Manga Review: Object of Desire by Tomoko Noguchi

Rating (Out of 5): ~2.5

Publisher: LuvLuv (Aurora Publishing)

Release Date: 2008

Volumes: 1.

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble.

Goodreads Synopsis:

When one is looking for love, where can she find it? Problems arise as Kako finds herself as an object of desire for men all around. Can she ever break what men are after and find real love?

Review:

I really want to love these josei, smutty books. But yet again, I am disappointed.

The art was weak and I didn’t like it. The characters were one-dimensional and didn’t stand out, and I didn’t particularly like any of them. The stories were weak.

I didn’t like any of the smut, even. The stories were unimpressive, as were the characters, and so I didn’t enjoy reading any of it. I wanted it to be over.

Meh.

Manga Review: Voices of Love by Kanae Hazuki

Rating (Out of 5): ~3.5

Publisher: LuvLuv Press (Aurora)

Release Date: 2008

Volumes: 1.

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. RightStuf.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Passionate manga for ladies Some say forbidden fruit is the sweetest Voices of Love serves up a steaming-hot collection of five romantic, passionate, sexy stories about modern women and the men they love. The title story follows a relationship between young teacher Mika Tsukahara and Naokazu Kuga, an 18-year old student at her school. They're neighbors too, and can't control their attraction to each other

Review:

This is by the author of Say I Love You, so of course I was interested. I was a little wary, because these smutty one-shots are always hit or miss.

While I enjoy the art of Hazuki (though this is rougher than her newer stuff), the stories were a little iffy. Most of them were a little underdeveloped in character and/or story. Some were rushed. But I did enjoy most of them, for the most part.

There’s one about a teacher and her student that’s kind of cute. One about a girl who’s being abused by her boyfriend, only to leave him and find love with a friend of hers that I rather enjoyed. Another about a girl being used by a lot of guys who doesn’t know what real love is, that I also rather enjoyed. They all have rather explicit sex in them, you are warned.

I’m glad I picked this up, because I did enjoy it for the most part. And I like Kanae Hazuki, so it was worth it.

Manga Review: Make Love & Peace by Takane Yonetani

Rating (Out of 5): ~3

Publisher: Aurora (Luv Luv)

Volumes: 1 (One-Shot, plus sequel)

Amazon Summary:

All they want is some peace... what they get is some hot and spicy love!

College student Ayame's boyfriend is the handsome police detective Koichi. After what seemed like a destined meeting, Ayame and Koichi are a couple who want nothing but a lovey-dovey relationship with plenty of hot sex to spice it up. However, having a police detective for a boyfriend naturally implies that constant troubles won't be far behind. Between battling injustices in society and indulging in sexual passions in bed, there is never a dull moment in their relationship. Though wanting some peaceful time together is unpredictable, can you really complain when you have to settle for hot and spicy sex?!

Review:

Unlike my last review of a Luv Luv manga, I actually enjoyed this one. It wasn't as amazing as I'd hoped, but it was much better than the last few I've read.

It's about Ayame, who's boyfriend is a police officer. They've gotten pretty intimate and close rather fast in their relationship, as she's already thinking about marriage only two months together. She worries about him getting hurt while working, and is bothered some by his constantly getting called in to work, but tries not to complain.

In most of the chapters, they're dealing with police-type problems, as well as relationship ones. Also, there is smut in most of them. (Skip the rest of this paragraph if you are not interested in the smut.) Some of this seemed rather repetitive, what with him always taking charge of it, and always licking her. It bothered me a little that she never took any initiative, or returned the favor of licking him. It just seemed to exemplify that she wasn't a particularly strong character, and that bothered me. And it would have been preferable to have to variety. Also, some of it seemed a little more... dirty, or explicit than the other ones I've seen. (Which isn't particularly bad, but was just weird to see.)

Most of the chapter-plots were alright. They weren't particularly bothersome. I think most of what bothered me would have to do with the characters. When Ayame tried to make a rapist look on the bright side, for example, and he acts all big only to look regretful as he leaves. (Another part of the rapist scene that bothered me, was when Ayame was going to jump out the window and the people protested, but then Koichi just appears outside it, when it's three stories high. Um, what? Oh! And when she holds out her phone and his face appears on the screen, because apparently she has a phone where she can chat like that, when they weren't before? I feel that that was just weird.) And when they're taking care of a mother, how absurd it seemed for her to just leave her baby because she's depressed, and how sure she is that she can't take care of it, only for her to change her mind when her husband gets there. But it also bothered me how much she was blaming that her husband was always gone and she was lonely and how of course she couldn't take care of her kid without him. She should have just dealt with it and tried on her own.

Oh, also, how fast Ayame and Koichi were moving. It seemed way too fast for them to be thinking love only two months in, and then to talk marriage only after six months. But maybe that's only me, since I feel that there should be years before you think about that stuff seriously? Aside from that, though, I do think they actually had something between them. Some chemistry or whatever. They seemed to get along rather well, joked around and seemed happy together. Although, a lot of what they do together is sex. Still, their chemistry together didn't bother me.

The artwork was also pretty good. Again, it wasn't amazing. But it was good, pretty consistently so throughout the whole book, and better than some of the other ones I've read recently, which is nice. Out of the three, this one was a little weak in story, or characters, and pace, I think. Not too bad, I guess.

I believe there is a sequel to this one that was published by Luv Luv as well? Or was maybe, almost published as well? I'm not too sure, but I'm thinking it might be harder to find than this one was, which will kind of suck, since I actually kind of liked this one and would like to read the next one.

Manga Review: Pretty Poison by Yutta Narukami

Rating (Out of 5): ~3

Publisher: Aurora (Luv Luv)

Volumes: 1 (One-shot)

Amazon Synopsis:

He's dangerous, beautiful & addictive... She Can't get enough!

Riyako's dreams of a happy marriage are shattered when her "true love" cheats on her. Heartbroken, she finds herself seduced by the beautiful young Shogo, ending in a night of heated, passionate sex. However, what seemed like an accidental meeting turns out to be much more, as Shogo and her ex-lover are somehow connected! In her vulnerable state, Riyako can't help herself from becoming more and more addicted to the seductive, poisonous bad boy Shogo. He knows just the right buttons to push to get what he wants, and what he wants is more hot sex with Riyako. A suspenseful and lust-filled love affair ensues.

Review:

I'm always looking for volumes from out-of-print companies, and that's especially for ones from Aurora and LuvLuv. Mostly because they tend to be smutty josei manga, and I love those. Or, I want to love them. I want to find a really good josei manga, and I would love it even more to have good smut, and I just can't. Usually the story is weak, or the characters are weak, or the art is weak; or maybe even all of them. And it just isn't what I want. And so I am disappointed. And this one wasn't all that much different. Which, honestly, sucks.

So, the first three chapter of this manga are all on the same persons story, Riyako. She's with this guys, who she believes loves her and agrees to move in together with her, while is obviously cheating on her, and he goes out and gets one of his 'friends' to make a move on her and 'console' her when she sees him with another girl. They guy, Shogo, ends up crashing with her for a few nights, even though she acts like she doesn't want his there. And then she gets all upset when she finds out it was all a set up. By the end, though, she's taking care of him again after finding out about his parents and telling off her old boyfriend.

Most of this was a bit annoying. I mean, obviously her old boyfriend was a bit shady, and then Shogo, who she ends up with, isn't very good at consoling her, and instead makes a move on her, pretending to have fallen in love with her as soon as he saw her (which is so obviously a line). He does several things within the story that bothered me, like pushing her into sex and just pushing her in general, which I didn't like. He wasn't particularly nice to her, and so I didn't feel that it made sense for them to believe they were in love so suddenly, when there weren't very many reasons for them to have fallen in love.

Also, I believe he stated, maybe once in the whole thing, that he loved the first guy and was gay, maybe bi? At first I thought he was joking, but he sounded pretty serious. Maybe he was, though, since it was never mentioned again, and didn't seem to be much of a problem? That bothered me a bit, but whatever, I guess?

That story gets a few points for the ending, though, since they decided to give themselves some room to grow, and they end up back together a while after the rest of the story. It wasn't done as well as it could have been, but it was still a good idea. Riyako gets a few points, too, because somewhere within the story, she ties him up because she doesn't trust him, which I haven't seen before and was happy with. That's not a whole lot of points for her, though, since she bought all the lines given to her and wasn't very strong for most of the story.

The last story, Yuji Scores, is about a girl who is in love with her soccer player boyfriend. He asks her to marry him, and she says yes, but later finds out that she isn't quite ready for it. I thought that they weren't quite right for each other, since they wanted very different things in life, and that something would happen with this other guy she knows, but nothing did. Instead, she breaks off the engagement, because she isn't ready for that (which she's not, since he wants a stay-at-home wife who can cook and will follow him around, but she's a bit useless at home and wants to work. Also, she's a bit materialistic, while he's not). In the end, though, they patch things up and she's trying to be more like what he wants.

At the end of the story, she states that someday she's 'going to make an honest man' out of him. I understand that that's supposed to mean they're going to marry someday, but I didn't think it really worked in their situation. Mostly because he's not not honest. He's pretty straight-forward with her, and doesn't cheat on her or anything. I just feel that she could have said something else, and it still could have had the same meaning, but that maybe went better with their situation.

So this one wasn't as good as I'd been hoping it would be. The artwork wasn't bad, but it definitely wasn't amazing. The characters weren't all that strong, nor was the story-line. Some of the smut was good, though, which is nice. On the other hand, though, some of that wasn't even all that good (like when Shogo pushed Riyako). I'm not very impressed, and so am disappointed by that, but mostly because (as I said above) I wanted to like it. I always do, but only few times do I actually like it. I'm still on the look for other Luv Luv and Aurora books, though, because I'm still hoping to find the one that does impress me.

Manga Review: Love for Dessert by Hana Aoi

Rating (Out of 5): 2.5

Publisher: Aurora Publishing (Luv Luv)

Amazon Synopsis:

Rei is a cheerful, happy-go-lucky worker at an ad agency who loves sweets so much that she has whipped cream for dinner! Conversely, her coworker Kuze is grumpy, temperamental and not the sweets kind of guy. That is, until one night when a kiss mixed with cream forces them both to reconsider their taste for sweets and their taste for each other. It seems that the only kind of dessert with whipped cream on top that Kuze likes... is Rei! 

Five additional stories, filled with sweet and spicy love and sex, feature a woman with a craving for guys in suits, a love-starved lolita, a hostess with bad taste in men, a woman who consults a fortune-teller about her hunger for love, and a college student with a strange, but sweet, boyfriend.

Review:

 

I've been wanting to read the manga from Aurora/Luv Luv for a while, or, really, ever since I'd heard of the company. I wasn't very into this type of manga when they were being published, and I only started paying attention to the companies the last couple years, so I didn't know about it at the time. I found this volume by itself at a used book store, and was very excited about it.

It wasn't as good as I was hoping it would be, though, which I'm a bit disappointed by. I hope that some of the others released by Luv Luv/Aurora are better.

The manga is a one shot full of short stories. I didn't know this, but I didn't mind it. It's also full of smut, which I did know, but could have been better.

The first story, 'Love for Dessert', is about a girl working in an office who likes one of her co-workers, but is always staying late to work with a different one who is very stand-off-ish. The guy she likes turns out to be a jerk and she ends up falling for the one she's always working for. The title comes from the fact that the girl like whipped cream, he doesn't, and they play with it a little.

The second one, 'Icing on the Cake', is about a high maintenance girl who is thinking of dumping her boyfriend until she sees him in a suit. He had a not very good job before, and when she sees him in a suit for his new job, she assumes that it's a higher paying job. Anyway, they get into a fight about the suit, she goes on a group date and finds out that she 'only likes him in a suit', and they make up. I understand, kind of, having a suit fetish, but the part about only liking him in one wasn't done very well. I didn't believe it, and she was a high maintenance girl, which is never really brought up or done anything about.

The third story, 'Bubblegum Princess', is about a stuck up girl who's mom dresses her up in lolita clothing. She ends up falling for a boy who she knew as a little girl that stays with them so he can work as a hairdresser. They fight at first, and then she finds herself falling for him and apparently he's already fallen for her. And there's a subplot about how she believes that her mom only sees her as a dress up doll, which is solved in, like, a page. And also, she wears glasses, and on the last page, something is thrown in about them not helping her see. But nothing about her glasses was mentioned before that, and it bothered me. I just didn't like her very much.

The fourth story, 'Red Bean', I actually did kind of like. It's about a girl who works at a host club, but everyone at school thinks that she's a prostitute, but this mostly bothers her, and she feels no shame about it. She starts getting close to a guy, who everyone calls Bean because of his hair, and who gets embarrassed very easily. She finds it cute, and is usually the cause of it. She doesn't tell him about her job until he saves her from a stalker customer, and he's embarrassed but happy about it. But then she decides to quit her job, and even though she says it's because of the customer being pushy, it seems a bit more because he doesn't really like it.

'Sweet Future', the fifth story, is about a girl who is having problems finding a job and that sees a fortune teller often. Her boyfriend doesn't understand it, openly disapproves of it, and then gets her a small, temporary job tutoring a boy. She isn't getting along with her boyfriend, which I understand, because she's sensitive and he is all business. Anyway, the fortune teller, Joseph, is stalking her, and her student saves her from it. She falls for the student, who is adorable, and he likes her back. It still feels a little weird, though, because she's his teacher. I'm not really sure what the age difference is, though, and that might make is better.

The last story, 'Puppy Chow', is about a girl who is going out with an outgoing boy that likes giving her choices. She thinks, though, that he just can't make decisions, and starts going back out with her last boyfriend who chose everything for her and that cheats on her again. There's a big thing about her not being who she really is, which is true, but I don't think that just going back to the boy from the beginning helps her solve it. She does end up going back to the boy from the beginning, who happily takes her back, and he find some puppies, which is kind of where the title comes from.

This whole thing wasn't all that good. I liked 'Red Bean' most, as I said earlier. And I guess I liked the couple from 'Puppy Chow', and despite me, I did kind of like the couple from 'Sweet Future'. I liked the boy from 'Bubblegum Princess'. That's mostly it, I think. The stories were a bit flat, which might be because of the short length of each story, but it also might not be. The art is what bothered me most, probably. It was a little flat, didn't really show their expressions very well, and just wasn't very good. And I'm a little picky with art. Also, though, the romance and smut weren't very good. I was hoping it would be really good. It didn't get me all hot 'n bothered. Not at all. And it wasn't even all that romantic, really. It was disappointing.

Also, the picture on the back cover is bothering me. It's kind of pretty, but it has nothing to do with any of the stories in the book. Does it? 'cause if it does, I missed it. I like it, though.

So, this wasn't a very good volume to start with from Aurora. I hope that I can find more, though, because I want the other ones, still.

Sidenotes: Why does Amazon still have some in stock, with 'more on the way'? Aurora is closed, isn't it? Didn't it close, like, two years ago or something? Shouldn't the books be out of print? I thought they were... Whatever, I guess.