Anything can be mistaken as a cosplay club.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Satozaki
What They Say:
Play with their bodies until your life force shrivels up. ❤
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Originally serialized in Comic X-Eros from the June 2020 installment, Puppets! Jiangshi Girls! is a twenty-page story from creator Satozaki, who just over half a dozen other works on the service. I haven’t read too much of their stuff but they’ve had some fun things. What I haven’t read, at least in recent memory, is a monster girl storyline since I’ve mostly been going for adult/office stuff that digs into relationship things a bit. That’s not what’s going on here as it’s a bit more “light horror” at best and focused on the kind of silly in a way, but with a lot of action that helps it all along. It doesn’t exactly make me all that interested in the monster girl genre, all told.
The premise introduces us to what you’d essentially call a lunk of a guy who is out late at night, drunk and needing to find some pleasure to cap off the evening. Unfortunately, he’s broke and out of options until he ends up at the end of an alleyway where there’s an elaborate door that he didn’t recall being there before. Thinking it’s some sort of cosplay club or brothel, he’s delighted to see a lot of scantily clad women about that are all basically his ideal vision of what a woman should be. And even luckier for him is that one of the latest arrivals at this place hasn’t been properly trained so the hostess offers her to him in order to let her feel the touch of a man for the first time, show her the ropes and all that. So a free session is perfect for this lunk and he’s all in on it as one can imagine.
Now, things are pretty clear from the start as the hostess calls them her jiangshi and that’s basically a Chinese vampire of zombie of sorts depending on the usage. That these girls are all undead and under her control as puppets is clear enough and it takes the vitality of a man like this to bring them to life so the hostess can utilize them. It’s just their kind of vampiric way of existence. For the lunkhead, he doesn’t realize this until it’s too late as you can imagine but it’s comical watching him going in hard on this and loving every minute of it until he starts to realize something’s wrong. Satozaki’s artwork is definitely appealing throughout but the story loses me a bit because the jiangshi that he’s with is pretty lifeless for a while and has no real personality so there’s not much to go for there. Mostly, it’s fun to watch because of the artwork and seeing the guy get his comeuppance.
In Summary
While we have some good action moments here that lack a bit in the heart and emotion side of it, which means it’s not as great a draw for me, there’s a lot to like from an artistic standpoint and just to admire the craft here as Satozaki has some beautiful pages. The story does have its moments and I’m amused by the whole thing, especially since we get such a lunk as a lead character that we normally don’t. Satozaki’s designs for the girls are great but I just wish they had more personality to them as that left a lot of it feeling lifeless, even as they were coming to life.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 18+
Released By: FAKKU
Release Date: June 2020
MSRP: FAKKU Subscription