Recent Reviews

The Cuckolding Wizard's Adventure
3/10

by ANN's Lucas DeRuyter Rating: 1.5/5 The Cuckolding Wizard’s Adventure really cannot figure out its tone or its relationship with infidelity. Just as I thought it was about to be a more considered, if still somewhat surface level, exploration of how sexual relationships outside of a main partnership can benefit all involved, the titular cuckolding wizard busts out a horny hypnosis spell and this manga loses whatever chance it had to say something meaningful. That leaves this work feeling deeply sophomoric, as it's clearly informed by longstanding social sentiments around infidelity — and the presence of “cuckolding” rather than “NTR” in the title makes it feel like it's explicitly trying to play into the dynamic's recent rise in American culture — but it's not actually saying anything. The end result is an exercise that's only masturbatory as an edgelord fantasy, rather than a sexual one. The basic plot of The Cuckolding Wizard’s Adventure is that a capable, but secret dirtbag wizard named Shinji joins a fairly novice adventuring party where the preexisting members are all childhood friends. While he lays the groundwork for a relationship with the party's ranger and big sister figure, Renka, most of the sex that actually takes place in this work is between Shinji and Charlotta, the innkeeper's daughter. Charlotta's motivation for hooking up with Shinji comes from her anxiety over not being sexually experienced enough for her partner Morse, as well as not being sexually fulfilled by him. Just when I think this work is about to say something about what can inspire a person to have sex outside of their monogamous relationship, Shinji hits Charlotta with his non-consent macguffin and the most interesting part of these kinds of stories is completely undone. To add insult to injury, the main non-smutty story beat of the first volume of The Cuckolding Wizard’s Adventure is a retread of the opening of Goblin Slayer. The main party enters a dungeon, finds a bunch of women being sexually assaulted by goblins, then has to kill those goblins in an excessively gory fashion to save them. Beyond being a deeply gross depiction of sexual assault, this blatant copying of Goblin Slayer's infamous opening makes this work feel redundant and unnecessary. There's nothing here that hasn't been done better elsewhere. As for the more technical aspects of this work, either the writing or translation is strange. At one point the work makes clear that this new party has risen from “low-intermediate to mid-intermediate” in rank, and there has to be a better way to communicate that growth than dividing a category like intermediate into further sub-sections. Intermediate means middle! Something can't be high, or low, or middle middle! That's a ridiculous categorization. As for the art, it has a sketchier quality that's maybe not the best suited for erotic illustrations where facial expressions and small details can make a big difference. However, it is evocative of a common look in turn of the century anime and manga and that engenders a fondness in me. Also, while sound effects are not replaced with their English equivalent, those translations are added to the page in an appropriate font, rather than in just a notation. In brief, there's better, far more informed and interesting, NTR hentai out there than The Cuckolding Wizard’s Adventure and folks are better off reading those works.

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3 reviews

Let’s Make a Harem in a Zombie World!
9/10

by ANN's Lucas DeRuyter Rating: 4.5/5 You know how porn parodies were semi-big in the 90s and early-mid 2000s? Well, maybe we need to bring those back because Yu Imai's Let's Make a Harem in a Zombie World! is basically a porno version of Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead and it's shockingly good! Beyond being the fun kind of skeezy rather than the scummy kind, this manga also manages to be genuinely hilarious and has better social politics than what I've come to expect from this kind of story. From the opening pages that feature the leads recreating one-way mirror exhibitionism videos in front of the living undead, it's clear that this is a zombie apocalypse story that runs on pornoworld logic. Protagonists Kosaka Koutarou and Kido Kana begin a romantic and sexual relationship after a burgeoning zombie apocalypse and, after Kana is bitten by a zombie, quickly discover that regular “injections” of Koutarou's semen will stop her from transforming into a zombie. Oh, and her being half-zombie means that she now has super strength for some reason, which proves beneficial in enacting several exhibitionism tropes, like doing it in a clothing boutique's changing room, hooking up in a storage shed behind a school, and fucking in a broadcast studio with their audio supposedly airing for all to hear. Throughout all of these exploits, Kana is an enthusiastic participant and even drives some of these erotic scenarios. That does a lot of work in making Harem Zombie more fun and campy than exploitative. It also helps that there's an overtly incel coded character that serves as the main villain of this volume. Like most good zombie stories, most of the drama arises from the tensions between human characters, and the central conflict is between Koutarou and Kana's faction and that of a scumbag teacher who's king of shit mountain at an all-girls school. By deliberately taking the piss out of the kind of dudes who objectify women or think they're entitled to their affection, Let's Make a Harem in a Zombie World! makes it a lot easier to engage with its premise without getting bogged down with the problematic dimensions built into its conceit. It also helps that Harem Zombie is genuinely funny for a smut fic, both in ways overt and conceptual. Some of its best jokes include: literal fashion zombies, the visual of doing TikTok dances in front of a zombie horde, and an extended gag where a freshly turned zombie tries to bite the MC's dick off; the work inspires a lot of laughs. If I had any criticisms of this work, it's that the dialogue can sometimes feel a bit clunky, in a way where I'm not sure if it's a consequence of subpar writing or an awkward translation. One issue that does lie at the fault of the translation, though, is how “sexy talk” is depicted on the page. Characters will elongate words or slur them during the act, which results in words like “stop” and “stole” being written as “shtoop” and “shtole,” and it can be difficult to determine the intended phonetic reading of these modified words. This ultimately makes what's supposed to be raunchier dialogue more distracting than anything else on a few occasions in this volume. Outside of that sole criticism, though, I cannot recommend Let's Make a Harem in a Zombie World! enough, especially to folks partial to exhibitionist kinks and more ridiculous hentai. The final pages promise future hentai hijinks in a future volume, and I'm genuinely excited to experience those!

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3 reviews

The Way To Conquer A Different World As A Reincarnated Porter
4/10

by ANN's Lucas DeRuyter Rating: 2/5 I think I like A Reincarnated Carrier’s Strategy for Another World as much as I can like a nakedly misogynistic, male power fantasy, isekai story. While I think either writer Tarō Koumi or artist Hayashi might have the spirit of a freak in them, this work's charm points are buried under heaps of regressive tropes, boundless amounts of misogyny, and even a little bit of homophobia sprinkled in for (the opposite of) fun! Even if there are a handful of inspired sex scenes or kink considered scenarios, so much of this manga is steeped in whiny bullshit that I can't recommend that anyone read this. The protagonist, Sei, suffers the standard fake discrimination common in these kids of isekai stories; he's a totally alpha and/or chad and/or sigma badass dude who can kick a ton of ass, but everyone thinks he sucks because his chosen job, a Carrier in this case, has poor stats. It never fails to annoy me that these stories that are so heavily steeped in JPRG conventions have characters that don't understand how JRPGs work. A given “Job” is rarely wholly worse than any other one in this kind of game, and the fact that the universe this story takes place in is apparently an unbalanced one or filled with characters that obsess over game design systems they don't understand is immediately frustrating to me. After this set up, the plot of A Reincarnated Carrier’s Strategy for Another World proceeds as these stories typically do: Sei saves a virginal cleric from being sexually assaulted, they begin travel together, hijinks ensue, and by the end of the first volume Sei's met the monotone ninja girl and mature sorceress that are likely to fill out his party/harem in future chapters. If you've experienced any kind of isekai media in the past 15 years, you know the broad strokes of how this story is going to unfold. What sets Carrier's Strategy apart from many of its contemporaries, though, is that it depicts actual sex scenes instead of just perfunctory fan service. The kinds of sex scenes fully featured or gestured in this work at are surprisingly varied for a male power fantasy isekai, which are often fairly vanilla to reach as broad an audience as possible. To name a few, Carrier's Strategy features kinks like bukkake, watersports, and ahegao. There's also a drawing of feet in a particular sex scene that could only be created by someone who has an affinity for that part of the human anatomy, and I respect Hayashi for likely letting their freak flag fly. However, for every positive comment I can make about Carrier's Strategy I have at least twice as many negative ones, with the biggest offender being a “gag” where characters assume Sei is gay after he's seen recovering what appears to be a large dildo. A character then asks him what could charitably be referred to as ignorant questions about sex involving two cis males, and I don't need this kind of casual, juvenile homophobia in any form of media in 2025. The sex scenes in A Reincarnated Carrier’s Strategy for Another World are distinct enough to be noted as such, but the work falls into a lot of the same pitfalls as others in this genre and will probably only be appreciated by isekai diehards.

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3 reviews

SSS-Class Revival Hunter
10/10

10/10 manhwa I would infact say this manhwa is a hard compete for number 1 ( YES I know or tged ss ri exist. But god damn this one hits deep( ps I know tbate exists but honestly I'd say like the other top 10 manhwa will decimate it's spot once manhwa and the anime for manhwas becomes more mainstream like tbate is good but like i still didn't like more parts of that than this manhwa but that's an opinion alright let's be civil)) The story and the world building is 10/10 . The art is 9.7/10 for any other story since it's not like the greatest art I've seen don't get me wrong it's amazing. but for this particular story it fits so damn perfect so it's a 10/10 . The artist knows how to draw fights and drama scenes and like romance scenes , and the funny ones and emotional scenes really well. I really really love the different arcs and concepts by the author as the author is amazing at laying it out and explaining everything. But mostly what I would say gives this a perfect 10/10 is the psychology or like you know emotions aspect of it and like it literally teaches you sh like i can't explain it just read it. Only complaint I would have is the start like first 10 chapters which really really threw me off( i reread it 4 times but god damn after u get past that it's amazinggg.) yeah but it potentially steered off many people with low attention spans or low tolerance for a generic manhwa even tho id argue the first 10 chs arent really that generic . Yeah please please read this kinda attentively tho since this isn't slop u need to think a tad bit at times but it's probably the number 1 manhwa of all time atleast for me so far

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8 reviews