EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

Onibana Muzan stands in the hall as a collection that lets density of drawing and an odd strain of comedy live alongside harsh subject matter.

It is an adult collection of eleven pieces whose leads are non-human girls, oni, beast-eared girls, fox spirits and elves, and most take non-consensual violation as their subject. The setting leaps from a village bound by custom to a battlefield, a slave market and a post-apocalyptic waste, but one reversal recurs: a being who ought to rank above is forced to submit to those below. It appeared from Nijigen Dream Comics, a label that began with stories of fighting heroines overpowered, and the label's character shows in the material. Some readers observe that because the leads are not human, they can keep reading even where the cruelty runs to excess.

Mochi's pages are built on density. Shadow is laid in without stinting, and the men's hands are drawn rough and knotted, setting up a contrast with the heroines, whose line is held back; several readers point to that same place. At the same time, the coined sound words and the bit players' lines carry a strange humour, so the book reads less darkly than its bleak plots suggest.

The earliest pieces date back to 2007, and the drift of the style can be followed within one volume; it is also an edit of the artist's own history. In 2022 the oni girl from the cover was made into a figure. Among the hall's commercial works it stands nineteenth.