B Gata H Kei (Type B Style H)

Kanji: Ｂ型Ｈ系
Author/Artist: Sanri Yoko さんりようこ
Status: Ongoing
Span: 2004-present
Volume #: 7
Wiki page: here
Series can be read at: here
Japanese word learned while researching the series:
~ sekufure (セクフレ) - sex friend/friend with benefits ... (what a useful word...?!)


I know, what an intriguing title. And judging from the style of the cover, it is quite far from the stuff I usually read/review. But worry not, I have not gone soft on you. Don't let the looks deceive you: according to the honourable wiki page, this series is qualified as "seinen." Which means it should be hardcore something, be it violence, sex, language, themes, or ... all of the above?

No, no, this series is not quite THAT hardcore. But let me give you a hint: H in Japanese is synonymous with sex.

No, no, no, I'm not about to turn this blog into a hentai review site (hentai being anime/manga porn... what, some people actually get turned on by ANIME/MANGA PORN? In a word, yes. Now go ask those people why. And how.). This series does not feature any physical sex (yet). There is no actual depiction of sex (or is there...?). There is no naked girl with giant boobs or any real nudity (any body part overly racy is covered by a giant billboard... you can't miss it). Huge turn-off? Sorry. Maybe you should look up some hentai after all.

This series is actually extremely cute. Cute as in "aww... look at these hormone-ridden adolescents and their frustrated sex drive." Okay, maybe not so much. More like "aww... they like each other and want to hold hands (or some other body parts) but are too shy to do so." This can definitely be described as coming-of-age drama. It's got its bittersweet moments, but it is foremost a ...

Sex comedy. That's right, it's a 4-koma (4-cell comic strip) about the quest of one girl named Yamada (first name purposefully not revealed) to get 100 sekufure. Sounds lewd and entirely disgusting? Okay, let me explain. Yamada isn't just any girl. She is a stereotypical bishoujo, or beautiful young girl. She starts out being around 14 years old (now she's probably 15) and extremely cocky of her good looks. There is just one thing though: she thinks she has the fatal flaw of ... being a virgin. That somehow marks her immaturity as a woman and debases her bishoujo status (in her mind). Her idealized self is the kind of woman who doesn't bat an eye when someone mentions sex, who is always calm and collected around men and can bend men around her fingers. She thinks her virginity is the reason she always freaks out and over-reacts around boys, so she wants to lose her virginity and train herself to become her ideal upon her entrance into high school.

But finding someone she can lose her virginity with proves to be difficult. Though guys are constantly throwing themselves at her, she always turns them down because she's scared and over-reacting. She doesn't want to do it with a good-looking guy because she's insecure and thinks he will laugh at her for still being a virgin (at the whopping age of 14... who wouldn't?! ... That was sarcasm, guys, in case you didn't get it. I do not endorse sex at puberty). So she settles with doing it with an average guy. It's just to lose her virginity after all, nothing emotionally important (?!). That's when she meets...

Kosuda. An incredibly plain boy who ends up in her class in school. He's nice and gentle and likes photography but is otherwise ... entirely average, in terms of looks, physique, grades, and other abilities. To the casual eye, he is quite unremarkable. Most boys in the class have a crush on Yamada, but Kosuda falls in love with her especially because she literally falls on top of him (and nearly crushes him) while reaching for a book in the bookstore. Yamada sets her eyes on Kosuda as the guy to dump her virginity on, but she gets so nervous around him that every time she tries to seduce him, she ends up abusing him or getting it wrong some other way. Kosuda is quite confused. He likes Yamada, but she seems pretty mean to him. But then sometimes she pays special attention to him and seems to like him, but then he doubts a girl like that would fall for a guy like himself, and so on... Slowly Yamada begins to have protective feelings over Kosuda and unconsciously shift her goal from losing her virginity to getting together with Kosuda (it has to be Kosuda, not just any person on the street), but she refuses to acknowledge that she cares for him because she thinks she deserves better than the average joe that he is.

Their extremely un-straightforward interactions and expressions of teenage crush are only one source of comedy in the series. More comes from Yamada's conflicting personality. Her beauty and good grades grant her celebrity status in her school. To the outsider, she is the constantly smiling, good-natured queen of the school. Only a handful of people (including her best friend Takeshita) know that she constantly thinks about sex and can be quite silly and perverted. She always laments after the fact that she's only a B cup (yes, I'm talking about bust size) while Takeshita is an F cup. Takeshita tolerates all her silliness rather well and tries to make her realize her true feelings toward Kosuda. Yamada's combination of aggressive sexuality and naive innocence gives the teenage girl character more depth and multiple facets, not to mention it makes her hilarious. It rips away the mystique of teenage girls and shows that yes, girls, even (or especially) good-looking ones, can slavishly obsess over sex.

A colourful cast of classmates and family members fawn over, laugh at, lust after, and generally support our girl Yamada. Especially Kanejo Kyouka, the rich girl newly transferred to Yamada's school from America. Like Yamada, Kyouka seems the perfectly courteous, well-educated young lady to the outside world, but secretly she harbours a very unhealthy obsession for her own older brother, Keiichi, who is so handsome and charming that a foreign princess once proposed marriage to him ... upon laying eyes on him at an airport (he's also attending Harvard at the moment). Kyouka sees Yamada as a great rival and has this notion that if she can steal Yamada's boyfriend, then she wins (in this imaginary competition). Both of them try desperately to hide the fact that they don't have a boyfriend despite their popularity. Kyouka's interference causes additional problems for Yamada in her pursuit of Kosuda.

One special touch this series offers is the characterization of the ero gods/goddess. They are basically the spirits that govern all things sexual about a person. Or they are the person's inner consciousness about sex (depending on how you interpret them). They take on a hyperbolized appearance and personality after the person they are governing. It's quite entertaining to see how the each ero god egg their individual on or, alternatively, deflates the individual's confidence.

Well, I think I've given away more than my fair share already. The rest awaits you in a shining, ongoing series of 7 volumes. Or you can catch the anime series that aired this year (April to June). They did a pretty good preserving the humour and style of the original.

(The center one is obviously Yamada. The old little dude on the cloud is her ero god. The one with the boobs is ... Takeshita. The only boy is Kosuda. The girl with long purple hair is Kyouka (both she and her brother are always drawn with gold stars around them to show their... aura of perfection).)