I definitively love and recommend
YOSHIHARA Yuki : 9 times out of 10 I can be sure she delivers both on the fun side and eyecandy and plot/characterization front , at least starting from her
Oboretai anthology onwards... so I'd suggest to try all of her works, minus the very early ones unless you're a completionist.
The only stories of hers that left me a bit O_O are a handful of tragedy oneshots (for the mindf*ck factor up the wazoo) and
Aisuru Hito (for featuring a triangle and the circumstances of said triangle members).
Usually her stories are at the core about Him and Her, pretty straightforward in this sense. No triangles. And it's a breath of fresh air : a clear-cut 'clean' romantic premise + crazy&oh-so-sensual execution combo that can make me root for the characters wholeheartedly. And characters that can have you facepalming - in a good way XD - but that you wouldn't bash repeatedly in the head with an anvil (as it happens to me instead while reading other smut authors).
And she has hard working, often proud women pouncing on pretty men
. Self-assured , (mostly) career-accomplished women's sex drive ftw . Forget doormats characters here
Last but not least: humour is higly subjective. But Yoshihara's brand of humour on me works wonders. One of the few mangaka - in any genre and demographic- that has made me - literally - ROFL (a shiny example it's in the aforementioned Oboretai: the fateful meeting in the elevator
) . Oh, glorious crack *_* .
Other good titles: Darling Wa..., Chou Yo Hana Yo, Haa Haa, Itadakimasu. Ningyo Ouji for more controversial and more supernatural stuff. Sheet no Sukima instead if you want both comedy oneshots and darker ones.
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SHIMAKI Ako: her story and characters are pretty simple and bordering on silly at times, and she tends to loose coherence/continuity in multi-chaptered works, but... boy, graphics and presentation are key here. Her art has a cinematic quality , gracing even the most trite plots with enough spark to lift her above 99% of smut (barring Yoshihara Yuki above , of course . Colour me biased XD ). One of my favourite sequence of hers is in the titular story of
Iinazuke Ryokan : the nocturnal torch sequence
While her girls usually falls under the 'naive, cute, not too sharp but good-hearted' type - with then bonus of looking quite shapely -, her boys are actually
nice and courteous. In a genre infested with potential rapists such as smut, this makes a very welcome difference.
Mixed bag, but better than most:
1) OHMI Tomu of
Midnight Secretary fame . I find her works to be swinging between very agreeable and appealing and bland and cliché. MS is a good example of that: I really like some parts of it , but it's very uneven overall. And the male protagonist's chauvinism is really pushing my tolerance at times. But I blame the editors and certain bad romance novels heritage for this
.
In other titles, for instance, her male leads are much better (
Barairo my honey ) .
2)
Kayono has often questionable plot elements, shallow and/or flat characters. But she used to (emphasis on past tense
) churn out some pretty art in some of her works , and she's good at exotic, '1001 Nights' kinds of setting: her best works to me are
B-Men Kazoku and the
Otoko Hime to Mahou no Lamp anthology , in which she managed to dodge most of her flaws and to showcase most - if not all - of her strengths : chemistry, some hot sex scenes, luscious backgrounds, detailed clothes and accessories, delectable bodies, action scenes and a bit of suspance, some jokes and jabs at various manga genres (from magical girls to harem boob-grabbing leads to action/adventure to her own stylistic quirks) and (in these two titles at least ) NO RAPE YAY.
Last edited by elianthos at 12:07 pm, Dec 6 2009________________
Motomi Kyousuke is DA (WO)MAN ;D
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=14467&p ost=382161
