Joji Manabe’s tribute to wrestling, in all of its many forms.
Creative Staff
Story and Art: Joji Manabe
Translation/Adaptation: Steven LeCroy
What They Say
Justice Asuka and her group, GIGAMAX, took the women’s wrestling world by storm, but after a traumatic loss the group retired and went their separate ways. Years later, a college student, Ryoma, finds out his landlady, the kind and gentle Sanae, is actually his favorite former wrestling super star, Justice Asuka! What’s more, he finds out that GIGAMAX is staging a comeback and they want him to act as their manager! Between finding a new gym, recruiting former members, and relieving the wrestlers’ sexual energy, will Ryoma make it as their manager? Jump in the ring and find out!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Joji Manabe, sometimes Romanized as Johji Manabe, has been an active mangaka since the 1980s, and some may know him from the titles Outlanders, Capricorn, and Caravan Kidd. For whatever reason, he’s now doing ero manga, and we should be thankful for it. In the letter at the end of volume one, he said Ring x Mama came about from his own desire to do a manga about fighting women, and his editor’s request to add MILF content. So what we end up with is a series about older, stronger women seducing a young man who has idolized these same women throughout his adolescence.
In short: Possibly the greatest hentai manga ever made. At least it is in my book, since it plays to several of my favorite styles and tropes. The book is your standard Project H quality, larger than the usual tankoubon with good quality printing and paper. Unforgivably, there are no color pages, something Project H needs to rectify in all future volumes of this most important of series. Alas, it is also censored, due to Japan’s insane laws and no uncensored files apparently being available.
With these few strikes against it, I’m happy to report everything else in the volume comes together as if I’d commissioned the work myself. Joji Manabe’s art still has a classic look about it, since he got his start in manga 30 years ago. Characters still have noses, hair and eyelashes are spiky, crosshatching is used for shading, and the women tend to be tall and bulky. All of the women wrestlers are built and stacked Amazons, and my only real complaint is that they have no defined musculature. I’d have hoped they’d have more defined abs from their training, but I suppose we can’t always get everything the way we want it. Aside from this minor quibble, the art is stunning, as befitting Manabe’s decades of experience.
The basic story, or premise for the fetish material, is that student Ryoma fantasizes about his favorite wrestler, Justice Asuka of GIGAMAX. Getting straight to the point, his landlady knocks on his door one day while he’s enjoying a photo of her. Little does he know that the landlady is Justice Asuka herself, and after teasing him about the compromising situation in which he was caught, she wanders into his room and sees all of the Justice Asuka merchandise he has. She’s impressed by his loyalty, which she expresses sexually, and then invites him to be her manager. She had planned to get her team GIGAMAX back together, but feeling Ryoma’s devotion was the last push she needed to get back into the ring. All Ryoma and Asuka have to do now is get her team back together.
This, naturally, involves Ryoma, or Asuka, or the two of them, having sex with the other members of the group. Ring x Mama has some girl on girl material, and three or four ways, which is rather rare in ero-manga released domestically. A personal favorite chapter involves Ryoma having sex with a ridiculously stereotypical blonde American character, who speaks in broken “Japanese”. Manabe isn’t shy about diving into pure fantasy material, and the volume ends with all of the wrestlers and Ryoma having a lubed-up orgy in a wrestling ring. And this is just the climax to the first volume.
There’s a slight plot, about jealousy and rivalry between wrestling teams, and the volume ends on a cliffhanger. Regardless, it’s hard to expect the solution to any problem will be anything other than more and more shameless sex. The whole volume is like a silly 1980s fanservice OVA, except instead of just cheesecake, it delivers hardcore sex scenes. I couldn’t ask for anything more.
In Summary
A talented ecchi artist from the 1980s crosses over to the dark side of hentai, and crafts a shameless and sweet title pandering to everything I look for in an ero-manga. Manabe promises fighting girls and MILFs, and he delivers in a big way. The censorship is the only thing holding this series back from being my favorite eromanga of all time. I cannot recommend it enough.
Content Grade: A
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade:B+
Age Rating: 18+ Adult
Released By: Project-H Books
Release Date: August 14, 2013
MSRP: $17.95
