EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

Senki Madouden Asuka & Shizuru stands in the hall as a fighting-heroine epic built on the design of its tentacles and the engineering of its costumes, and as a book that, more than a decade on, is still read as if it were new.

In a world modelled on medieval Europe, Asuka, a swordswoman of the Guild, and Shizuru, an exorcist in Japanese dress, face the revenge of a masked sorcerer they let slip away, across eight chapters. With assault by tentacles and monsters as its subject, it belongs to the line of fighting-heroine stories in which the heroines are defeated. A standalone about an exorcist nun, holy asylum, rounds out the volume.

Reviewers single out, again and again, the design and rendering of the tentacles. They also return to the artist's habit of designing close-fitting costumes and keeping them on, which they treat as a signature. A blonde swordswoman beside a black-haired exorcist, Western beside Japanese, gives the pair their identities, and a structure that piles setback on setback before turning the tables at the end gives the long story its shape.

It collects every chapter serialised across two of the publisher's anthology series, Touki Ryoujoku and Slave Heroines, and is Rindou's second solo collection, after Ryoujoku no Rensa.

The print edition came out from Kill Time Communication in August 2008, and the digital edition went on sale the same month. Year after year, readers write that they had been hunting for it since first seeing it in an anthology, or that it holds its own beside current work. It ranks 234th among the hall's commercial works.