit tropey/cliched) adult romance stories with a good deal of sex scenes. The story is so cliche, its hilarious!
In the later chapters i was surprised at the unexpected seriousness, as the characters actually talk the misunderstandings through instead of just ignoring it and thus creating unnecessary drama like in many,many, many josei.
What makes this story noteworthy is the appearance of the male lead who is: a buff firefighter and not a sleazy s/M office stud or the pale and noodly possessive prince-type.
So why do I bother writing a review about a hentai, of all things? OPINION on the entire genre:
Having read manga for over 18 years now, and being an adult woman, i was looking for some aesthetically pleasing erotic stories geared towards women that are NOT yaoi. With the manga and hentai publications being so vast i thought it should be easy to find an adult romance/erotica/hentai .... or so i thought.
I couldn't have been more mistaken. Although the hentai publications are many and catering to all fetishes and kinks possibly imaginable it is surprisingly hard to find erotica made for women that is not yaoi. On top of that i have some standards, which made it even more difficult. Those being:
1) the sex has to be consensual
2) no incesty-shit, no violence, no creepy shit
3) the woman has to enjoy it
4) the female character must have more brains and text lines than a housefly.
This shouldn't be nearly as hard as it was, maybe i looked in the wrong places, but most of the hentai/erotica i discovered so far is not specifically geared towards women, so i find at leas one or more criteria not met. Which is a shame really. The other matter is the appearance of the male lead. Sure there are some adult romance /josei that also contain sex scenes and some of them are drawn really beautifully, but most of them still feature the two major archetypes: kinky and possessive office-stud or pale-fainty-prince noodle arms. And i like neither.
I mean, anything is possible in art, and hentai for men has allllllll the possible taste one can possibly have (just think about all the boob sizes) so why cant there be more diverse types in male leads?
Yaoi has some beautifully drawn art as well AND athletic body types, but what to do when that's not your kinda jam?
So, here is my conclusion: there is not enough smut drawn for ladies.
And yes, i know the cultural situation, with women in japan being expected to act pure and modest and say "no!" when sex is about to happen as well as the societal idea that a woman over 25 is to be married and should have kids so no time to read.....
