Kentaro Yabuki is seriously the king of cheesecake 😁
I definitely was not expecting to like this as much as I did. I have nothing against ecchi, but usually it’s just not really for me. With AyaTri, I felt like Yabuki-sensei masterfully balanced the perviness with humour and battle scenes. And I was actually quite invested in Matsuri and Suzu’s relationship, even though it was obvious that Suzu was in love with Matsuri regardless of gender.
While it was a given that there would be fan-service, some of the scenarios were so ridiculous they were hilarious. The one that immediately comes to mind is when Matsuri has to use a straw to suck out some of Suzu’s spiritual energy via her belly button while she’s asleep, but of course Suzu dreams about eating donuts which leads to her nibbling on (a very specific part of) Matsuri???? Surely human flesh does NOT have the texture of donuts 😂 Surely a sweets connoisseur like Suzu would realise even in her dream that something was not right…
Another thing that surprised me, was the extent to which Yabuki-sensei employed the ‘everything has a hot girl version’. Like, literally everything/one has a hot girl version 🤣 When the mirror ayakashi became a hot woman I kinda lost it (laughing). And then Yabuki-sensei did a troll chapter on ‘hot girl Ninokuru’ which turned out to actually be cute girl Ninokuru jr (his real sister). You got me there Yabuki-sensei.
And a THIRD thing that surprised me in AyaTri was the sheer number of ayakashi medium forms LOL. Shadow Mei made sense as a separate entity, but then they split out little Suzu and ON TOP OF THAT little Suzu could fuze with Shirogane into Kitty Little Suzu and it made me just feel like yelling YABUKI YOU GENIUS. So when we ended up with two Matsuri’s I kinda didn’t really care because how can you even top that 😝
The ending was a bit unexpected. I wasn’t expecting the Gyogosen to be the final bad guys. But that is totally because I likely paid very little attention to the actual story beats, since I was so bedazzled by the ‘plot’ LOL.
So yeah, I loved this series. I looked forward to it every week. But at the end of the day, I’m on the fence about whether I actually want to own this physical. I feel like this series captured the essence of a great weekly (well, close to weekly) series where it’s just really fun to keep up with it in real-time. But compiled…there is an overarching plot (like actual plot)…but ultimately it’s a more of a shenanigan-of-the-week formula and I don’t know if I will enjoy reading it in bulk. 15 volumes isn’t too bad… If it got a box set I would probably bite, but it’s Seven Seas so it’ll probably be out of print before the final volume even lands??
Final note, Yabuki-sensei gets big respect from me for his thigh-game. No other manga-ka can draw them as well as he does 🤣
Categories: Manga Plus Simulpub Review
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