Renai Sample Review

So, earlier this month I decided to work things out with Zane – after all the bullshit he pulled (including a fake suicide attempt and threatening to quit his job to give his mom more control over us), I realized that maybe he did actually want to do better…unlike other guys I’ve been with, he actually wanted to try to make our relationship work – he went to counseling with me, he improved his attitude around me, and he started to become financially responsible for our daughter to prove that he didn’t just keep her around as proof that he lost his virginity. I was finally ready to take our relationship to the next level, something he had been wanting since the day we met…I finally agreed on a date to marry him.

But a week before our county clerk appointment, I realized that he is the same creepy high school nerd he has always been. You see, I was using his computer to take an assessment for a job I was applying for (with his permission, of course – in fact, it was his idea), and I needed to log into my Gmail for my session code, but his Gmail account was already logged in…and that’s where I saw that he had spent roughly the cost of a box of diapers on some stupid hentai download on FAKKU called “Renai Sample.”

When I confronted him on it, his first response was, “But it was uncensored!!” He then had the audacity to tell me that the art and story were impeccable, and that I would probably enjoy it (even though I don’t like porn anymore because it’s all the same and I’ve grown jaded by it). Of course I was pissed, but it’s been a few weeks, and now I’ve given it some thought…perhaps I should take a look at it and see what all the fuss is about.

Well, here it is: Renai Sample by Homunculus. It appears to be a collection of short erotic stories, some of which are in color…let’s examine this compilation by section, shall we?

Rule of Bikini – a girl decides to test her theory that men are driven wild by bathing suits. It results in a rape-like deflowering that the girl somehow ends up enjoying, which is a pretty standard staple in Japanese hentai. It kind of reminds me of how I lost my virginity, so naturally it makes me want to vomit, but the art isn’t the typical uncanny valley shit you see in a lot of hentai, so that’s a bonus. The dialogue is the usual “oh, we shouldn’t, but it feels soooooooo good!” and play-by-play that comes standard with the genre, too. Nice art, but not very original. However, I do wonder if it ends with the guy constantly borrowing $40 for the next four years after the inevitable divorce, same as my situation…

I Lock You – this one is in black-and-white, so maybe the bikini one is the only one in color. Kind of a letdown, considering what Zane paid for the digital copy, but let’s take a look…okay, so this little gem shows a guy and a girl accidentally getting locked in a storage room at school, and sexual tension ensues…only it wasn’t an accident, and it turns into an NTR situation. Kind of interesting, actually. The dialogue features the typical “This is embarrassing!” line as a way of expressing ecstasy while remaining humble (I think it’s part of the whole Japanese cultural humility thing). And of course, more play-by-play…cumshot, vanilla ending, credits.

Summer’s Beast – so this one has a guy doing his cousin, which I guess isn’t technically incest in Japan…but then again, I live in the only west-coast state in the US where first cousins can legally marry, so I won’t judge. And there’s sex gone wrong, which is something you don’t see in a lot of porn – Japanese or otherwise – so that’s something new…then flash-forward to the future, where the girl in question is marrying someone else but still gets with the guy she’s related to – didn’t that happen in That’s My Boy, too? This particular story is kind of interesting, except it has that typical multiple male orgasm thing, which makes me bitter because the guys I’m used to usually take forever just to climax once. Also, no wacky Adam Sandler hi-jinks.

Be Natural – another incest vignette, this one between brother and sister. I’m starting to see why Zane’s mom never had another child after Zane…but anyway, this is the story of some bimbo who doesn’t know how to dress or act in public and the “brother” (I don’t think they’re actually related, but what the hell) is all stressed out about it. And then pretty much the exact same sexual scenarios from the previous chapters play out.

Love Sample – okay, a guy loses a bet with a girl and has to have sex with an unknown woman as part of the agreement. Here in the States, we just call that Friday Night. But anyway, Girl #1 wants to watch…then after the guy finishes with the mystery girl, he goes back to the first girl and has his way with her. And then a threesome. And then it turns out the girls were sisters all along…reading some of this stuff, you would never know that Japan is actually a conservative nation where even divorce is still taboo. But my country has Honey Boo-Boo, so it’s not like I have anything to gloat about.

Point-Blank Love – more incest that isn’t actually incest…didn’t see that one coming. They pretend to hate each other, then fuck when no one is around…actually, that’s pretty much what my relationship with Zane has been like for the past six months, so I can’t act completely flippant about this scenario.

Silent Spring – I don’t believe it…not only is this the exact same shit that you get on the rest of FAKKU for free, but it’s an amalgamation of the stuff that I’ve just read. But I spelled “ amalgamation” right the first time I typed it, so it wasn’t a total waste of time.

Little Devil @ Home – more pseudo-incest. I don’t think I want to leave my daughter alone with her dad anymore.

Younger Sister Warning – okay, I swear I went into this book with an open mind. Now I’m just getting annoyed.

Girlfriend – okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Here’s this couple that met up only to have sex, but it ends up being more…this is actually a cute story. Makes me a little teary-eyed, almost.

Contrary Teacher – this one’s in color. It looks like a series of role-plays between a younger guy and an older woman…but it doesn’t look unique or exciting.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand finally I’m done. Bottom line: this wasn’t worth the $10 he paid for the digital download. You can see all of this stuff for free elsewhere on the site. If you want porn that’s actually interesting, I recomment Lost Girls by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie. It’s even got lolicon in it. And you can find free PDFs of that on the internet, too.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have married this guy. But according to this screenshot, I’ll get about a third of his paycheck in alimony if we divorce…

In The Not-So-Distant Future

There has been a trend in Young Adult fiction in recent years, where “dystopian future” storylines seem to be en vogue, particularly in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genres…honestly, I don’t get it. Not only does everybody know by now that these tropes are thinly-veiled references to present-day politics, but there is enough freedom of speech in the first world that people can try going straight for the source: why not a “dystopian present” novel?

 

Science Fiction is not the creative frontier it once was. Notice how there hasn’t been a new Star Trek series since Enterprise, which went off the air almost a decade ago (the J.J. Abram’s reboots notwithstanding, as both were essentially remakes of The Wrath of Khan)? There is nothing left of this genre to explore or expand upon, which is made obvious in the formulaic approach taken to many (if not all) “dystopian future” stories these days:

 

• A “bread and circuses” style government that throws elements of socialist utopia (government-issued property, food, etc.) and magical technology at its citizens to distract them from blatant civil rights violations, usually (if not always) involving some sort of caste system: class warfare, arranged marriages, government-issued career “choices,” and so on.
• A teenage girl, towing the line of womanhood, who is somehow made aware that all is not well in Pleasant Valley (why it’s never a guy, I’m not sure – probably because most guys are oblivious to those sorts of things, hence the stereotype that conservatives are all white, upper-class, Protestant males).
• Some kind of love triangle between the female protagonist and two equally-but-separately undesirable men, though the heroine stays celibate to the bitter end (and eventually chooses one of the two).
• A disproportionate level of death and destruction to put a mere dent in the government’s policies.

 

The three series I draw this formula from the most are Matched, The Hunger Games, and Divergent, all of which are essentially interchangeable with each other. I did enjoy The Hunger Games books, but if you’ve read one of the aforementioned series, you’ve read them all. Instead, I propose that people start writing about their own current, respective dystopian societies, from present-day perspectives. Think about it – the United States alone has plenty of source material:

 

• Advanced technology
• Obamacare, while seen as a Godsend to many who voted in favor of it, actually forces those who fall through the cracks (such as single household members who didn’t qualify for Medicaid but can’t afford Obamacare right after graduating from community college that a grant paid for, i.e., me) onto Medicaid without destigmatizing the latter government assistance
• Haves vs. Have Nots, class warfare, etc.
• Racial/ethnic issues are still a thing, though largely related to social class and SES
• There are still GLBT issues in some of the hick states
• Stuff about the NSA
• Social networking and cyberbullying

 

The list goes on, and yet writers tend to fall into the same patterns and tropes. Though to play devil’s advocate, this could be the publisher’s fault, which is a common problem in high school literature textbooks in the US as well. Still, there seems to be a stigma enforced by society against people who don’t enjoy reading for leisure, and if they want their way, they can at least make it easy for skeptical people to enjoy dystopian fiction.