The advantages of staying at home.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Cucchiore
Translation/Adaptation: N/A
What They Say:
The awkward girl’s hidden desires. ♥♥
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Originally serialized in Comic Shitsurakuten from the November 2023 installment, Shut-In Girlfriend is a twenty-page story from creator Cucchiore, who has three chapters on the service. This marked my first experience with this particular creator as I was going and doing a little random sampling and wanted to try something different than the round of creators that I follow at this point. Cucchiore definitely has a lot of potential as there’s a solid enough setup for the story here, some good action in the main part itself, but also some surprising tenderness that has me curious to check out some of their other works. Part of it is that you want them to be able to tell a fuller story to see what they’re capable of but this opening introduction to their work for me definitely has me wanting to check out more of their material, if the tags are right.
The focus for this one is on Ryou who is spending time with Sae, his childhood friend who is something of a shut-in at this point. She’s able to get away with not going to school but remaining enrolled because she’s near the top of the country in her grades. But since he’s known her forever he spends time going over some of the work with her in her room. She’s pretty introverted in a lot of ways but also hates a lot of the demands of society, hence just wearing an oversized hoodie and not going on for anything. Ryou is the only one that sees her like this because of how long they’ve known each other and their friendship. It’s not easy on Ryou, however, because she’s always showing so much leg and he doesn’t know if she’s doing this on purpose or just that oblivious to it all. And it would have gone on for quite some time to be sure if not for him accidentally leaving his phone there one evening and going back for it.
Because that’s when he sees her engaged in really enjoying the pillow he was sitting on before and enjoying herself. The dialogue works fairly well in getting them to the right place and I absolutely loved the awkwardness we get from them agreeing it’s what they want and getting undressed. It’s surprisingly tender in how they start – and that she just wants to skip things and get right to it – and there’s a good bit of fun as they experience this for the first time. And how good youth can be for multiple experiences. Thankfully, it doesn’t overplay it in any way and it comes across as pretty realistic for the most part and it provides an incentive for Sae to reconnect with life. Well, at least in a hentai kind of way because it at least gets her to dress up in her uniform even though it’s not a school day.
In Summary
As an introduction to this creator, this story is pretty solid and lets you know their skill as a storyteller overall. The artwork is great, the setup of the situation is straightforward but executed well without too many cliches, and there’s both good action in the obvious sense but also some moments that make them both very human and accessible. It’s not the kind of characters I tend to focus on, and the lack of tags for it is what fooled me at first, but I wanted to see what this creator was like so I carried through it. It’s definitely well done and makes them an easy creator to follow to see what else they come up with that’s more in line with my interests.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 18+
Released By: FAKKU
Release Date: November 2023
MSRP: FAKKU Subscription
