I kept putting off reading this one, I guess because of the tags and the fanservice-y promotional visuals, but I ended up bingeing the whole thing yesterday.
It’s certainly an odd combination of wholesome iyashikei storytelling and bigtime Male Gaze visuals, and there’s no reason Akebi isn’t an annoyingly perfect genki girl, except she’s not. Sure, it’s “Everybody Loves Akebi,” but the author does a pretty good job of showing why they do.
The voyeuristic aspects seem to be as much about the author’s fetish for figure-drawing and body language as it is about lewdness (although there’s some of that too). It reminds me a bit of the virtuoso body-language drawing in Hana ni Arashi, only with the volume turned up to 11, and the author’s background in animation on full display. I take some consolation in the fact that Akebi’s parents also get the full fanservice treatment, so it’s not just middle-schoolers’ bodies on display. (Is there a hotter Wholesome Mom than Akebi’s in all of manga?)
I’m going to need to re-read this to get all the characters straight in my head, but I’m finding the story totally enjoyable and it’s been showing surprising emotional depth in the last couple of volumes.
At some point there probably needs to be an Akebi-Erika “You know what sex is, right? And that two girls can have it?” conversation, because that certainly seems to be the long-term destination. (Smokin’-Hot Mom with the girls’-school-prince haircut might have some insight to share in this area.)
last edited at Oct 16, 2023 3:59AM