Aqua Bless

Aqua Bless is written and drawn by Yamatogawa and originally published by Akaneshinsha in Japan 2007 [source]. The English version I have is the second edition published by Digital Manga Publishing's Project-H in 2014. There is the first edition published by Icarus Publishing from 2008. It appears that Project-H did do a retranslation (Steven LeCroy according to contents page). That said, I bought this because I liked the pitch. Kyono is blessed (or cursed) with the ability to feel every electric kiss and tender touch if she's near anyone who's getting it on! I like the idea for porno. Probably done before but some angles could be interesting. Also, how this story would tie to shore and the title had an appeal of a fun summer story. The first chapter is a good start for Kyono's story. Manga starts with color pages explaining her shared sensation. She happens to come across her classmate while having sensations and high jinks ensue. Unfortunately, Kyono comes back to manga at the end. Unlike I thought, the manga is not one story but multiple small stories. Eight stories where one is two chapters long plus full-colour epilogue to be exact. I should have read the blurb more carefully as the second paragraph has plurals that hint at the fact. Still, I think it is a dick move by Project-H that blurb has the first paragraph telling only about the first story. This surprise certainly did affect my enjoyment least at the beginning. The title is a bit of a lie too. The environment of "Aqua Bless" is only at one of the story.

Only Kyono's story has a supernatural element. Rest are more funny happenstances. Only a couple of the stories I would say are serious and even they have side gags. Manga overall does have this vibe of wanting to have fun. Only one of the stories I had questions why sex is happening and I think manga just fails to communicate internal logic. I do have favourite stories (namely Train Woman or Cow Girl is number one) and one I dislike (Lady Impact). My favourite stories get the honour because characters have their own goals which they act upon. The worst one gets the mockery because most problems I found are clearly present and being most stereotypical. Another factor in my favourite rating is that I favour adult characters. It didn't affect my favourites at the top because everyone is having sex with their own age pretty much. Most stories have underage characters. Some stories are clearly designed to be for under-age characters. So much so that some characters aren't even 16 but weird age between 12 and 16 where the character just learned about sexuality.

The art style has distinct marks of the artist. I think she draws shoulders higher so that acromioclavicular joint or just the acromion bone causes a pointy shoulder which is then continued by a very thin arm. Female breasts are not drawn as balloons but with more an angle. I like it as it is more realistic. Overall I buy breast physics in the manga. Gravity has an effect on them. There is one panel where missionary position female has different phase between the breasts. It is weird if you stop and think about it. What force could cause that? Females do have a hierarchy in their breast sizes but in the end, it isn't uncommon to find a panel where breast size or shape changes between panels. However dicks in this are more questionable. Artist draws dicks as scimitars. Long and curve. It is the longness of the dicks which raised an eyebrow. Every male in this has a 22-centimetre erect penis. Average length from this literature review is 13.12 centimetres. This makes one of the aspects of why Lady Impact fails. In the story, it is a point that the male in it is packing when thing erects. Since every male is packing it takes me out of the story. Also, penis size changes just to get that monster fit in the mouth. For overall character design, female faces differ mostly okay. Every girl has a pretty similar body so the face is the biggest identifier. I had a problem with cowgirl and the last story's Megumi. I had to compare them directly before to see that their hair was slightly different. Later looking at Lady Impact one of the henchwomen seem to have a similar problem of looking like a cowgirl. However, males are really similar to the point they are the same character. Male in twins and lady impact at least are way too similar. Every male except Demon Force Matenger are shrimps with the same face structure. This is annoying because there are side characters that actually have different face structure.

Manga is targeted to males so much so that seinen is tagged on the back cover. For females, there is Demon Force Matenger male for muscle love but during sex, the focus is on the female character. There is nothing more than vanilla sex in this. I actual like vanilla so this hits my personal taste. The most extreme things here is a male getting his own cum to the face. Sex doesn't keep itself from blowjob to pussy to ass routine in every story. This is positive. Sex isn't overly sweaty. It makes sense when there is and when there isn't sweat. Females usually come at the same time as males with yelling. No ahegao faces. There is this odd thing where every female regardless of virginity has a tear on the eye. Why? Another thing is that cum stains are forgotten. In Ladies Impact this is very annoyingly noticeable. On the same page, almost the next panel character has cleaned her face while the other still has some cum on the cheek. Still, manga has a good variety in sex position and scenes.

There are odd design choices in the manga as a book. Colour pages are the outer edge of the book after the cover. Probably printing limitation. The oddity is that you "have to" read through Project-H ads to get to epilogue. Another odd thing is that the contents page is placed at the end. I thought manga didn't have a contents page before I double-checked for this review. Also, the numbers on the contents page are wrong. Not that it matters since manga doesn't have page numbers!

In summary, even though I didn't get what I wanted; this is still good hentai.