Being hard on yourself at the wrong time isn’t great.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Sumiya
What They Say:
Even pretty girls can be wild. ♥
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Originally serialized in Comic Kairakuten from the August 2023 installment, Looks Are Everything is a twenty-eight story from creator Sumiya, who has over fifty other works on the service. While I’ve been mixed on their storytelling there’s definitely a lot to love in terms of design and action. I skipped out on checking things out for a few months just to clear the palette a bit but dived back into this creator to see what they were doing a few years ago while looking for something to read. This one definitely reminded me why I like Sumiya’s artwork so much but that I like their work as a whole even more when there’s a solid story and some lightness within it to help offset things a bit.
While a pretty vanilla chapter in terms of story, this is probably one of the hottest things I’ve read in a while. The story focuses on a young man named Dai who isn’t conventionally attractive. He’s not a wispy thin guy with great hair and bone structure but rather just an average guy with a rounder face. He finds himself frustrated in dealing with his sister when she has a friend over, a young woman named Seika, and has to deal with how his sister complicates his life as Seika visits several times over a few days. To his shock, however, Seika ends up asking him out on a date which leads to a very great moment at the start where he’s waiting in the park for her and everyone is shocked when such a beauty meets up with him. He can’t understand himself as he’s quite aware that he is, at best, average.
The two do some normal date stuff like the movies and meal but he’s so distracted by all of this, thinking that it has to be a trick or ploy of some sort, that he’s missing the obvious interest she has. And he’s even more put off by it when she brings him to a love hotel and is pretty much primed to go. His confusion is certainly there but his calling her out on all of it is an interesting moment, one that throws her off as well. What he discovers, strangely enough, is that she got into him because he reminded her of a villainous orc character in a mobile game she plays a lot. One that had a pretty intense adult sequence that got her all hot and bothered in a way she never expected. So when she met him and made the connection, her body and interest just responded to him.
This explains so much and her honesty about it, and how it surprised her, allows the two of them to re-engage in activities with a bit more honesty. It gets pretty intense as it progresses and a lot of the appeal of it all is in the artwork as Sumiya just takes Seika to a whole other level. Her discovery of a particular kink is handled well because she’s able to actually make it happen in some way and was honest about it – eventually. Dai’s coming from a place of disbelief and then some level of understanding but mostly it’s just the peace that comes from learning that this isn’t all some kind of trap. And that lets him get out of his head some but he’s still just struck by having this gorgeous woman in bed with him. And he wants to do as well as he can by her, which feeds into her own intensity that Sumiya puts to page in a hugely erotic way.
In Summary
I know to expect a certain level of enjoyment from a Sumiya story through the artwork but this one managed to just overdeliver in so many ways. Yes, it’s “just” a vanilla story, but there are things within that which can just exceed every level of expectation and be the hottest thing ever. The story here works well in just getting a “normal” male lead and seeing him dealing with what he’s going through and trying to understand it – and not able to just go with it until he does. That speaks well for him and what we get from Seika makes sense as she was just caught up in her feelings and let it go quicker than she might otherwise. The whole thing is a lot of fun and comes together very well, definitely leaving you once again wishing that we had a lot more story – and adult material – with these two to see where their lives go next.
Content Grade: A-
Art Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 18+
Released By: FAKKU
Release Date: August 2023
MSRP: FAKKU Subscription
