Disclaimer: This title is an 18+ mature title. While nothing explicit is posted on this site, please not that the title in question is a hentai title and will contain (usually) explicit sex scenes. In future all reviews of hentai titles will be below the cut so it’s up to you if you want to read them. This is because some covers are NSFW.
Language: English
Direction: Right to Left
Pages: 205
by: Chihiro Harumi
Publisher: Project-H
Type: Series
Genre: HentaiSynopsis:
Nitta Shin is suddenly crushed with debt, his loan agent tells him he can escape paying off the debt if he keeps a certain woman "company". Over time, he learns that doing so is not as easy as he thought.
This is the first full blown hentai I’ve read for review, and overall I’m on the middle ground.
Velvet kiss is a four volume series that follows Nitta, your average salary man who is quite happy with his life. He’s doing fairly well in his life and is currently on a high streak. All of this comes crashing down around him however when he get’s stuck with an 80 million yen debt. He’s told they’ll waive the debt if he keeps a certain young girl company. subsequently his days of hell begin.
And that’s pretty much the story, or what I got from the first volume. While the story is nothing new, and has been used multiple times to varying degree’s of success, it does lend itself well to this series. I like the relationship between Kano and Nitta, which seems to flop around all over the place.
The the thing that really makes the volume a good read for me is that the personalities in this volume are really well done. Kano’s ‘couldn’t give a damn’ personality comes out really well as does the subtle change she goes through during the volume. Initially i hated her (the character), but i liked the way she developed and grew a little over the course of the volume. I’m actually looking forward to seeing how she grows over the course of the series.
Nitta also had a pretty good personality, certainly better than his character design hehe. I liked how he changes over the course of the volume. we see him go from a happy guy to someone with a lot of anger and hate to deal with. I actually liked he changes again after meeting Kano’s step-mother.
The character designs drawn by Chihiro range from being stunning to be a bit ‘meh’. The lead girl, Kano is a prime example of this, she’s been drawn stunningly well. She’s really cute and catches the eye straight away. the same applies to every other girl in the volume, they’re all either cute or beautiful, including the step-mother. However the guys in the story are all pretty meh, including Nitta.
Towards the end of the volume we get some hints that there’s more in play here than a 80 million yen debt, and i have to admit i like the fact that there is at least a semblance of story.
Although this series is about sex, and there’s plenty of it, it actually has a decent story which makes it worth reading. the actual scenes are censored, so while the sex scenes are indeed pretty graphic, your never given a full on shot, there’s always something in the way obscuring the scene slightly. This type of censoring isn’t as bad as some that’s usually used in hentai, ranging from black bars to empty space. this style of censoring doesn’t hinder the flow of things.
I do feel that the sex scenes were used far to frequently, it was as if Chihiro feels the more sex in a volume the better it is, which sadly isn’t the case, Toshiue no Hito would be a prime example. Yet despite the over use of sex I do think I’ll keep reading the series as i want to see how the Kano and Nitta relationship progresses and where it ends up.
This is volume is available from both EManga.com and Amazon, though the costs of buying from Amazon (in the UK at least) means it’s probably better to read it on EManga.com. It costs double the price of a normal manga volume, and i do not feel it’s worth the price. Project-H really do need to look at their pricing model for their print releases, or they won’t sell.
