EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

Kimono are hard to draw, which is exactly why they are worth the attempt. Koi Maguwai stands in the hall as Shiokonbu's first collection, one that set itself the rule of dressing its heroines in Japanese clothing and held to that rule throughout.

Built around Japanese dress, from yukata and shrine-maiden robes to the layered court robes of the Heian period, it gathers twelve stories, newly drawn work included. It opens with the devoted romances of lovers and newlyweds, then widens into love with the supernatural, a fox spirit and a snow woman, and a darker tale of ritual.

Readers almost all remark on how this clothing is rendered, saying that a care which neglects not even the smallest crease holds from the cover to the last story. The running order lowers the temperature from bright romance in the first half to bittersweet endings in the second, keeping the book off a single note; one reader likens the story of a snow woman who loves in spite of her own sense of unworthiness to the snow woman of classic folklore.

Published at the end of 2014 as the first title of Bunendo's new BAVEL COMICS imprint, it was the artist's debut book. The devotion to costume began here, in Japanese dress, and would later turn to Western clothes and a manor house in Fanaticism.

Almost alongside the book, the story Boukyaku no Youko was adapted as an OVA, followed in 2015 by Ikoku na Retro, and both were released in English. The book's first place on DLsite's daily chart came two years after its digital release, around the time Fanaticism arrived there. It stands 170th among the hall's commercial works.