Our Eromanga Toshokan review series returns with a look at the latest offering from veteran mangaka DISTANCE, who according to his Mangaoh product search has been in the business for at least ten years now. As I’ve seen his books come out over the years I’ve typically picked them up, thumbed through them with serious consideration, and ultimately put them back down unpurchased; this is the first to make it into my collection, for reasons I hope will become clear below. Note: this is a hardcore [ERO] book. If you’re under 18 or not interested in hardcore content this post is not for you.

Title: B-Chiku (美～ちく)
Author: DISTANCE
Release Date: April 19th, 2008
Pages: 6 color, 206 total
Publisher: Core Magazine
Imprint: Megastore Comics
ISBN 13: 978-4862523846
Availability: Mangaoh, Amazon
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Art: ★★★★☆
Story: ★★★★☆
Ero: ★★★★☆
Themes: huge breasts, newlyweds, fellatio, cutaway view, teachers, students, riding style, from behind, sporty types, spats, first time sex, racing swimsuits, girls next door, sex after watching porn, yuri shower play, cunnilingus, 69, paizuri, bikinis, tsundere girlfriends

DISTANCE (henceforth referred to as Distance to adhere to more standard English language naming conventions and avoid sounding like I’m shouting at myself) is an artist I’d largely overlooked in the past, despite (or perhaps because of) his veteran status - this book is amazingly his eighteenth tankoubon release, though the first under the auspices of Core Magazine.

Thinking about it now, it’s possible that the key to his longevity is the same reason I didn’t care much for his earlier work; he tends to draw in a formulaic style which while undoubtedly easy to sustain didn’t provide much excitement for this particular viewer. It’s hard to describe his earlier style since it was so generic; character faces and body types shared a bland similarity, and he drew erogenous zones in a kind of paint-by-numbers way - “there’s supposed to be breasts here so I’ll draw some breasts”, without really considering the fetishistic potential or significance that could be added by exaggeration or heightened levels of detail.

Whether due to the watchful eye of the Core editorial staff or some other factor I don’t know, but in B-Chiku we see a notable evolution in style from Distance’s earlier work. While some scenes retain their formulaic blandness and feel like “I just drew that there because I had to put lines on the page”, he’s managed to invest some real thought in a surprising percentage of the cuts that bring his stories to life.

This is done principally through a mechanism of extreme shading technique applied through the liberal use of (likely digital) screen tones. The monotony of his style comes largely from a uniformity of line width and a lack of plasticity in body parts that should be malleable, and the increased texture provided by aggressive tone use helps alleviate the former while the occasional conscious effort of brute will on the artist’s part alleviates the latter - you can almost feel his synapses rewiring in scenes like this.

Content-wise the book’s tone is uniformly light and playful, spanning seven lengthy chapters each of which recounts an isolated story:

• Fraeulein Asssault!! - A hapless salaryman arrives home one day to find that he’s married to a young bride who he’d never met before. Though he is initially hesitant to accept her advances she wins him over and they have mad passionate sex through their wedding night and into the next day.

• The Melancholy of Black Tights-sensei - An impertinent student comes on to his teacher, who is secretly starved for sex. She regrets caving into his advances the next day, but finds herself equally powerless to resist when he approaches her again, and they have mad passionate sex in the classroom after school.

• First Timer Ecstasy - The captain of the girls’ softball team gets irritated at her teammates for their graphic descriptions of sex with their boyfriends, but can’t get them out of her head. She then finds herself in the empty locker room, where her own boyfriend comes on to her, and she lets him go all the way.

• え・れ・じ・い (Elegy?) - Boy with no swimming talent spies on the tennis player girl he has a crush on, before swimming coach comes over and smothers him with her breasts. He doesn’t have the balls to confess to tennis girl himself, so she offers to coach him in the art of gaining self-confidence with women…

• Engage x Insert - Next door neighbor girl comes over to work on homework together, but she end’s up watching the guy’s porn DVDs instead. She gets excited, starts masturbating on his bed, and he eventually gives in and they have mad, passionate sex.

• Absolute Normal - A girl is confessed to by a junior student who she finds smelling her gym clothes. Her sister comes in while she’s bathing and tells her that if she likes him she should accept him as he is, scent fetish and all, so she decides to confess her love to him in return and they have mad passionate (and only slightly abnormal) sex.

• Her ** Structural Mistake - A girl insecure about her recently gained weight is given a bikini by her boyfriend. He surprises her while she’s trying it on, and she angrily pushes away his advances, ashamed by how she looks; she finally lets him come on to her but continues (pretending to be?) angry through their mad passionate sex; at the end she’s put on even more weight, as she turns out to be pregnant.

Overall this is a book that I find easy to recommend to just about anyone, with quality art that is a clear evolutionary step above Distance’s previous work and a narrative flavor that’s good clean erotic fun with no bitter aftertaste. I should note that I may be making a bigger deal than necessary about the change in art style from previous works to this one; I don’t have a reference volume handy to make a definite comparison so I’m left to rely on the memory of his work I’ve seen in the past.

Either way, what’s presented here in B-Chiku is quality work that stands solidly on its own merits.

As a final bit of trivia: The title “B-Chiku” is written as 美～ちく, which has no real meaning but implies “beautiful breasts”. It’s actually a pun on B地区 (bichiku = “B Sector”), which is a Japanese internet slang term for “nipple” (乳首 chikubi) that inverts the syllables of the original word.