EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

Azatomaking stands in the hall for choosing the ground beneath its own feet, the editorial office of an adult manga magazine, as its stage, and for drawing the romances of the grown-ups who work there through characters of real depth.

At its centre is a seven-chapter series with an epilogue about the women editors of an adult manga magazine at a fictional publisher, Kani Magazine: their work and their love lives, an office romantic comedy between adults. Alongside it come three chapters of the Shuujuu series, carried over from the previous book Shuujuu Ecstasy, and one standalone story.

Readers' attention gathers most of all on Azato, the editor on the cover. Several point to how this calculatedly coy woman changes as she spends time with an artless new recruit. Others agree that every character has a temperament of their own, enough for the book to stand as romantic comedy. One critic reads parody and metafictional play into the premise itself.

Though the chapters first appeared over some four years, the drawing, dense with fine linework and lavish at once, stays remarkably consistent. Reviewers also single out the care taken over the binding: a translucent jacket through which the art beneath shows.

It is Michiking's third book, four years after the last. The first-print limited edition topped both the 2020 adult-manga bestseller list at Toranoana's Akihabara store A and FANZA's annual mail-order ranking for the same year. A sequel, Azatomaking Plus, followed the next year. 59th among the hall's commercial works.