I must point out that I was sucked into reading this by the cover art rather than a dirty mind. Despite being a hentai title, Hanafuda actually has gasp a storyline going. I found the story to be quite engaging, though I also have a feeling that OKAMA may have borrowed heavily from traditional Japanese folktales (given the presence of kitsune and oni), and gave it a more mature spin… The romance component was quite satisfying and clever, despite being bittersweet. As with any short series and especially hentai, there are a number of plot holes and loose ends not tied up. A number of things threw me off, but overall I must admit that the storyline was quite good, and stretched well beyond the usual mindless sex-driven hentai plots.
The art is simply beautiful and the backgrounds are very detailed. I think that the use of multiple panes gave the series a lovely cinematic quality, and helped with the pacing because so much more space was available for OKAMA to use. Unusually, the volume is entirely in colour, which I think it really adds to the atmosphere and adds to the great detail OKAMA has put into the art.
And now (finally! X3) onto the sex scenes… Personally, I think that the sex could’ve been much easily been delivered as implicit smut instead of hentai. The explicitness of the scenes didn’t add to the story and was a bit of a put off; though I’m sure some people would argue that there wasn’t enough sex! It was weird seeing all the girls’ half-conscious during sex. The snake poison thing just induced a ‘wtf!?’ reaction from me because it was ridiculous. Though the way that the oni were leading Yone-Nobu around made me laugh…
Overall, I liked Hanafuda, it has a fairly decent storyline and was well paced with gorgeous art. Yes, the hentai can be off putting, so reader (especially kiddies) beware!