Silly and sexy tales of men and women with a cute titles in one tight little package.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Rei Hibari
Translation/Adaptation: Akko
What They Say
From Rei Hibari comes a collection of eleven shorts all published in Puromero Magazine. Filled with big breasts and oddball love stories, come and delve into a world where twins share their sexual sensations, where a faithful girlfriend would do anything – and anyone – to uphold her boyfriend’s honor, and where a jerk and a hussy come together and confess their love to each other! So, what’re you waiting for? Come and delve into a world where everything tastes better with cream!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Tastes Better With Cream marks the first release from Rei Hibari through Project H Books and it’s one that definitely has its fun as it compiles a lot of short stories together. With the way so much hentai manga is put together where there’s just a lot of small, individual works that are done without a larger theme, compiled volumes can be dicey pieces, especially when you bring in some of the older material from a creator that hadn’t refined their work yet. Hibari talks at the end of the book about how he was surprised that he was getting a compiled volume, especially in this digital age, and noted that with one of the stories they went back and essentially rewrote it since it didn’t come out the way he wanted. Which is good and bad because part of me wants to see the original, raw and untouched piece. But the other part likes getting the cleaned up version that reflects what the author wanted to do. Of course, you can’t get both.
One of Hibari’s staples for his stories is that the women must have really, really, large breasts. Well, they’re not like Eiken scary or anything, but they’re definitely prominent features that in some ways really does detract from otherwise appealing artwork and character design material. It also makes a lot of his characters seem the same since most feature such, well, features. That said, there are some cute stories to be had in this collection. The opening tale in particular has a lot of fun as we get introduced to some twins where one has totally discovered sex and just gets into it in a big way but her sister is trying to remain chaste, which means she ends up feeling most of what her sister feels. The only way to ease it is to try and enjoy herself a bit, but she’s a little restrained and that makes it difficult. We get some fun sister versus sister dialogue here as the two go at it, but the end result of the chaste girl discovering the real thing through an accident turns her into having better sexual results, which frustrates the hell out of her sister.
The last story is one that is also interesting if only because it plays to the boys wish fulfilment aspect so fully that you have to laugh at the premise. With the way young society has gone in Japan, boys just aren’t all that interested in sex anymore so the government comes up a training school of sorts to help young men realize that sex = good. Every year they get plenty of applicants and no empty spots because of the appeal of it, but mostly because they get the wrong kind of people in general as it’s filled with young men who want sex. The story focuses on one guy who was kind of interested in being there but it got all awkward because he ended up getting paired with a girl that he really, really likes but doesn’t want it to happen like this. She’s pretty restrained with how she is around him, but she’s really into him as well and wants to please him. The two have an awkward relationship but the story plays amusingly with the way the training is done and the whole male wish fulfillment aspects laid out in a big way.
Women wanting sex is admittedly a positive to the book since a lot of titles tend to have them not all that interested in the act. Another story here has an angle where the woman wants more out of her boyfriend than he’s giving, since he’s treating her like a princess and being all respectful and simple with his acts with her. But she’s craving something rougher and more intense and that’s not something that he knows how to do or really thinks should be done with her. When things do end up that way in a kind of accidental way, she gets what she wants and he realizes just how much more it pleases her, which is nice to see. Communication is always difficult in ways of sex and relationships so seeing them go through it here in an abbreviated form and making it so that she’s the one craving something more intense gives it a nice little twist and a bit more weight.
Another story involves a guy who ends up getting dumped by his girlfriend on New Years Eve and it’s left him pretty distraught. To make matters worse, it was witnessed by another girl he knows, who sees it as an opportunity to get closer to him by consoling him. While it has a fairly standard approach, it has a fun little twist in that the guy was in the hospital at the start of his previous relationship and he sought the girlfriend out since she came to visit him regularly. Of course, it turns out it wasn’t his girlfriend that had done that but this other classmate and she’s glad to finally have a shot at him since she fell for him early on. It’s a roundabout way of her getting the guy she wants, but she doesn’t tell him outright and decides that her best bet is to just console him for awhile, enjoying that aspect before going for a full on relationship.
In Summary
With this collection of tales, we get a lot of short and simple tales that involve men and women in various states of sexual congress. Hibari provides for some appealing character designs in general, though he goes a bit overboard in certain features, but it’s balanced by giving us characters that are interested in what they’re doing for the most part. There’s some decent variety to the stories and some comical quirky ones that are included as well, but there’s also nothing that stood out as hugely memorable or really erotic. They do the job, they’re fun and the layouts are decent, but it doesn’t reach that strong level of engagement needed to stand out above the rest. It’s a solid release that will find its fans and it does leave me curious to see if Hibari can grown his craft more.
Content Grade: B-
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B-
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 18+
Released By: Project-H Books
Release Date: November 13th,, 2013
MSRP: $19.95