Creative Staff
Story: Mizuki Asamori
Art: Mizuki Asamori
Translation/Adaptation: Leighann Harvey
What They Say
Despite his ongoing attraction to his classmate Honoka, Keita continues his relationship with their kouhai Aya. Keita attempts to cast off his feelings for Honoka in order to remain “Aya’s boyfriend,” but a visit from his cousin only complicates matters further! These hearts are so in love but they just can’t be honest with their feelings.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Having long been a proponent of hentai releases in both anime and manga form, I’m finding myself feeling like this is the golden age of material these days. With the anime side having long been lost for a variety of reasons and then dealing with years of just yaoi material, it’s been refreshing to get such a sizable amount of output from Project-H Books that deals with the largely non-creepy side of hentai material. There’s a lot of very fun anthologies and collections out there, but one that made me really grin when it landed with its first volume last summer was Goddess of the Glass. What we got here was by and large a fairly standard romantic comedy that you’ve seen in innumerable anime and manga series over the years. The difference is that since it’s college age kids, they actually have sex and deal with the ramifications of it and the way feelings grow and change.
The opening installment of the series gave us the fairly standard situation where decent legitimate college kid Keita had found himself in a one night stand with a girl he really liked named Honoka. But the situation got out of control before he could get back with her to see if there was really something there and he kind of fell into a relationship with Aya, who was far more outgoing and has spent her time doing her best to make sure that he knows she wants him by showing it repeatedly. To make matters worse, Aya and Honoka are friends so that complicates things in a big way since to break up with Aya would mean that Honoka wouldn’t want anything to do with him after hurting Aya. And that’s all with Keita not even knowing if Honoka actually likes him even after all the time they spend together as friends with the usual kind of awkward moments.
It really is all familiar material if not for the sex that goes on in the pages – real and imagined. Imagined being the case here at the start as Keita is obviously having a lot of Honoka on his mind as he’s dreaming of her in some pretty intense and normal sexual ways which is how series author Mizuki Asamori makes it possible to put the two of them together for us even though they’re not. And those sequences always have a different take compared to what Keita and Aya are like as there’s a sense of more warmth and intimacy throughout them, more actual love making than sex. Especially since you have a number of scenes where Keita is just kind of uncomfortable having sex with Aya since his heart is elsewhere. That’s a problem that comes into play for a number of men to be sure so it’s actually refreshing to see him having to cope with it and the kind of strain it puts on him as he goes about his day and dealing with the aspects of the two women in his life.
This volume plays this dynamic well though it also goes for the obvious angle of complicating things more by bringing in another character for a bit. Interestingly enough though, we get one that doesn’t get all sexual with anyone here, though there are a few playful moments along the way. The arrival of Keita’s cousin Jun, who was actually a neighbor growing up, brings a pretty fun wrinkle once you get past her basic character quirks of being loud, easily lost and a total buttinsky. When she arrives in town, she ends up crashing with Honoka through the usual unexpected circumstances and when she discovers that Honoka knows her cousin, she gets clued in pretty quick through watching their interactions that the two are definitely hot for each other. Even though the two of them can’t see it. So that sets her into motion for trying to fix things so that they hook up since Jun really likes Honoka and thinks she’s a good fit for her cousin.
The fun really begins when Jun finds out about Aya and can’t understand what’s going on at first before she attempts to fix is so that Aya can get out of the picture. There’s a lot of time spent together between the four and while you might expect some girl on girl shenanigans along the way, it plays it straight (hoohah!) and just goes with the more familiar storyline. But it’s one that gets complicated as it goes on because Keita realizes more and more that he can’t get close to Honoka because of the way things are and are likely to remain – partially because he’s sure that Honoka’s not into him in that way – and he just decides to go all in when it comes to Aya. Sadly, he does it in a way that’s kind of a destructive “love the one you’re with” style and has some pretty rough sex with her as he’s trying to prove that he really loves her, both to her and himself. She’s up for it all at first, but it’s not what she was hoping for and it does come across clearly that she’s been going at him the way she has for so long to try and get him to realize her feelings for him. It’s a familiar idea where one partner just does all they can to please the other in order to prove their feelings.
In Summary
Not surprisingly, things are still mostly in a holding pattern towards the end here and while we were almost rid of Jun for the next and final volume, she’s going to stick around a bit more. It’s not that I dislike the character, more that I do like her and that she hasn’t become a sexual component of the story, but more that it’s just too familiar of a character and angle to play. There’s a good bit of all consensual sex to be had across this installment, dream and real, but it’s not the dominating factor. More and more this book plays like a pretty fun if simple romantic comedy series that has an occasional foray into the nookie time good lovin’ stuff. The relationship side has a lot of good things going on overall and I really like some of the things that get admitted, internally and externally, between Keita and Aya as each of them tries to find the right balance here all while Honoka is in the background. Definitely a fun series and a lot more engaging than a lot of people would think.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 18+
Released By: Project-H Books
Release Date: May 14th, 2014
MSRP: $17.95
