EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

An artist chooses what to show in a first book. What Kyockcho chose in Lovely was the face of a girl in the middle of feeling something.

Rain starting on the walk back from trash duty; an empty classroom during the school festival; a date carried out with a toy already in place. Eight short pieces, all set within a few streets of one another, their characters wandering into the corners of each other's stories. Restraints and toys turn up often, and the pieces almost always come to rest on two people who care about each other.

The craft is concentrated in the face. Eyes filling with tears while the pleasure is held back; the moment the holding fails; the instant between the two. Readers keep saying the same thing — that every panel carries exactly the right expression for it. They also name the clothing, soaked with sweat and fluid and clinging to skin, and the line that runs from hip to backside. That the artist devotes the afterword to expressions is itself common knowledge among them.

This is a first collection, gathering two years of short work from COMIC BAVEL. The artist had been drawing in the doujin world; this is the first thing put forward after finding a place in a commercial magazine. One piece here, about a pair of twin sisters, later grew into a long-running series and was animated.

An English edition came from FAKKU, and a simplified Chinese edition from the publisher itself. Among the hall's commercial works, this one sits seventh.