EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

An artist's themes are sometimes all present in the very first book. Koisuru Pantsu stands in the hall as Okada Kou's debut collection, the point from which the rest of the work sets out.

Built around linked stories of a brother and his younger sister, with another series about a small girl and a mischievous boy among others, it is an adult collection of eleven chapters whose official genre labels include lolicon, little sister and incest. It also contains Me ga Hanasenai, a single netorare story in which the brother's friend comes between the siblings.

A review published just after release hailed the newcomer as a supernova within the genre, pointing to the bright expressions of round-faced characters and to a storytelling range that slips bitterness, and now and then a harsh turn, into otherwise gentle tales. Readers have gone on remarking on the softness of the drawing in the years since.

Okada Kou debuted in 2006 with a contribution to a shota anthology, passed through the Oaks anthology Karyou Gakuen Shotoubu, and made a name in Hit Shuppansha's ino. Most of the stories here continue the anthology work, and the artist has said that Me ga Hanasenai was the first piece drawn with a free hand for ino. The subject it opened would carry into later books.

The print edition came out in February 2009. That year it placed 10th in the annual chart of Toranoana's Akihabara store A and second in the Eromanga Taisho reader vote, the first year in which the artist finished near the top of that poll. The digital edition has been available since 2011, and the book stands 182nd among the hall's commercial works.