Nanao has a brothel date with Asumi. Or destiny. Maybe both? Then the world’s least necessary beach trip turns into the least necessary practice date, all in service of feelings that might not have any place in a story like this…
The little sex book that could does so again, this time with poor Nanao getting a crash course on how not to be an innocent waif. This might be the most blatant sexual awakening I’ve ever seen in manga and it’s a corker of an opening.
For all her anxiety, Nanao certainly goes with the… uh… goes along with her meet-up, even when it turns out to not be Asumi she’s scheduled with. Still, her incredibly kind and gentle partner helps her figure a lot of things out with varying degrees of spice.
The beach trip is mostly whatever - Asumi’s senpai tags along and, once she figures out Nanao’s secret, spends the entire trip needling the latter about her crush. Typical stuff, but Nanao is neurotic enough without assistance so it feels incredibly extraneous (considering how fast said senpai gets written out of the subsequent chapter, I feel somebody else might agree).
Honestly, the Nanao and Asumi relationship is very charming. Both women are very into one another and only Asumi’s quest is stopping things from going in a more traditional direction for yuri. Yes, I know rooting for a relationship in a story like this is being like the person who says they really love Playboy for the articles, but my point stands.
Oh, the sex? Sure, there’s a bunch of that, although it’s definitely calmer than the wildest stuff in, say, Volume 2. But it still does a good job, plus that beach trip has a couple scenes of its own.
The highlights are definitely Nanao’s experimental phase, plus the fake date that Asumi goes on to prepare for an actual date later. The latter is probably the hottest one, as Asumi says she only wants one thing, but her escort has her dead to rights in the opening moments.
No, none of this is at all realistic, this is the gentlest and sweetest escort service in the history of the industry, I’d wager, but it’s still got a better attitude towards sex work than a large chunk of media. Everybody is very okay about it and no shame is assigned, and the world is better for it.
Plus, yes, it’s a good, dirty time still. It’s the rare explicit book that I don’t have utter shame about enjoying because its heart is in the right place. It wants to have fun and be fun for the reader and it definitely does that.
The main plot definitely takes a hiatus for this entire volume, which means we do miss out on the sheer variety of sexual situations Asumi was exposing herself to, so that’s a bit of a knock, and the replacement with her and Nanao is welcome, but as I said before, can it really go anywhere? Guess we’ll find out.
3.5 stars - not the slam dunk of earlier volumes and it is all just an excuse for sex, unquestionably, but it’s a way better excuse for sex than almost any other manga I can think of.