Gyarus Reap What They Sow (Adult Content)

Publisher Irodori Comics is a distributor of doujinshi manga which are predominantly sexual in nature. On their website, they have a section of free doujin which typically seem to be early chapters in a series, tasters in other words to whet your curiosity and encourage purchase of later titles. However, one stood out to me for seeming to be a one-shot chapter - a complete story in other words. Therefore, I thought it worth taking a look at as anyone can go read it without needing to spend anything other than time.

The one-shot itself, Gyarus Reap What They Sow, is 26 pages long although only 16 of those pages are the manga itself, with the rest being made up of the cover, background materials, etc. We are given a quick story intro, all in text, that the main character, Kennichi Sakamoto, is the only remaining member of the manga club in his school now that the others have graduated. This results in a group of gyarus, four of them to be specific, taking over the room so that they might play games with each other such as cards and mahjong so that they can have, as they put it, "a wild time". I must admit that the idea of gyaru's wild times doesn't exactly bring board games to mind but, regardless, a member of the group has the idea to make use of Kennichi as the object of their dares, a punishment game where the loser of whatever they're playing that day must do something with him, the contents of which I'll discuss in a moment.

The mangaka, Aiue Oka, notes at the beginning that this concept was an idea he had for a future work that eventually ended up not being made and became a one-shot instead. I'm not going to beat around the bush here, it feels underdeveloped. Really underdeveloped. We're straight into the dares with only the briefest introductions to each girl. These dares start out relatively subdued, French kissing being the first, but quickly escalate into sexual acts such as fellatio, breast jobs and, ultimately, sex both with and without protection. There is very little to distinguish the characters from one another personality-wise with the two closest moments being one mentioning that she has a boyfriend, potentially moving into a smidgeon of NTR territory, and another who seems to actually enjoy the sex she is having. With that one exception, the rest of these acts have the girls constantly insulting Kennichi, calling him a creepy otaku, a pig, smelly etc. He doesn't seem to care though, not really acknowledging these insults. If you're looking for something where it gets straight to sexual acts with no build-up or conclusion then you'll probably be satisfied but I can't help but view this as a weakness.

The artwork on the other hand is pretty good. The character designs are distinct but charming with a nice level of detail, clean linework and, for the most part, great proportions. The backgrounds are a little simplistic but make strong use of negative spacing as well as enough lines, though somewhat scratchy and reminiscent of hatching, to never feel distracted from the foreground. There are also quite a few splash pages and, while the paneling itself is a little basic, an interesting technique is used where a character's body stretches over the centre of the page, surrounded by panels that progress their actions while highlighting their entire body.

As for extras, we get about five pages at the end which show the progression of concept artwork for characters as well as a little about each character's personality and interests. This is fine but it does highlight how little you know about them within the work itself and it would've been nicer if these could've been integrated somehow into the plot.

So in the end, what are my thoughts on Gyarus Reap What They Sow? It's ultimately a very simple and basic work of hentai which spares no time for plot and characters, instead moving quickly into the sexual acts. If that's what you're looking for, you'll probably be quite happy as the artwork is pleasant and shows off a nice amount of detail as well as good proportions via the splash pages but it's ultimately what I would consider to be a forgettable title, serviceable for what it sets out to achieve but little else.

You can read the title for free on the Irodori website.