EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

Even a long-running saga has a starting point, and here the publisher itself points to it. Injutsu no Yakata stands in the hall as the first book Erect Sawaru published with Kill Time Communication.

Its centre is a five-part title series set in a mansion where monsters stir, in which the elf sisters who serve the house, a demon and others are caught by its uncanny powers. In subject matter it is adult dark fantasy: sexual violence and conditioning by tentacles and monsters, and bodily transformation such as futanari and bestial change, in stories that end without rescue.

What became the artist's calling card is the sheer volume of fluid covering the page and the way tentacles are drawn; critics and readers alike have named these as Erect Sawaru's signature. Where the later PANDRA gives its characters hopeful endings, the title series here leaves them fallen, and some readers find that contrast refreshing.

It was the second book by an artist who debuted in 2005, published in October 2008. Recent work fills the front of the volume and early work the back, so the drawing visibly shifts as the pages turn. Part of the mansion's world, the artist has said, comes from a self-published booklet made back in high school.

Two years later the same publisher launched PANDRA: White Desire, Black Hope, and in presenting its second volume called this book the artist's work "before last". Many readers likewise trace the saga back to it. Among the hall's commercial works it stands 34th.