Physical Feedback: Nekomimi Maid Futaba no Hon (A Catgirl Maid Futaba Book)

Read here if you're interested

I'm tempted to call the phenomenon of h-doujins with ironically direct titles a subgenre in itself, it's something I see more and more as time goes on. There's a seemingly endless deluge of titles fitting the template of "A [fetish] [fetish] [character] Book," usually with some lampshadedly-weak excuse plot to get straight to the titular [fetish]-[fetish]-[character] fucking, which is all well and good as far as I'm concerned. If all you really want to do is get right to the point of a character you like or find attractive getting fucked in a particularly appealing way, more power to you, and thank you for making that apparent right off the bat.

Well, in this case it's maybe not quite so up-front. There is a really unexpected sudden urination scene near the beginning of this one. But I've dealt with worse unexpected fetish material popping up, that's no big deal. No, my main gripe with this comic is the fact that in spite of the seeming directness of the concept, it can't seem to really decide what it wants to be and instead flits back and forth between several different tones and ideas.

Futaba's embarassed about wearing a tail plug in public, but then it's revealed that she wasn't wearing panties under her skirt, which one would think would be a more pressing concern; She's very immediately affection and forward toward Ren, but midway through foreplay suddenly starts acting reticent for no apparent reason; after the pissing scene she's suddenly very eager to sucks his dick, and now he's suddenly filming it just to throw in an extra tag I guess, and once that's done she's suddenly reluctant to move forward again, then back to being eager and excited.

I'm not about to say that this sort of behavior is impossible, it's totally feasible that Futaba's level of enthusiasm rises and falls depending on what activity's being performed and how into it she is. But this isn't really established, it's just my own speculation, and that's beside the point. In a lot of art, and especially in pornography, I would posit that presenting a piece with a cohesive appeal is more important than presenting a piece with a cohesive logic, and no matter how much one can rationalize that this book doesn't fail at the latter, it absolutely does at the former. It's a damn shame, because Futaba is a fantastic character design and there are a lot of panels here in which she looks incredibly cute, but it's difficult to get into it when the reading experience feels so inconsistent and unfocused. This isn't a terrible doujin by any means, but it could've been so much better, and feels like so much wasted potential as a result.

I'm giving Nekomimi Maid Futaba no Hon a 2. It's certainly above the neutral cutoff of 0, mainly on the strength of the art, but it could've stood out a lot more and been much more memorable if it would just show some confidence and pick a consistent angle from which to approach the content.