Holiday Review #13: BETRAYED BY THE HERO, I FORMED A MILF PARTY WITH HIS MOM!

 That last review represented one of the earlier, classier isekai offerings!  These days, it seems the only way these creators can distinguish themselves is by getting hornier and stupider than ever before.

BETRAYED BY THE HERO, I FORMED A MILF PARTY WITH HIS MOM! (Yusha ni Zenbi Ubawareta Ore wa Yusha no Hahaoya to Party wo Kumimashita!), written by Ishino Yassan with art by Makoto Kuon.  First published in 2022 and first published in North America in 2025.

PLOT:

Ceres had been happy to be a member of the Guiding Light adventuring group...until its dirtbag leader Zechs kicked him out in order to monopolize all the cute girls.  That's fine with Ceres, who prefers older women anyway (unlike seemingly everyone else in this world).  He happens upon Zech's mother Shizuko at the local slave market, whom he adored as a child.  Ceres takes it upon himself to purchase her and show her just how worthy of love she still is.  Lucky for him that she's also a former S-rank adventurer, and that her equally illustrious colleagues also just happen to be attractive, big-breasted older women in need of an escape from their unhappy marriages.

STORY:

I Formed a MILF Party might be a manga-original isekai story, but it still operates on the same level of unoriginality, narrative convenience, and naked indulgence as anything that came out of Narou.  It can just be a little more pervy about it because it's a digital comic.

I cannot get over the amount of excuses Ishino Yassan makes to make this narrative work.  It can't just be enough for Ceres to simply prefer older women, he has to be a reincarnated middle-aged Japanese dude in a world where lives are short and any woman over 25 is treated like a worthless, unfuckable crone.  It's not enough for his new slave to formerly be a high-ranking adventurer, she has to literally be his ex-leader's mother so that she can constantly declare just how superior Ceres is to her own son.  It's not enough for Ceres to be a good adventurer, he has to have been the only person in his party capable of doing paperwork and cooking food.  They can't even manage proper hygiene without him!  All of these excuses exist for one purpose: to make Ceres look good.  

Even the practice of slavery exists to make Ceres look good.  How else could he prove he is not just a good person but also literally the only capable man in this world if he didn't first prove that he was a Good Slave Owner?  So naturally he had to go looking for a slave in the first place for domestic work, and then buy her affections with good food, presents, and sex.  It's telling that Ceres has supposedly adored this woman for years, spends most of the book wooing her, even going so far as to marry her via their guild, but never once entertains the idea of freeing his lady love.  That apparently would just be silly!  The real test will be if he goes full Shield Hero and forces Shizuko's old friends/future sister-wives to become slaves before he marries them or not.  I just can't imagine why anyone would bother to keep reading this long enough to find out.

ART:

It turns out that when you're tasked with drawing a horny isekai manga without any light novel illustrations to refer to, all you're produce is the stiffest, most generic-looking book possible.  At least this series features a white-haired Potato-kun instead of the standard Dollar Store Kirito look.  Of course, why bother with novel character designs when most of them are just boob delivery units?  That's not even getting into how porn (including but not limited to hentai) has utterly watered down the concept of a MILF to "big titty, maybe somewhat taller and/or curvier than other women," which is in full effect here.  

What really gets me is that this is a story that needs a pervert artist and Makoto Kuon is not a pervert.  There's an extended sex scene late in this volume and it's drawn in the most perfunctory, matter-of-fact fashion possible.  This is presumably what this manga's audience is here for!  I'm really glad I reviewed Don't Hold Back, Lord Hades before this one because even putting aside the differences in their audience, you can look at them both and tell which artist is comfortable and excited to draw smut and which one is not.  If you're not passionate about drawing the smut in your smutty manga, why are you even there?

So is there anything Kuon is good at drawing?  Yes - action.  At one point Ceres and Shizuko fight a wyrm, and the paneling is surprisingly dynamic.  The fight itself is as rote as can be for this genre, but their choice of angles and composition gives it an energy that is sorely missing from the rest of the volume.  It's clear where the artist's true passion is, and it's not for anything that this boneheaded story would consider a priority.

RATING:

I didn't expect I Formed a MILF Party to be good, but I didn't expect it to fail even at its stated purpose of providing fanservice.  It's a stiff, soulless, hollow thing, the manga equivalent of a Xerox of a Xerox with some big boobs scribbled upon it.  All this story can do is metaphorically jerk its own protagonist off, and frankly there are so many other places where you can find that sort of content done better if you want it.

This manga is published by Seven Seas.  This series is currently ongoing in Japan with 6 volumes available.  3 volumes have been released and are currently in print.

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