Joou-sama no Eshi

Hot off the heels of Kodomo no Jikan, Kaworu's artistic ability has leveled up in a big way. If you don't know the artist who penned this manga suffered a major blow, after getting a big deal with a U.S. distribution company for her pedorag mag, they suddenly pulled shelf space when the contents of the second volume were made aware.

Now imagine being in this headspace and writing something like Bakuman, you see when Bakuman was written, Obata and Oishi had already reached the pinnacle of success, not only were they jump regulars but they had reached world wide renown with their series Death Note. Kaworu sensei comes at this manga from a much more visceral place.

This manga reaches a greater depth of emotion, the protagonist is unknown to the reader due to changes in perspective and how the story champions different heroes at times. Every character is peripherally related to manga and even Kaworu herself is embodied in a character that complains about the injustice of the KnJ situation. It's written with much more anger, but there is a lot of love. Though the characters struggle and fail, the love of manga really shines through.

Though it may seem oversexualized, this is the kind of story the author wanted to write, as an answer to being banned in the U.S. the whole thing reads like a love note to KnJ with much better art and a faster pace. It's a wild ride with plenty of anime tiddy to take in along the way as gas. There is clever unexpected humor and even romance. Because Kaworu goes places others dare not to go the cliche character tropes can't be found here.

All in all 8/10 so far

tl;dr: Angry Bakuman with 2D qts

This is at the same time so very odd and so very normal; it's a slice-of-life series about four friends that try to make a comic book and nothing really unusual happens but at the same time it dismisses all the clichés so much and at the same time references them that it becomes original; it's surreal in how contemporary it feels and how much of it references the very current state of comic book production and self-censorship in Japan and the ire of the author with censorship regarding controversial content can clearly be felt.

What one shan't find in this story is:

- a faceless (male )protagonist meant for reader-insertion: there are four protagonists( — two male, two female) — all of which are æequally the hero and the story takes place from all of their perspectives.
- a male boy meets female girl story, despite it being about love developing love and relationships it handles this in an original way.
- clearly developing love for the audience whither the characters are oblivious; the internal dialogue of the characters as their love develops is seen and they quæstion themselves and their feelings

As per usual with the author there is a tonne of casual sexual harassment and I love it. We have four friends: three students and one teacher, two males and one female that are sexually oddly open with each other for such a dynamic and casually sexually harass each other and seem to be fine with it. The line "Bitch, get your tits off me; I'll rape you." was actually uttered. This is absolutely not one of those series that tries to spread the idea of "Sexual harassment is fine as long as it's not a male doing it to a female." but rathe "Sexual harassment is fine when it's done amongst friends that can laugh about it." and it's completely æqual opportunity — in essence it's a power phantasy for sex-positive people that want a world or at least friends where sex and sexual taboos aren't treated so sensitively and one needn't define one's sexual taste with rigorous labels.

The story definitely isn't about lolicon but references it all the same with one of the characters openly calling children "before they grow pubes" "hot" and another claiming to be borderline after having seen pictures of another character as a youngster.

Apart from that the plot definitely takes a backseat to the interactions, comedy, and social - and comic-book market criticisms. There isn't really an overarching plot except four guys that are trying to make a comic book together and more or less succeed and discover and find themselves through the complicated, censorship-stained world of comic book publishing — it's a holesome story in the end with a happy end where all the characters can look back on what they learnt and discovered about themselves and how they improved.

If one be looking for a faceless protagonist self-insert harem power-phantasy then one should look somewhere else: the men of culture are talking now.