Story & Art by Okayado

Seven Seas Entertaiment (2014)

Storyline Ongoing

Summary: It’s every day life with Monster Girls in this ecchi comedy, telling the harrowing tale of a young man named Kimihito Kurusu who builds a harem of young, attractive girls with animalistic features. From a Lamia (half-snake, half human) to a Centaur (half-horse, half-human) and more.

In this world, a new law has passed allowing for the co-habitation of these “monster races” and humans, and but some races are still in need of human contact before things become truly normal. Thus Kimihito is unwillingly thrown into the role of “host family” for these girls – sort of like exhange students; whether he likes it or not.

[SPOILER WARNING!!]

Review: Ecchi comedy series’ are of a certain taste. They’re generally not big on morality tales and intelligent storytelling. Their first concern is to both entertain and titillate the reader with fun/funny adventures and sexual scenarios that often border on the extreme – almost hentai – side of things; yet while never going that far.

With Monster Musume, you’re immediately aware you’re not in for a very serious story so the idea is to let yourself relax and just enjoy the ride. Take it for what it is, but that doesn’t mean you have to like everything you see. Yes, ecchi comedies are not without flaw, and neither is MM. If you’re not careful to build your story, things can get boring and stale – your reader will look elsewhere for entertainment because you seem like you’re in a rut more than trying to really capture attention.

Thankfully, in these last 5 chapters + 1 extra edition, MM gets rid of any staleness it might have had before and dives headfirst into an arc that is both exciting, funny, and builds up its characters quite well from where they were before – as well as add to the world these characters inhabit.

Before I finally got around to reading these chapters, I was getting bored with this series in the last few chapters. It had been building this tale of Kimihito possibly getting killed by some enigmatic monster that was after him, sadly the ball was dropped on that story and we got yet another monster girl added to the line-up of the ever-increasing cast of girls. At this point, if I were the creator, stop adding girls. Kimihito now lives with 7 Monster Girls – time to stop.

Those girls are Miia the Lamia, Papi the Harpy, Centorea the Centaur (my personal favorite of the cast), Suu the slime, Rachnee the Arachne (spider-girl), Mero the Mermaid, and finally LaLa the Dullahan (Reaper). Not to mention all the side-characters that also happen to be girls.

The thing is, the story was starting to feel dull with no real character progression for these characters. They’d entered a state of static being.

In the last few chapters though, Okayado had the smart decision to let us meet the “mothers” of the 3 main girls – Miia, Papi, and Centorea – in order to learn more about their worlds and why they’ve come to the human world in the first place. And yes, we get to learn about all of those things. It really helped me re-connect with these characters after returning to the series.

I won’t spoil while either girl is here, but of course it generally leads to sexual encounters and scenarios that while any other guy would be thankful for, Kimihito is understandably afraid of. He’s had this world of monster beings thrust upon him without his permission, and he’s tired of things getting out of his hands. So these chapters see Kimihito take a lot of initiative and try to keep as many of these encounters as he can from happening. It was quite refreshing, although almost every time he did he had yet another near-death encounter (it happens a lot). These girls can kill him if they’re not careful, and generally they’re not.

Fascinatingly enough, while most creators have usually brushed these “funny near-death experiences” in ecchi series off as impervious main character syndrome, Okayado does the opposite and completely ties these events together into a rather intriguing addition to plot involving LaLa. Suddenly, I find myself a-okay with her being onboard the cast, as before it felt like she had no real purpose. I can dig it.

We also get a slight continuation of a subplot that’s been building since the beginning and will probably the crux of the finale one day – which of these monster girls will Kimihito choose to marry? I personally believe he won’t end up picking any of them, but Okayado has completely shattered my perception of the series and he could very much end up surprising me.

While the Mother’s themselves were alright, and did add a bit of understanding to how these girls are, I felt like Centorea’s story with her mother was the best out of the 3. It felt a lot more personal for her story. All 3 of these stories were about going against the flow of tradition and allowing for one take over one’s own destiny – Centorea’s worked the best with culture and tradition and we got a lot more out of it. She is definitely best Monster Girl in my opinion.

The sexual encounters throughout MM were toned down in these last few issues than they normally are. Even for a first time reader you might think there’s a bit much but there really wasn’t as compared to the amount that there usually is. You do get to see full frontal boobs as usual, but that’s on par with this series as of now. One thing that I did find interesting is that in Miia and Centorea’s story the series gets its closest to actual hentai and that really surprised me.

Okayado’s art style is really fun and energetic. He really knows how to make a scene feel like it’s more than just a generic ecchi shot and give it life. He does give most of his girls impossible boobs, but it’s just the general style for most comedy ecchi’s these days. Not all series are like this, but also not every. single. girl. in this series has impossible boobs either.

I like Monster Musume, it’s a lot of fun to get into and if you don’t mind the weird combination of women and animal creatures then you’re in for a genuine treat of a series. Sure, it has its stale moments and boring moments but more often than not you get arc’s like the one seen in these chapters here that let you know the artist is trying for something more than just borderline pornography. He wants to tell a story too. And I am 100% all for that.

I say check out Monster Musume, it comes out monthly so getting caught up isn’t that hard, you can spend an evening doing it in fact with only 30 chapters out right now. It isn’t perfect, but nothing is, and I do hope that Okayado doesn’t add anymore girls to the already enormous harem. There’s no reason to. He can add more monsters into the story, but don’t add them to the main cast. That’s all I ask.

Final Score: 4 Motherly Monsters out of 5

Special Note: Monster Musume seems to be taking this month off, so I’ll continue reviewing it when it returns. In the meantime, this is the perfect point to jump on and get caught up.

Derrick is a born and raised otaku with a love for comics, anime, manga, and movies.  The full list is pretty long, but that’s just the basics.  Stories set in space are his bread and butter.

You can find more of his writing at IndieComix.net

@KazekunForever