Heat: Ring of Destiny is the book every fan of kinky anal sex has been waiting for! (Contains nudity)
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Makoto Fujisaki
Translation/Adaptation: Ex-S Woo
What They Say
Short stories from the creator of Coed Sexxtacy, with a focus on kinky anal sex. Secretaries of Section 2 – When a young office lady is promoted, little did she know that section two is a harem, and her new job is to satisfy the perverted sexual appetite of her boss.
Packaging:
Icarus Publishing continues to churn out nicely produced books. The large format is beautiful and there are not many other companies with such a stellar record of consistently printing books with perfect ink from start to finish. Every Icarus book I’ve read over the last two years has been smudge free with good panel alignment and sizing. The front cover of Heat: Ring of Destiny depicts a very steamy looking blonde with band aides over her privates and another women bent over in the background. The back cover depicts a woman facing the wall of a shower with her nether regions sporting band aides, much like the girls on the front. Extras consist of a letter from the author and a drawing from another ero-mangaka, along with Icarus’ glossary of honorifics and pronunciation guide.
Artwork:
Fujisaki’s art is very much like his cover illustration; more realistic character design with use of crosshatching for shading. I prefer this more seinen-like style of art over the big eyes/big hair shonen-like style many ero-manga artists use. The character design for the women is very attractive with highly detailed eyes and hair. While the girls all have large breasts, they aren’t in the ‘explosive breasts’ category. Fujisaki obviously has a thing for women with short hair and glasses, however, I think the women from one story to another resemble each other too much. Backgrounds are sparse, but I appreciated the minimal use of screen tone and the greater use of speed lines for action and crosshatching for shading. There are also explosive two-page panels.
Text/SFX:
The translation reads well enough, but the editing got away from Icarus on this book. The number of grammatical errors jumped up to the level of earlier Icarus titles. Icarus would have some really solid releases if they could just nail down the editing errors that plague most of their books. Honorifics remain in translation along with the Japanese SFX, which lack an English translation that could add to the story.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As a fan of erotic stories, I fall in the ero-manga camp that prefers their books to be multiple chapters of a single story, following the same characters through their sexual adventures. Heat: Ring of Destiny somewhat falls between a book of shorts and one of a single story. There are three stories with three chapters each and a single two-chapter story. Overall, I felt this gave the book a nice balance, as each story wasn’t so long to give me a chance to grow bored with the characters.
Two important aspects all the three-part stories share are lots of anal sex and female domination. Most of the interactions are male over female, but there is some female/female domination/humiliation if that’s your thing. Even with that, none of these stories turned me off like the scenes in Pet Humiliation Diary.
The Ring of Destiny story is my favorite because it’s just so damn kinky. Kanako belongs to the modern literature club at her college. It seems prestigious since the club’s president, Reiko, is the smartest girl in school. It is also a tough club to get into, since its members become the sex toys of Reiko and her manipulative fiancee, Furuya. Reiko may act like she’s the one in charge, making Kanako sexually degrade herself, but Furuya has Reiko wrapped around his, um, little finger. Needless to say, lots of girl/girl/guy sexual antics ensue.
Quite a bit different from the other three stories, My Wonderful Librarian follows the sexual awakening of Segawa, a somewhat average high school kid. He is in the library club with the cute and spunky Rika who acts much like the main female in Sundome, released by Yen Press. Rika loves watching Segawa masturbate in exchange for peaks at her naughty parts. Everything seems to be going the way Rika wants until Segawa reaches his breaking point during one of her teasing sessions. Will Rika find a new boy toy, or will Segawa’s aggressiveness turn her on even more?
In Summary
Fair warning, if you aren’t a fan of either anal sex or sex slave stories, then you should run from this title. These aren’t rape stories, but the men definitely use the women anyway they want. However, if those types of ero-manga turn you on or leave you neutral, then maybe Fujisaki’s wonderful art will leave you plenty satisfied. The characters a very attractive and the panel layout creates good flow in the sex scenes. Considering my personal fetish for the ‘hot librarian/teacher’ look seen on characters in three of the four stories and the fact that domination/humiliation stories don’t bother me like the sibling-sex stories do, I was thoroughly satisfied with this latest Icarus release.
Overall Hotness (1 to 5): 5:G-spot Rocker!!
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: C
Age Rating: 18+
Released By: Icarus Publishing
Release Date: October 30th, 2007
MSRP: $19.95
