EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

Beautiful drawing can also serve as a vessel for a dark story. Fanaticism stands in the hall for carrying, in such a vessel, the ruin of a love across class lines.

It is an adult collection set in a manor house that recalls Victorian England. The title work follows a new maid and her young master, whose romance is torn apart by jealousy, by the barrier of rank, and by a warped custom the house keeps hidden; its subjects are master and servant, class, cuckoldry, non-consensual sex and coercive "training", and madness. Two short pieces complete the book: a yuri story between a noble daughter facing an arranged marriage and her maid, and a devoted romance about nursing a lover broken by war.

The craft lies in the costumes and the density of the page. Maid uniforms are drawn with long skirts, their folds followed one by one, and the back matter includes costume design notes. Store readers agree on the beauty of the drawing, and a review blog points to a density that loses almost nothing between the colour and the monochrome pages. The descent from sweet romance into ruin happens with no drop in that beauty, and the gap between the two is what gives the title its narrative shape.

This is Shiokonbu's second book, collecting serial work from COMIC BAVEL. The first collection, Koi Maguwai, came out at the end of 2014, and nine years would pass before the next.

The print edition of February 2017 placed sixth for the first half of the year at Toranoana's Akihabara A store, and the digital release topped DLsite's daily chart on its first day. An English edition has been published by FAKKU. It stands 64th among the hall's commercial works.