If this was the best they had to offer, it's little wonder that they failed.
LOVE FOR DESSERT (Nosatsu Cream), by Hana Aoi. First published in 2007 and first published in North America in 2008.
PLOT:
This racy collection of short stories share the stories of a business woman who discovers her surly coworker loves her covered in whipped cream, another who finds her aimless boyfriend more alluring after he gets a suit, a high school girl who is disappointed to learn that her childhood sweetheart is far less princely than she remembered, a hostess whose virginal art school classmate offers to serve as her bodyguard, an unemployed woman whose fortune leads her to a tutoring gig and her new love, and a college girl who discovers that her spacey boyfriend may be more caring that she realized.
STORY:
Normally you'd think I would be eager to read a josei anthology, but this isn't the usual sort of josei manga I cover here. This collection is actually ladicomi, a demographic that could be described as josei's tawdry cousin. While both are targeted towards adult women, I've never been much of a fan of ladicomi. While both are meant to tell more mature stories, ladicomi's approach to that is more shallow and clumsy, like a teenager's idea of what it means to be sexy and adult.
None of these stories stand out. The heroines are virtually interchangeable and the guys they love come off as either feckless or mildly douchey. Aoi tries to make up for their lack of personality with silly quirks (Her mom dresses her in lolita dresses! She eats whipped cream for dinner!) but these end up only becoming bigger distractions. Most of the stories depend on these women not having any idea of what they want out of a relationship and/or both sides jumping to conclusions instead of talking to one another. Not that it matter either way as the end result is the same: they end up having sudden, disjointed, awkwardly timed sex.
Honestly, were it not for the (mildly) explicit sex scenes and the heroines being mostly out of their teens, this wouldn't be any different from bottom-of-the-barrel shoujo. It depends entirely on cutesy nonsense and endless misunderstandings to function and presumes that any man can be turned into the perfect boyfriend with kindness and perseverance. It's not fun, it's not sexy, and no amount of sex can make it truly adult.
ART:
The other thing that largely turns me off ladicomi like this is the crappy art. Hana Aoi's work here is no exception to his, as it is laughably amateur. She seemingly can only draw one male and one female face, yet all of them tend to be regularly drawn off-model. People's bodies are stiff and weirdly proportioned, something that only becomes more obvious when they start having sex. The sex scenes themselves are less censored than I expected; while we don't see any actual genitalia, we do see nipples on the regular and even the occasional bit of pubes. Still, it's not the least bit sexy because the sex itself is seemingly composed at random without the slightest concern for mood.
RATING:
Love For Dessert is lackluster and flavorless smut, neither spicy nor sweet enough to be worthy of anyone's time or attention. If you want ladicomi, go searching over at Renta! and leave this in the bargain bin.
This book was published by Aurora. It is currently out of print.
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