EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

Neither hypnosis nor stopped time appears in it, and it holds the circle's highest figure on DLsite. "Tabisaki de Nakayoku Natta Ko ga Otoko to Omottetara Onna no Ko datta Ken!!EX" stands in the hall as a short story that Nyuu Koubou, a circle whose calling card is the supernatural device, built on a single mistaken identity.

A man travelling alone strikes up a friendship over a card game with a strikingly good-looking guest at a resort hotel. The companion he took for a boy turns out to be a girl. Built on the mistaken-identity pattern that romantic comedy has returned to again and again, it is a 23-page adult short whose subject is the age gap between a grown man and a girl; the official classification is pure love and age gap.

Reader comment converges on the plainness of the plot and the sureness of its handling. The book first lets the two settle in as playing partners, so that their temperaments are known before the story moves, and nothing feels forced. It is held up as proof that a simple premise can make a good book, and requests for a continuation keep coming.

Story by Nyuu Koubou, art by pastime774. With 84 titles since 2012, the circle has in recent years brought in a different artist for each work. While its main body of work leans heavily toward FANZA, this book's numbers on the two stores run nearly level. That the book most read on DLsite from a circle of high-concept titles should be one whose title simply states its plot can be read as a sign that readers were not asking for strong devices alone.

It stands 37th among the hall's doujin works, 8th in the Pure Love division and 7th in Loli/Petite. Official translations exist in four languages, and a live-action version has been made.