EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

A sequel is not a container for selling the same story twice. Mesugaki ga Arawareta 2 keeps the container and swaps out everything inside it.

The salaryman hunched over a blame that was not his is the same man as before. What stands in front of him this time is a girl with a stricken face, asking for help. She says there is a bug in the restroom; he follows her in, and a photograph is taken of him as a prowler. That is when her face changes. Where the first girl pushed with taunts from the opening page, this one begins in mimicry. What she has hold of is not the difference in strength but his standing, and the single word "police" hangs at his throat through to the last page.

What readers name again and again is that switch of expression. The same drawing reads as a different person, they write. The hand doing the work is broken down into fingertips, and the instrument on hand is a phone. People pass outside the cubicle, and that condition imposes a held breath on the whole book. The main text runs 43 pages, bundled in two versions, one with the dialogue printed in colour and one without.

For the circle Hamenzu it is the book that came 22 months after the first, with SAKULA's Youma Matenrou in between. In the closing pages the girl from the first book steps up alongside the new one, and the series ran on to a third volume in 2024.

Among doujin works in the hall this one sits 39th, and 9th in the loli category. The first book stands 7th in the same hall: both of Hamenzu's volumes are here together.