Object of Desire

Review by Jilly Gee

Object of Desire is a collection of five, short love stories for ladies; six, if you count the two-chapter one as two. Five different, unrelated stories, five different leading ladies, three of which are a little ditzy. For the lucky ladies who weren’t ditzy, the guys turned out to be cheaters. Actually, all of them were cheaters with the except of one. I suppose the theme of this graphic novel should be “boyfriends who are jerks”.

Kako wants a guy to admit that he only wants to have sex with her instead of going through the motions of being her boyfriend and trying to hurry their dates along so they can go to a hotel. She finally meets that guy! They have sex, they actually have an amazing date, he tells her about his girlfriend…

Atsushi is constantly sleeping around with women other than Atsuko, she’s even caught him at it, and yet she still clings to him and obsessively texts him. The conclusion may have been sweet, but the premise of this story just doesn’t make any sense. She has threatened to break up with him if he cheats on her, and he actually tries to hide this cheating from her despite the fact that he thinks she is annoying and doesn’t want to be her boyfriend in the first place.

The two chapters of Shizuka and Kimura’s story was the best out of this graphic novel, not just because it was two chapters and had more room to develop the characters and their feelings than the 25 or so pages the other couples got. This first chapter alone had more depth and feeling than the rest of the other love stories put together. Shizuka has always been a smart, cool, cheeky girl. Everyone except Kimura is awed by her, so of course, she is attracted to Kimura. She admits, in the most casual way possible, that she likes him and they actually begin a relationship. The cheekiness she usually shows to him, though, is absent whenever they have sex, which rattles him. He tries to take his mind off of it with another girl, resulting in an unexpected blow-up from the cool Shizuka.

The follow-up chapter leaves behind most of the angst that was in Shizuka and Kimura’s previous story behind and is more comedic, with Shizuka scheming to get what she wants out of the relationship and the two of them playing baseball against a team that practically worships cool Shizuka.

Yuji is the one guy in this book who is not a cheater. Yay for Yuji. His girlfriend, Airi, is a kind, pretty, klutzy…airhead. In other words, she’s like an older version of the typical shoujo manga heroine, except without the incredibly long and awesome coming-of-age story to make her look less idiotic. The problem in this relationship comes when kind and klutzy Airi overhears what Yuji’s coworkers really think of her when they meet her at a party and she concludes that they are right. The story is sweet and makes a hell of a lot more sense than Atsushi and Atsuko’s, but it’s not anything more than that: sweet.

The final couple, Mami and Steve, do not have a sweet story, nor are there passionate, emotional feelings involved. Mami is a horny virgin and Steve is an exchange student staying with Mami’s family for the summer. Passionate, summer love? If only it were so. Just a quick summer fling, in this case. Mami, although disappointed that Steve was just looking for casual sex and not really in love with her, gets over it extremely quickly and is back to lusting over the guy from the beginning of the story.

Make More Love and Peace

Review by Kris

The adventures in and out of the bedroom for Ayame and Koichi continue in Make More Love and Peace. This time around things are a bit more rocky from Ayame’s point of view. After catching a girl shoplifting at a grocery store Ayame invites the girl over for dinner (the girl claimed she hadn’t eaten for two days.) But a surprise is in store for Ayame. The girl, Nono, is just a common trouble making delinquent who had been taken in to the police while Koichi was working. Nono is just looking for attention and plays Ayame for a fool. Because Ayame is such a sweetheart she can’t refuse when Nono begs to tag along on Ayame and Koichi’s date. Nono plants seeds of doubt within Ayame that her kindness is just a front and that Ayame is just a fake.

Of course Ayame struggles with all of these emotions and Koichi tries to be the good boyfriend and reassure her that she’s wonderful. Once everything is back to normal another woman is thrown into the mix. This time around it’s Koichi’s ex-girlfriend from high school, Tamaki. Tamaki is impressed with how Koichi has turned out and makes the comment to Ayame that she wants to steal him away from her. Ayame knows that Koichi is in love with her but she can’t help but worry. Man, being in love is hard.

There are also two brief one-shots included as well. Just Like a Romance Novel is about a librarian who compares her new romance to the romance novels that she loves to read. The Way You Look at Me is the tale of a make-up artist who hides a secret beneath her makeup and frets when she decides to show her new boyfriend what’s behind her makeup.

As a sequel to Make Love and Peace, Make More Love and Peace is more of the same. I really enjoyed the first one but this volume just adds more smut to the mix. Don’t get me wrong I liked it but it wasn’t groundbreaking or earth shattering. It’s a fluffy, sugary manga that is a great to read when you want something quick and light to read. I must say though that I really liked the one-shot Just Like a Romance Novel. It was a really sweet story where the girl loves books and compares life to books. It’s a fun mix of sweetness and creativity. I was a bit disappointed with The Way You Look at Me. The character is much more shallow than she tries to let on and the way I see it she wanted to put the blame on her boyfriend. Oh well, you win some you lose some!

The art in Make More Love and Peace is definitely beautiful. It has the look of a high quality shojo title but the sex thrown in to make it an adult title. If you have an aversion to sex scenes in your josei titles then you’ll probably want to skip this title because there is a whole lotta sex going on with our couples. As a whole I did like the manga but I still prefer the first one. But I’m still going to recommend it to those who like fluffy adult manga. Keep up the good work Luv Luv Press!

If you are interested here are some other review links from this series:

Make Love and Peace – review written by Kris
Make Love and Peace – review written by Linda Yau
Make More Love and Peace – review written by Linda Yau.

Make More Love & Peace

Review by Linda Yau

I was very surprised when I realized that there was a continuation to Make Love & Peace, and I find that I enjoyed this volume more than the first volume. Surprising enough, there wasn’t that much sex scenes drawn as there was cuddling scenes. While I cannot excuse for the fact that there was still sex scenes, it was not every three pages as I had noted from my first review of this story.

Since this is the second volume, readers have already met Ayane and Koichi, so the main point of the second volume is more plot driven, to mention of Ayane’s insecurities with several new competitors for Koichi’s attention. I would recommend reading Make More Love & Peace if you want to see how it turns out for the love birds.

Following the title story, there are two more short stories. In the second story: Just Like a Romance Novel, this talks of aspiring librarian-to-be, Maki and her sempai/pursuer Kazama. I loved Maki’s explanation of why she wanted to be a librarian. It also made me curious to find out the truth of what this manga character said of the Japanese library system.

The third story is The Way You Look At Me and dealing with Mio and Norito’s relationship. Mio is a make up artist with a secret that Norito eventually finds out, but would this secret harm their relationship?

Those are the basic summaries of the three stories. Now I was at the point where I can write off Josei manga as nothing but sex scenes and no substance except for fluff scenes, but Luv Luv Press or rather this second volume defies my expectation. I definitely look forward to more publications from this publication, as I enjoy finding out if there are hit or misses in terms of Josei mangas.

Object of Desire

Review by Kris

Object of Desire by Tomoko Noguchi is an anthology of sexy stories from Aurora’s own Luv Luv josei line.

We have stories like the title story. Kako is tired of dealing with guys who want to date her just to sleep with her and not be with “her.” She wishes that guys would be up front and be direct in what they want. She’s taken aback when Mizoguchi gets to the point and asks her to sleep with him just once. In Lovey-Dovey we deal with an obsessive stalker type girl and her cheating boyfriend. Oil & Water and With Lemon are about Shizuka and Kimura. Shizuka is an intelligent girl who has a crush on a fellow classmate, Kimura. Shizuka is kind of a tough chick and all of the guys treat her as one of their own, with the exception of Kimura. He teases her and treats her differently than the other guys and Shizuka likes that. Maid for Love is about a clumsy girl who works in a maid café and her salaryman boyfriend. The final story, Summer Prince, is about a girl who falls for the womanizing foreign exchange student who is staying with them.

Luv Luv has been churning out some good titles lately, like Pretty Poison, Sounds of Love, and Make Love and Peace. But they missed the mark with Object of Desire. All of the men in each of the one-shots turned out to be a cheating jerk with the air of loser hovering around them. The title story of Object of Desire and the Shizuka/Kimura stories of Oil & Water and With Lemon were tolerable and somewhat enjoyable but the rest of them are really quite forgettable and I found the last story of Summer Prince to be the most disturbing of them all. They’re only in high school and she’s already obsessed with having sex regardless of who it’s with. There was also a lot of self-loving going on. You wouldn’t think I’d be all that surprised by reading a manga where pleasuring ones self is present, I read a whole lotta yaoi, but with this featuring women touching themselves I was a bit surprised. I know that sounds really weird but I’m just not used to it like I am with reading yaoi self-satisfaction panels.

Not only were the stories lackluster but the art was not at all pleasing to the eye. I love it when a manga-ka has a unique style if it looks good, but this manga is really disappointing. The nipples on the characters don’t look like normal ones. They honestly look like Playtex baby bottle nipples that we used to feed my niece when she was a baby. Every once in a while you might catch a panel of two that really showed what potential Noguchi-sensei has but most of it is really not at all attractive. The cover is beautiful but the rest, not so much.

If you like stories about girls in some possibly unhealthy relationships with loser guys pick Object of Desire up. But I don’t really recommend it. Wait until January’s Luv Luv release Make More Love and Peace.

Make Love & Peace

Review by Linda Yau

College student Ayane Shinoda’s boyfriend Koichi is a hardworking police detective. They are passionately in love with each other. Every three pages or so, there is at least one sex scene between them, and that is quite graphic. At the beginning of the book, there is a brief mention of their initial meeting, while catching a thief. They hit it off (rather Ayane stalked after Koichi), and sparks flew.

Their relationship though has more problems than normal, ever since Ayane gets herself fancies herself to be a strong individual with a herorine tendency. Their relationship is either strenghted or bothered by everything from a panty theives, to who seeks revenge against Ayane, Koichi’s younger brother Ruka, or to the issue of parenthood. Make Love & Peace is a quick simple read.

Luv Luv Press has not back down on their quality of translating Josei books, these books are very much meant as romantic smut books. The few times I brought this to work, to try and write out a review, during my lunch hour – has my coworkers surprised at the graphic content of these type of stories. So these are what they meant for the 18+ crowd.

But as far as character development, I found Ayane to be an naive female, with one example in mind. There was one part where she was in trouble, she was about to jump out of a three story building, there was one bubble of wondering if this was how her parents felt in a life or death situation. That was such an odd timing to think about this though, and so I was pretty surprised by her line of thought, ever since it was established several times, that her parents died in a car accident. She has a redeeming characteristic though of being a traditional Japanese women, with the idea of being a wife and mother in mind… so this is the dream of a Japanese society women.

There was an interesting running joke of Koichi being very overprotective, which was actually parodied on at the author’s after comics, which was quite amusing, protective to the point of even ignoring his health and getting sick.

Kris wrote an earlier review for this book, so be sure to check that out.

Sounds of Love vol. 1

Review by Kris

If music be the food of love, play on

We are all familiar with this line from William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (yet how many people do you know keep their Complete Works of William Shakespeare handy? Just me?). In Sounds of Love vol. 1 music and love weave a beautiful symphony. Kazune is the manager of up and coming pianist Kyoichiro Haneda. But Kazune is more than Kyoichiro’s manager; she’s also his girlfriend. Kyoichiro is hotheaded and passionate. When he plays it’s like he’s making love to the audience. Because he puts so much emotion into his playing he is quite frisky after his performances. Kazune is also a pianist but her style is very different from Kyoichiro’s. She seems to put everyone to sleep. It’s because her style is calming and flowing, like water.

In Sounds of Love vol. 1 we learn more about Kyoichiro and Kazune’s love affair all while dodging offers from prestigious talent agencies wanting Kyoichiro to sign with them, performing with other musicians, and even avoiding marriage proposals.

There are also two short one-shot stories, The Prince of Love and Little Lovers Hands. Mayu and Sakito dated in the past but Mayu wanted Sakito to show her how he feels. Many years later Sakito is a hot romance novelist and Mayu models for him. Will their love return? With Little Lovers Hands Shiori is dating her coworker Takayuki. Takayuki gets sick and Shiori is at a loss as to what she needs to do.

Holy crap this is one hot manga. The sex is so steamy you will need to keep a towel handy. We are dealing with a subject that I love. Classical Piano. Music and romance are perfect together. Kind of like chocolate and peanut butter, it’s the perfect combination. Rin Tanaka-sensei has written a beautiful story to go along with the gorgeous artwork. Kazune’s dresses are stunning and Kyoichiro is handsome in his tuxedo. The artwork and story are both so amazing you can almost hear the music coming through the manga.

Lately Luv Luv has released some really amazing titles recently. This one is added to the list of amazing josei titles that I’ve read. They really hit a home run with this title (mixing sports and music, hmm…). My only complaint is the cover isn’t scored near the binding so now you get nasty creases. I know I’m OCD, but aesthetics are very important to me.

I recommend this title to those who love music and romance. The story is compelling and since this is a series, I’m anxiously awaiting the next volume. Keep up the great work, Luv Luv!