EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

A first collection sometimes arrives with the artist's high-water mark already inside it. Knospenmadchen stands in the hall as one of those books.

This is an adult collection about girls in adolescence, and half of it belongs to Adagio, a serial in three parts. Set in a school, it follows the relationship between a transfer student introduced as a prima ballerina whose wings have been broken, and a school nurse of thoroughly bad character. Across the three parts the story changes direction again and again before converging on a ballet scene near the end. Reviewers agree on how much ground so short a serial covers, and how surely it carries the plot through every turn.

Mameojitan draws thin and leaves the page bright. Reader after reader reaches independently for the same word: transparency. A white page can easily tip into slightness; here the density of work in every panel keeps it from doing so, and readers speak of the drawing's sheer power. That hand is at its best in the ballet scene near the end, and more than a few readers write that the beauty of the dancing moved them.

The stories ran in Akaneshinsha's COMIC Koh and its successor, COMIC Aoha. The book was assembled as the one magazine closed and the other began, the artist's first collection, with three short pieces alongside Adagio. From the following year Mameojitan took on the manga adaptation of a game; the serial went on to run in Shueisha's Ultra Jump and reached an official traditional-Chinese edition. Some readers say that adaptation is where they first met the artist's work, and that they came back to this book from there.

9th among the commercial works in the hall. English-language databases hold an entry and nothing more; there is still no licensed English edition.