Erect Sawaru is a doujin veteran of many years, and one whose work I’ve not always been fond of - his books tended in the past to be incredibly messy, to the point that it was nearly impossible to tell what was going on. This first collected volume of his serialized works carries over many of the traits of his doujin, but contains enough stuff from his more recent period to make it worth a second look. Note: this is a hardcore [ERO] book. If you’re under 18 or not interested in hardcore content this post is not for you. If neither of these conditions apply, by all means read on!

Title: Mazo Chichi (まぞちち)
Author: Erect Sawaru (エレクトさわる)
Release Date: August 25th, 2007
Pages: 12 color, 230 total
Publisher: Akane Shinsha
Imprint: Tenma Comics
ISBN 13: 978-4871829380
Availability: Mangaoh, Amazon
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Art: ★★★☆☆
Story: ★★☆☆☆
Ero: ★★★★☆
Themes: bakunyuu, group sex, massive bukkake, coercion, tsundere, bathroom sex, outdoor sex, bondage, anal play, sex toys, teacher/student, paizuri, masturbation, 3P, fellatio, MILF, pirates, china dresses, witches

As stated in the excerpt I haven’t always been a huge fan of Erect Sawaru’s work. The faces of his heroines were too angular to be appealing, the huge wads of semen generally too gloopy and overwhelming to generate anything other than a sensory overload, not of pleasure but of the sort you get when looking for Waldo, only here you’re looking for the heroine’s face lost in a sea of cum.

Around the beginning of 2006 though something in his style changed. It’s hard to point to exactly, but it’s like he suddenly caught the moe - his heroines’ faces lost their severity, their bodies loosened from their jutting stylized lines into fuller, gentler curves, and while largely retaining his signature complexity it all somehow became readable. Whether this was a conscious decision on his part or simply the progressive maturation of his style is impossible to tell, but whatever the reason, his work for the past year or so has consistently topped my list of enjoyable reads.

Reading Mazo Chichi is like experiencing this evolution backwards. The first half of the book (cover included) feels firmly planted in his new body of work, with a softer, much more sympathetic look to the characters and an effective page flow that seldom overwhelms or loses the reader in a visual overload. The second half of the book comes from his earlier period, complete with more angular faces and bodylines and a less articulate flow. The author notes as much himself in the epilogue, noting that “when gathered here the drawings look totally different”.

Content-wise the book is a mixture of coerced and voluntary activity, again roughly divided along the line that seems to delineate his older and newer styles (with the newer being not only more moe visually but more moe in terms of the character types and scenarios). I prefer consensual material as a rule, though I hope he didn’t change merely to pander to “the moe boom”; without knowing his intent I do find the mellower, newer material to be much nicer than his older stuff across the board in both artistic content and theme.

This is a hard book to recommend on its independent merits as it really feels like two compilations mashed into one. If you welcome both the harder, more artistically challenging fare of his earlier work and the softer stylings of his new material this will be right up your alley; otherwise there may be pages you’ll find yourself glossing over. As a fan of many of the themes Erect Sawaru deals with and of the direction his art is now taking, I can however recommend this unconditionally to put a bowl of ramen on a starving artist’s table and help him live to draw another day.