For the second installation of our eromanga review series we bring you a book released in May of this year from rookie mangaka Drill Jiru. As his handle (“drill juice”) and the book’s title (“juice max”) imply this is a very messy offering, and one not for those made queasy by the sight of some maniac ero; for those into that sort of thing or interested in the craft of manga in general this is a deep offering from a talented artist at the beginning of what will hopefully be a long and fruitful career. 18+ ONLY, NWS.

Title: Jiru Max!! (ジルマックス!!)
Author: Drill Jiru (ドリル汁)
Release Date: May 23rd, 2007
Publisher: Kill Time Communications
Imprint: 2D Dream Comics
ISBN 13: 978-4860323936
Availability: Mangaoh, Amazon
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Art: ★★★☆☆
Story: ★★☆☆☆
Ero: ★★★★☆
Themes: bukkake, futanari, kyonyuu, group sex, coercion, etc.

As this is his first published book and his official site leaves a lot to be desired, there isn’t much to find online that helps us construct a history of Drill Jiru’s work. He has some all ages art up here (commission work?), and I’m almost positive I’ve seen his stuff in doujinshi recently, but this book is the only concrete item we currently have to go on in terms of ero.

Artistically this is a book with some pretty significant strengths and weaknesses. The guy knows how to draw phenomenally erotic illustrations, and has a decent handle on balance and proportionality within his frames, but when it comes to laying them out on a page he often ends up with a bland, static or downright confusing flow. To me this looks like a sign of an artist who cut his teeth on individual illustrations and moved to manga from there, but this is a valiant first effort and I’m confident that with time and experience his layout-fu will improve.

Another issue that affects his page composition is that the images are so darn busy. The book is called JIRU MAX for a reason, and what he does with the theme is quite impressive, but on many of the pages he suffers from an acute case of Synthetic Garden / Erect Touch syndrome – it’s impossible to tell what is going on without engaging a part of the brain that would really rather be off powering other vital functions while looking at manga like this. When he does get the balance of his pages right, though, they’re really, really good, and I’m confident that his second volume (if and when it’s released, knock on wood) will be exponentially better than the first.

I’m not quite sure how I should rate the story for this volume, because frankly I didn’t even try to read it. 90% of the dialog consists of “UIIIIIEEEEEE” and “KOOOOOOO” and “ye gods, I am covered in semen”, not leaving much room to fit a story in edgewise; from that perspective this is the sort of manga that should probably recieve an N/A rating in the story section, because the philosophy seems to be “why put a text bubble there when you could have a bubble of some miscellaneous body fluid instead?” I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, but pick this up with the knowledge that it’s no War and Peace. Well, maybe if Pierre was a futanari…

Overall Score: ★★★☆☆

I wanted to give this 3.5 stars, but there’s no half-star in the IME so I’m settling for three (I could make it a ten point system and give it a seven, but I refuse on moral grounds. Or something). I tried to include all of the recommendations from the first review in this one, but there may be some things I missed; as before, if you have any suggestions for the column I’m all ears!