AoD Adult Review: Aqua Bless

[Hakaisha]

http://cdn-www.mania.com/content_pics/000004/66/45/aa13edba56fdae4c_large.jpgAqua Bless (http://www.mania.com/aqua-bless_article_110911.html)
Mania Grade: A-
Art Rating: A
Packaging Rating: A-
Text/Translation Rating: B
Age Rating: 18 and Up
Released By: Icarus Publishing
MSRP: 19.95
Pages: 160
ISBN: 978-1934075227
Size: A5
Orientation: Right to Left
Overall Hotness (1 to 5): 5:G-spot Rocker!!


This may easily be the most entertaining Icarus title released to date! It is definitely the highest art and content grade I have ever given. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!!!!!!!!!

[Gatts]

Contagious psychic sexual sensitivity was pretty funny. Especially at the end scene were they were unfortunate enough to run into all of the other story characters. :)

[Classical]

I've read a couple of chapters, and I've glanced throughout the artwork in the book, and I have to agree that Aqua Bless is hot. :blush: Yamatogawa sure knows how to draw hot woman. I especially love their eyes.

[Dissonance]

I read Yamatogawa's Travel and Love in an issue of AG Digital and I liked it a lot. The girl in that particular story (she's on the cover of this book, I think) is cute and *gasp* realistically proportioned, and the writing is snappy. My only bugbear is a common one (apologies in advance for the bluntness): the excessive bodily fluids. That said, it's certainly nowhere near as bad as in most ero manga I've read. Might pick this one up.

[Gatts]

The girl in that particular story (she's on the cover of this book, I think) is cute and *gasp* realistically proportioned

They even make a throw away joke in the first page where she's yelling at the cover girl that her breasts aren't that big. As for excessive fluids, there are much worse examples of that out there. :)

[General Hentai]

This is an outstanding book. Get it!

As to "excessive bodily fluids", I think we're stuck with it (pun!), as it seems to be a convention which developed as a result of Japanese censorship of genital areas. If you have to blackout penetration, put mosaics on anime genitals, excessive bodily fluids serve to show what exactly has been going on downstairs. I think Bukakke developed because of this for live action Japanese porn. It's become a standard convention, even though mosiacs are lighter, and blackouts on genitals in manga are smaller. It seems to be so much a part of the anime and manga convention that were censorship lifted today, I doubt we'd see any changes at all for the foreseeable future.

But as to Aqua Bless, the girls are realistic, beautifully drawn, sweet and sexy. they're all individuals, not carbon copies of either facial or body design. A great, great book.

[Dicrel Seijin]

Thank you for reminding me of this manga-ka. I saw a couple of pages from the title story and made a note to myself to pick up the compilation when it came out (and I promptly forgot about it :sweat: ). Well, this'll pad out my order this week.

[Buster Blader 126]

Wow, I didn't know that this was actually a licensed title - I had read this online a few days prior to this review up.

Might have to inquire about this one at a comic shop someday. It was pretty good, and I'd rather have the physical copy than online scans.

[Hakaisha]

Wow, I didn't know that this was actually a licensed title - I had read this online a few days prior to this review up.

Might have to inquire about this one at a comic shop someday. It was pretty good, and I'd rather have the physical copy than online scans.

Icarus is good people, support their efforts :nosebleed:

[Hayate Kurogane]

Finally got my copy!

Like Dissonance, I'd read the "Travel and Love" story in that issue of AG Digital. Maybe it's because that was the first story of Yamatogawa's I'd encountered, so it gets the unfair advantage, but after going through all the other stories I have to call it my favorite.

Some of the collections released by Icarus show more pronounced evolutions in the style and techniques used by some artists more than others, especially if they're collections of standalone stories collected from over time, and Yamatogawa's art falls into the "many changes" category. This isn't necessarily bad, but it does make some of the stories present here better than the others because, let's face it, we're buying this stuff for the hawt girls as much, if not moreso than we are for any narrative value the stories may possess.

That said, Yamatogawa's art in "Travel and Love" strikes my personal artistic fancy more than the art in any of the others. I'm a bigger fan of the actual stories in the telepathy chapter (and the hilarious follow-up where they meet all the others) and the cowgirl idol chapter, but the art means "Travel and Love" is the winner in my book.

I do agree that it's the most entertaining title Icarus has released thus far. I'm a big Taro Shinonome fan, which means Swing Out Sisters gets the win for best artwork in an Icarus title (and yay for the bonus Taro Shinonome image in A Wish of My Sister), and Domin-8 Me is still the hottest ero-manga I've read in the past several years (yeah, not an Icarus title, but what can you do?), but Icarus gets major props for bringing us Aqua Bless and, frankly, their entire catalog. Good to have a company giving us some good ol' slip-n-slide, moan-n-thrust, T&A on a consistent basis!