Foxy Lady Volume 1 by Ayun Tachibana (amazon)

With a title like “Foxy Lady”, I was halfway expecting this manga to be about the misadventures of an attractive woman in the 1970s. Since this is manga, the book is an example of the mystical girlfriend subgenre of shonen manga, where an ordinary schmo suddenly finds himself with an incredibly hot alien/goddess/demon/magical girl who demands to marry and/or have sex with him. The shining example of this genre would be the sadly out of print Urusei Yatsura.

Jin is the heir to his parents’ shrine. He lives in the deserted dorms attached to the shrine with his friend Sogo, a nearsighted cigarette fiend with a severe pornography habit. Jin is about to defile sacred ground by reading a manual on picking up girls in the shrine when he has has second thoughts. He heads back to the dorms and finds a girl sprawled out over Sogo. She’s Kogane, a half-human, half-demon who announces that she’s come to the human world “to beget” with Jin. After Kogane realizes that Sogo isn’t Jin she quickly switches her affections. She wants to become human, and the only way to do that is to get it on with a mortal boy. If she kisses Jin her ears, tail, and mystical powers disappear for a brief period of time.

The art is slick and attractive, with plenty of shots of Kogane in miniskirts and skimpy outfits. The reader learns disturbing things about Jin’s Dad, as he seems to have a closet full of naughty Santa-girl and nurse outfits. Some of the panels seem overcrowded and cluttered, with too much explanatory text and multiple shots of the characters from different angels. Sogo seems to exist as lecherous comic relief, as he often tries to get together with Kogane or any other female that happens to be in his vicinity only to become violently injured in the process. Jin decides that he has to protect Kogane as part of his shrine heir duties. When the kids go to school, all the sports clubs start fighting over Kogane due to her demon physical prowess. There were a couple amusing details like the portal to the demon road being placed in a linen closet and Kogane’s reaction to fried tofu, but the title didn’t capture my interest. I’m not really a member of the intended audience for this title. There’s plenty of madcap action and jokes about people being perverts, but this is a manga that doesn’t transcend the limitations of its genre to have much appeal for people that aren’t already seeking out titles about girls with animal ears.

Review copy provided by Tokyopop