Would living in an apartment complex filled with beautiful women who are sexually frustrated and receptive of interest, even if they’re mostly married, be heaven for a young man about to start college…or hell?
Creative Staff:
Story/Art: Ryuichi Hoshino
Translation: Sai Higashi
Lettering: Laura Scoville
Sales & Distribution: Yoko Tanigaki
VP Production: Fred Lui
What They Say:
Yuusuke has finally earned the keys to paradise! With a brand-new apartment and a bevy of beautiful neighbors, things are bound to get interesting in no time. But what if this busy, happy house suddenly turns into the hottest harem on the block?
Hard Temptation piles on pleasure after pleasure with a gorgeous cast of naughty next-door ladies and the luckiest young man on the planet! How can a guy feel bad about cheating when his partners are this incredible? But will regret finally find a way to spoil the all-night party?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Technical
As one expects, good quality printing and binding, with no signs of ink bleeding or misaligned printing in the volume. Hoshino’s artwork tends toward the simple most of the time, making good use of fewer lines to arrange a scene, but that does not mean that detail is lacking, including hair (on top of the head, you horndogs), though clothing is more often given complexity through screentone patterns than detailed linework. The female character designs tend to be a bit more proportional overall, though breasts tend to be on the very large range as is common for a great number of eromanga. This volume is completely uncensored with not a trace of anything to block the view.
“Story”
Yuusuke is a young college student living away from home for the first time. At first he’s not too happy that his worrywart mother forced him to move into the same apartment complex as her younger sister Eri, the Shangri-La Miyabi, but he changes his tune shortly after he discovers that he’s surrounded by beautiful women. Of course, most of that female beauty is “off limits,” since most of the women are married and Yuusuke himself has a girlfriend named Yui, whom he’s known since elementary school and is deeply in love with. So deeply in love…that he doesn’t refuse the advances of his aunt Eri when the two of them take a bath after a long day of unpacking his boxes. Even though he knows it’s wrong, even though he knows she’s married (though she’s not in a great marriage…of course) and he has a girlfriend, he goes right ahead.
That’s the general tone and theme of this chain of connected short episodes, the philandering adventures of Yuusuke. For it is not only his aunt, but the sexually frustrated and lonely single teacher Arisaka-san who is his neighbor, a couple of Eri’s fellow housewife friends, an old high school acquaintance (and crush), Obata, who now works nearby, and even the married landlady Hitomi who all get a turn with Yuusuke, much to his delight. There is something of a karmic payback, however, for all of his unfaithfulness: when Yuusuke goes to visit his girlfriend Yui at her apartment, he ends up witnessing (hiding outside) Yui having sex with another man and openly stating that sex with him is better than it is with Yuusuke. Yuusuke feels that he got what he deserved, but manages to drown his sorrows in some alcohol…and the attractive landlady’s beautiful body. This is a somewhat unusual element for this kind of story, but the author himself states in the afterword that he wanted to do something slightly different from the standard run of events where a guy “with no merits” gets lucky all the time, so it serves to shake things up a bit, even if the effect is slightly weakened by what happens further on.
In the end, Yui appears asking to make up with Yuusuke, who does still have feelings for her, but Yui has competition in the form of all the other women who come to claim Yuusuke for themselves. Would having a “harem” of this sort (the author again notes in an afterward that this was meant to be a lighthearted harem work in general) be a dream for a young man? Or a nightmare? An answer isn’t really offered and I doubt that many of the readers would be that interested in pursuing the philosophical question when there is so much sex to be had.
For some reason, it was not quite as stimulating as it could have been. The designs were nice enough, but even by the superficial standards of pornography, there was something too shallow about many of the characters and several of the situations depicted. Despite the curveball thrown by the author at Yuusuke, he still seemed undeserving of all that he received.
In Summary:
The Shangri-La Miyabi apartment complex is a true paradise for young Yuusuke, a young college student living on his own for the first time, surrounded by a number of mature, but still very attractive, women who all seem to be sexually frustrated. Even though he has a girlfriend he loves, Yuusuke seems to have sex almost non-stop. He gets something of a comeuppance when his girlfriend is revealed to be unfaithful, but things end with Yuusuke back in harem mode as the curtain is drawn on this collection of unfaithful encounters.
Content Grade: B-
Art Grade: B
Package Rating: B
Text/Translation: B+
Age Rating: Adults Only (18+)
Released By: Project-H
Release Date: May 6th, 2014
MSRP: $17.95
