Reviews for Kamasutra

Kamasutra is a manga from 90's. The plot: In short, a ecchi Indiana Jones. the art: Character design is dated, but the scenery is amazing and pretty realistic. Character are clichet and plain, but they are funny. I am not a big fan of pervet old man, but professor is so crazy funny. The main guy Ryuu is the tipical virgin, clumsy guy, but he is likeable. Prince, the vilain, is the wicked man. What I like: this manga is so non sense, but clichet plot hooks you, you wanna know what it will happen next ( it will be a lot of scenes) and action scenes as well. Notquite bright lecture, but it's funny and relaxing to read, you laugh and... I recommend if you wanna some non sense sexy manga.

A non-sensical story, Borderline H content that alternates between sexy and off-putting, periodic excerpts from the actual Kamasutra, and a "wtf was that" ending. If that sounds like your kind of thing... then, sure, go for it. Story (3): The story makes no sense whatsoever. A Japanese boy is told by his globe-trotting (and extremely perverted) grandfather to protect his virginity so that he can marry an ancient Indian princess. Sure enough, he gets sucked into his grandfather's adventures, dragging along his girlfriend and his grandfather's beautiful assistant (spoiler alert: both of whom he has sex with), and a comic relief character, as heraces against the evil snake clan to find and marry the princess. And periodically, he gets schooled in the Kamasutra.

By the way, that plot summary makes things sound way more logical than the way they are presented in the actual manga, where characters just do random things for no apparent reason most of the time.

Also, there were random acts of sexual harassment and assault, including attempted rape, scattered throughout the manga, usually passed off as jokes. Because apparently it's funny to attack women?

Art (7): Art is a bit old school, but really quite good. Images are clear; the temple statuary looked impressive. Some of the characters looked bizarre, but that was probably intentional.

Character (6): The bad guy was unnecessarily evil. The good guy was pretty bland. The girls were good; they had spunk and brains. Not much character development happened--at least character development that made sense--but I generally rooted for the good guys and against the bad guys, so great.

Enjoyment (4): The main character was so bland as to be annoying, the women were being constantly harassed and assaulted, the plot made no sense... about the only enjoyable thing was the frequent quoted passages from the Kamasutra.

Overall (4): A mess of a manga. Doesn't work as Hentai (or even Borderline-Hentai), doesn't work as an action manga, doesn't work as romance, and doesn't work as comedy. Skip this, and go find a copy of the actual Kamasutra--you'll be happier.

This must be one of the worst manga I've read in a very long time. Don't get me wrong, I love many of Nagai Go's series, though I don't read his work all that often anymore. I even have physical copies of some of them in languages I don't know. But Kamasutra is just terrible. And its terrible for all the reasons his other books are great. Because, it is the typical Go Nagai schtick but this time set in India and instead of gruesome violence and murder, there is explicit sex. Loads of it, even sometimes with genitals. There is sex, but it isn'tsexy at all. Rather, it is childish, filled with idiotic jokes, and characters making stupid faces. And by filler, I mean, every single chapter has at least two or three scenes like that, some scenes even including gerontophilia, bestiality, and others. Oh, in "good" Nagai Go fashion, it is also racist and misogynistic. The women, all of them without any exception, are presented as sex bombshells, annoying horny girls, or empty vessels for the male characters' seed. Or an amalgam between the three. The male characters are not much better - they are either sexgod superheroes or inane oversexed butts of jokes. The latter, of course, are drawn as small and weak people. One of them is even Higegojira from Go's classic sex comedy Harenchi Gakuen.

This all begs the questions, for what audience was this thing made? Was it for teenagers, like most of Go's other work? Though the sex and jokes might make it seem so, the numerous pages with direct quotations from the Kama Sutra make me feel like it wasn't. After all, would children, even teenagers, would be interested in reading pages upon pages of long, boring passages of an ancient Indian text with minimal illustrations? Also, would they be into the main theme of the original text, pleasuring your partner, and the ultimate, haphazardly slapped one of the manga - procreation for the sake of humanity's existence? Can't be certain, but don't think so.

On the other hand, I can't say that it's made for grown readers, either. There are just way too many childish sex jokes, horny, predictable plot twists, and overall immaturity of the thing to make me feel like it wasn't. But, again, that's Go's entire thing. He's been doing pretty much the same thing, rehashing the same tropes for who knows how long now.

Visually, it's also 100% Go's style. Characters that look like they came straight from 70s shonen manga, static-looking action scenes that finish way too fast, uninspired panelling and page design. All stuff he can probably do in his sleep, and reading these volumes, I couldn't but feel that he did just that.