EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

Hypnosis stories are usually told from the side of the one casting the spell. "Cheat Item Kanrikyoku no Oshigoto EX" enters the hall by retelling such a story from the side that cleans up afterwards.

The setting is a world in which "cheat items" that control people and stop time are in circulation. A man takes a part-time job in the department that recovers their victims, wipes their memories and sends them home. Its subject is hypnotic harm and non-consent, which places it in the line of hypnosis and ryojoku works; the official classification lists student, hypnosis, brainwashing and ryojoku.

What readers agree on is this reversal of direction. The damage has been done before the story starts, and the pages open on the procedures of recovery and retrieval. Several readers say they had never read a book that begins after the breaking rather than before it. Comment also gathers around the senior colleague who turns a blind eye to her junior's conduct, and who shows another face once the setting notes at the back of the book are read.

Story by Nyuu Koubou, art by Mikka Sanban. Here a circle that has drawn hypnosis, altered common sense and stopped time for 15 years turns to the aftermath of the subjects it raised itself. Hypnosis has long served as a way into a relationship that skips courtship altogether; this book can be read as dropping even that way in, and putting the routine of a workplace in its place. The form, with a back-office worker as narrator, was carried into "Ero Trap Maintenance no Oshigoto" the following year.

It stands 83rd among the hall's doujin works and 5th in the Hypnosis division. Its sales lean hard toward FANZA, following the pattern of the circle that holds first place in the circle wing. Several readers came to it through excerpts on social media. Official translations exist in five languages.