Creative Staff
Story/Art: Hinoshita Akame
What They Say:
A blessing in disguise?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Originally serialized in Comic Kairakuten Beast from the May 2018 installment, Early Summer Records is a sixteen-page story from creator Hinoshita Akame, who has three other stories on the service as of this writing. I was surprised by how much of the work was given over to the story side as it’s nearly halfway through before it really starts getting into things. That lets a good bit of character material come into it and some nice teasing moments that ups the interest but it can’t quite stick the landing in the back half, partially because the character designs combined with the positioning of them just doesn’t feel like it quite works well enough.
The story focuses on a young nurse named Kaoru who finds herself now taking care of a former college boyfriend. She’s giving Tatsuyama the cold shoulder because of the way they had a bad breakup over a fight as he was far more interested in his college sports dreams of going pro, which involved a lot of time schmoozing as well as on the court. They didn’t have a physical relationship which made it easy for him to break it off with her but she was emotionally invested so it made a big impact on her. His being a patient in the hospital with a problem that has cut short any real chance of going pro now has him thinking of working as a trainer instead but the time with Kaoru has him realizing what an ass he was before and hoping to fix things if she’ll actually talk with him.
Amusingly, when she does come to try and explain away some of her cold nature toward him she ends up hopping under the blankets with him to avoid a gossip nurse checking on a nearby patient. This has some teasing moments to it as they’re up against each other but even with her being somewhat resistant to the idea it leads into full blown sex pretty quickly where they don’t even try to muffle each other as it gets further into it. I know, I know, I’m putting too much logic into things but having spent enough time in a hospital bed there’s a lot going on here that just doesn’t work and some of the way Akame illustrates things has it coming across even worse with positioning and the like. Some of it can be chalked up to simpler designs but some of it just feels like not a lot of real world material to draw on in order to really drive it home.
In Summary
The fun material outweighs the mediocre material here overall with what it does as we get a good bit of character material to set the stage for passions to really ignite. This feels like it plays more to classic adult material more than anything else, along the lines of “hello, pizza delivery!” than some of the more detailed stories we’ve been seeing lately. That factors in with the artwork as well which is decent but doesn’t really drive the intensity of the action forward. I enjoyed the more playful material when Kaoru was hiding more than anything else though it does help to get everything underway.
Content Grade: B-
Art Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 18+
Released By: FAKKU
Release Date: May 2018
MSRP: FAKKU Subscription
