EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

Iribitari Gyaru ni Manko Tsukawasete Morau Hanashi stands in the hall as a doujinshi that laid the foundation for a series that has kept adding sequels on a single device: the terms of an arrangement between two people.

It is an original adult doujinshi with student protagonists, twenty-five pages of story. Kuroda Hikaru, a black-haired gal, keeps turning up in the room of an otaku classmate in order to read his manga, and the book follows her relationship with the room's owner. It does not begin as a romance built on affection; the premise is a trade, a relationship that starts as payment for the reading.

What readers write again and again is that this is not the familiar figure of the gal who is kind to otaku. She comes for the manga on the shelves, her manner stays businesslike throughout, and she is drawn as cool and low-key. A good number of readers explain, in their own words, how a relationship that does not assume affection departs from the established type. That is where the book's reception shows most clearly.

Manno, the artist behind the circle Amagami Honpo, draws with a clean line, and although the panels are dense the page is always easy to read. The other quality readers single out is the gradation of expression. The process by which feeling begins to seep into what was supposed to be a transaction is tracked through the small changes of a blank face slowly loosening, and the fineness of those steps turns an expressionless heroine into the book's centre of attention.

Since its release at Comic Market 101, Amagami Honpo has kept extending the same pair. That an unusually large number of readers say they picked the book up after seeing it advertised is also part of its record. It stands 9th among doujin manga in the hall.