HANKY PANKY (Koreaki Kamuro)

This book is like a bad Chinese buffet, except with sex – there’s a whole lot of it, but none of it makes you go ‘yum!’, and you don’t really want seconds. Also you may have just eaten fried dog in that chef’s special.

Koreaki Kamuro had a handful of titles that DMP licensed as digital-only books for their weird Digital Manga Guild experiment, but Deux Press put out her only physical book that was released in English. She had a title called ‘Sex Friend’ that was licensed by the short-lived Boysenberry imprint from Broccoli Books, but they folded before it was released (there is a preview in the back of Pet on Duty, one of their only two releases). I’m not sure if ‘Sex Friend’ was better than this one, but it would have to be pretty dogshit to be much worse. I’m not super familiar with this mangaka and don’t know if this represents the lower end of her work or the average, but I guess we can also consider that it was made in 2007 and if she was still making work now she would no doubt be much better (she isn’t, to my knowledge, with her last published work being from 2011).

So there’s a few one shots in here but the main story is about two college classmates, Manaka and Doi (is this a real Japanese name or a nickname?). Doi is a bully and teases Manaka because he wears glasses and looks like a nerd, which is like….not something that really happens in college, but ok. Manaka only pretends to be a nerd though, he’s actually a host at a host club and wants to be “disguised” outside of work…until Doi starts working at Manaka’s club too, and of course he would be like “oh wow, you’re the classmate I bully except without glasses,” right? Wrong, he completely doesn’t recognize him, and then basically hits on him, and then they start working together and he STILL doesn’t recognize him as the same person with his glasses off. Apparently glasses are the ultimate ninja disguise!

Manaka and Doi from “Hanky Panky.”

So like…Doi gets really drunk at work one night and they hook up because, mysteriously, Manaka has feeling for him. Yes, he has feelings for a guy who is apparently so stupid he believes that his hot host club coworker and his classmate who he bullies for looking like a nerd in college are two completely different people. Your guess is as good as mine.

“Mmm yeah, who’s my hot college bully?”

There is also one about a guy named Naomichi who gets dragged along by a business client to an oral sex club, and there runs into a guy named Makio who he used to coach in soccer. Makio decides this is the perfect time to give Naomichi a blow job, because is there a better way – or better place – to greet your old soccer coach?

I have a thing for both clothed hand jobs and guys in business suits, and so this was *maybe* my favorite panel?

The other two or three stories aren’t even worth mentioning they’re so lame or so little happens. There’s a lot of sex in here though, it’s definitely smut, but it probably wasn’t the droids you were looking for. I’m usually all for smut, you guys know me, but like…the anatomy just so rough, and the sex is either weird looking, poorly censored, or you just don’t see anything at all. And would it have killed her to add some shading?

Oh boy, that pose on the left, it’s like…kneeling sex while floating? This spread is from the second story, which also had characters who work at a host club
This was The Tale of a Man and his Fuck Buddy (not the real title) and the fuck buddy feels guilty because the guy is married…well, he thinks so anyway.

Even in 2007, I can’t imagine this being anything more than mediocre at best. Skip this one and read almost anything else, Deux Press does some smut trash for sure but even this is below their usual standards.

TL;DR: A lousy book of various smutty BL one-shots – smut-shots? – the main one featuring a guy who bullies his college classmate for being a nerd and wearing glasses (yes, in college) and doesn’t recognize him as his hot host club coworker, because apparently wearing glasses make you a completely unrecognizable person. The rest of the stories are either just as bad or totally forgettable. Plus the art is bad, and even the sex is bad – like a suspiciously cheap Chinese buffet, there may be a lot there but none of it looks appetizing.

TheBL Rating: 3.5/10