Creative Staff
Story/Art: Renya Sabashi
Translation/Adaptation: Steven LeCroy
What They Say
Introducing a collection of amazing hot, steamy sex stories, starting off with a girl mistakenly walking in on a couple having sex. To the boyfriend’s surprise, his partner asks the girl to join in on the fun! From then on, he has to fulfill the sexual appetites of two wonderfully demanding women!
Another story focuses on the dirty secrets of a girl who is the head of the discipline committee at her school. How far is she willing to go despite jeopardizing her reputation? Other stories include a random fling in the outdoors, a horny nurse, and more.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the nature of compilations like this being what they are, taking a particular artists work over a period time and bringing it all together after a series of varied magazine runs, there’s obviously not a lot of cohesion to them. You sometimes get a few multi-chapter stories, which can be a whole lot of fun or just one long slog of a mess, and varying quality when it comes to the numerous standalone chapters. Especially when you get some that you really like but end up wanting a whole lot more of but have to do without. Love Infusion brings us the work of Renya Sabashi into one fine place, which is his second collection but the first I believe published by Project-H books. To which I say, after finishing this, please do go after his earlier work as I’m curious to see it.
Love Infusion gives us a very fun three chapter story at the start, even if it left me wondering more as to the mindset of the girls in a way, but that’s just the way I think. This story introduces us to the main couple of Shintaro and Kanade, a pair of young lovers who are very, very much into the whole sex thing. They get at it a lot and pretty intensely, but there’s something just a bit off about Kanade in a way. When her friend Maki comes over to visit her without calling first, she walks right in on the couple having a pretty sloppy and messy session. But while Shintaro is embarrassed by it all, Kanade is more than fine with it and even invites Maki to come and play with Shintaro. While there is the belief that it is every man’s dream, Shintaro does have some hesitation over it since he’s not asked and there’s an aspect of him that wonders if it’s all just one big trap. But what ends up happening is just a whole lot of interplay between the three, growing from smaller moments to bigger ones as Kanade prods her best friend who is without a boyfriend to enjoy her own boyfriend as much as she wants.
Not surprising though is that as it goes on, and a situation arises where Shintaro and Maki are together alone and are in essence given permission to start without Kanade, they really get into and do some deep exploration of each other. Kanade didn’t realize they were going to go that far and starts to withdraw from both of them, feeling like she’s not being wanted or desired by them. It’s fairly straightforward in a way and you know how it’s going to work out (i.e. they’re all going to get lucky together), but it handles it fairly well and goes for some fun dialogue and interplay between the trio before a situation is set up for them to all just get back to what works for them. The three really do work well together but they also have some good sides to them when just in pairs, which makes for a pretty fun three chapter story overall.
After that, the book gets a bit more uneven, but it mostly comes down to how well you like the setting and characters that are involved. The Morals Officer chapter is pretty fun and a decent way to follow up the three part storyline as it introduces us to Hino, a very strict morals officer for her school, and her boyfriend Yuto that just completely messes with her in school since she’s just hugely sexual and needy for it, which allows him to put her in some awkward positions since there’s always the chance of getting caught while at school. He’s a bit more domineering because of the dynamic and it’s a good change from what Shintaro was like, and Hino’s trying to hide what they’re doing definitely makes for a whole lot of fun since there’s a really big need coming from her but also a nervousness with how Yuto pushes her.
Where this one leaves me a bit less than pleased in some ways is that it follows it up with another chapter about the two characters and has Yuto going to Hino’s house to visit. The problem is that Hino’s not there and her twin sister Mayu is. And Yuto hasn’t a clue. Cue up the good fun, but Mayu’s attempts to mess with her sisters secret boyfriend goes badly since she doesn’t know the kind of relationship Hino and Yuto have, so it gets pretty rough pretty quickly and that makes for some very intense scenes, which are really detailed and engaging when you get down to the visuals of it, but the story ideas can make some people a little queasy. It’s an awkward situation, one that Mayu puts herself in, and it spirals out of control quickly and she’s just not able to express what the truth is, and there’s that internal dialogue we get scattered about that reveals just how much she’s enjoying it.
Another story has a young couple that finds their first times together to be pretty special as they go to her place after school when nobody is home. It’s straightforward in a lot of ways and has a nice feeling to it, even if it goes beyond reality, but that’s what dreams are for. Another story has a young man coming home from college after being away and he’s greeted in the street by his slightly younger girlfriend, who is wearing just her parka since it’s the middle of winter. They get down to some rather nicely executed action here considering the weather and the getups involved and it’s nice to see a bit of a change of pace from the usual school rooms or bedrooms that we often get. Another story is just kind of odd where a young man finds some random woman pleasuring herself at night in the woods and they get involved. It comes off like a real one-off here without enough setup or closure to make it work.
The last story is one that really made me smile in a way as it plays on a few tropes and just enjoys it. We get to see a young man named Kyosuke as he’s laid up at the hospital after breaking both of his arms. It sucks since he can’t do anything with his arms, including reading comics. What’s amusing is that the nurse that’s working there used to go to school with him, so she’s helped him out previously since his injury by pleasuring him a bit. But she takes it further as this chapter gets going and there’s a good bit of fun with how she toys with him because of his condition all while making sure both of them enjoy the experience itself. There’s some really awkward layouts at times, and again part of it is just me, as I keep looking to see how she’s pulling this off without hurting his broken arms. Silly me.
In Summary
Love Infusion is my first exposure to Renya Sabashi’s work and I have to admit, I quite like it. There’s some good stories in here and the ones where he gets a chance to spread things out a bit tends to work the best. But there’s also some fun short stories here as well. Japanese hentai culture being what it is, there’s some awkward material as well here. But the book as a whole has some good dialogue to it, some good settings and characters to work with and it has some very good looking artwork. They all have their differences so it’s not a cookie-cutter routine and the layouts are generally very good with great looking physical encounters that get about as messy as one would expect. There’s a certain lightness to the stories overall as it avoids going dark and dangerous, but it also has a promiscuity across both genders that’s just welcome to see.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 18+
Released By: Project-H Books
Release Date: May 8th, 2013
MSRP: $17.95
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