EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

Severity and tenderness can be drawn with the same hand. Anata ga Toroke Ochiru Made stands in the hall as a collection that keeps the two together, unbroken, through all nine of its chapters.

Its subject is female-led SM: women who discipline their lovers, or the men before them, gently but without letting up, with bondage and drawn-out teasing as the main devices. Most of the stories concern couples in consensual relationships, though a few, among them the interrogation of a captive and a tale of vengeance, proceed without consent.

Where reader comment converges most is on the absence of malice or contempt in the women who take charge. No violence meant to hurt is ever drawn. The faces carry that tone on the page, and reviewers dwell above all on the women's expressions as they themselves warm to what they are doing. The long, slender fingers are another detail that separate readers return to. Several write that they had never before picked up a book in which the man yields, and were drawn in all the same.

Published in 2019, it is Dibi's fourth adult collection. It gathers work that ran in Akaneshinsha's Girls forM from late 2016, the same moment as the first book, together with stories first released as doujinshi and pages drawn new for the volume. An English edition, Until You Melt, has appeared in print from J18. Of the artist's four works in the hall it ranks second, and it stands 93rd among the hall's commercial works.