MAKA-MAKA

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
2
RELEASE
Invalid Date
CHAPTERS
24

DESCRIPTION

Some of the chapters are just about sex, often in public places, but that isn't all Maka-Maka is about. It's about having someone who tells you your skin looks beautiful in the moonlight, someone who looks out for you and wants you to look out for yourself by having safe sex. It's about having someone who calls you the night of your birthday, when you're feeling down because you just slept with a guy who turned out to be a jerk, and thanks you for being born because she's so happy to have met you. What is Maka-Maka about? It's about Jun and Nene.

CAST

Jun Yokomizo
Nene

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

Pockeyramune919
69/100
It's pretty hot, but I was promised more than that.

Hello and welcome to the next installment of the Pockey Reviews ~~Ecchi~~ Hentai show!

If you've been following this show (which I absolutely know you have been), you'll know that this entire "reviewing hentai" thing is a fairly new, difficult task for me. In Ring x Mama I proclaimed that I "don't review porn." I then elaborated that it's more I don't know how to review porn. It comes with a different set of standards than the story/character-driven fare that I usually find myself reviewing.

However, I've found a system that somewhat mitigates this dilemma.
A) I can try aiming for what I consider to be the creme de la crop of hentai and be able to effectively review it due to having something to say about how well it handles its pornographic elements.

B) I can focus on pornographic works that (seemingly) do have a focus on story/character elements, thus I'll pretty much be able to review it the same way I review "regular" works.

Or C) I can find something that's so marvel or strange that I can focus on that instead of strictly the porn.

So far, Interspecies Reviewers has fallen squarely in the first category. If I ever get around to reviewing Metamorphosis or TF Monogatari, I anticipate they'll fall in the third category. I was intrigued by Maka-Maka because it seemed that it would fall in the second category, the one I'm most interested in.

From the Anilist and Myanimelist page: "Some of the chapters are just about sex, often in public places, but that isn't all Maka-Maka is about. It's about having someone who tells you your skin looks beautiful in the moonlight, someone who looks out for you and wants you to look out for yourself by having safe sex. It's about having someone who calls you the night of your birthday, when you're feeling down because you just slept with a guy who turned out to be a jerk, and thanks you for being born because she's so happy to have met you. What is Maka-Maka about? It's about Jun and Nene."

Needless to say, I was very intrigued at a Hentai that wouldn't be primarily about sex, but the caring relationship about two women and how that relationship leads to sex. Maka-Maka will be tender. Maka-Maka will be thought-provoking. Maka-Maka will be-

Maka-Maka will be a pretty standard hentai with a somewhat wholesome coat of paint, won't it?

Well, kind of disappointing, but what can you do?

And if that's the case why don't we just dig into the main component, the sex, shall we?

And to that I say, holy smokes this is a finger-lickingly ( ) hot hentai!

A lot of this can be attributed to the art style. I don't know how, precisely, but the art seems, I don't know, "softer" than most other hentai? The faces look more pleasing and distinct to me and I cannot quite put my finger on why.

What I know for sure is the fact the lips and nipples look absolutely luscious. The lips are really thick and full which adds to the manga's sensuality and is a nice change of pace next to the thin black lines that pass for lips in most anime and manga. And the characters' breasts are shapely and aesthetically pleasing. Nene is well-endowed, but not to the extent of most busty women in manga. Bustier woman than Nene quite obviously exist, but, the fact that the mangaka felt they didn't need to give her a set of dohoonkabhankoloos shows that he sees her more than a big breasts fetish.

I was pleased that the characters actually love and care for the another, making the sex read as sweet and that's sadly something that I can't often say about hentai. It was nice to see them supporting each other then later have sex.

This somewhat contrasts with the sexual acts partaken in, since it seems like a good number of them are public. You'd expect that, in caring for one another so much, they wouldn't subject the other to the risks involved in getting caught fooling around in public. But hey, the acts are hot I guess.

Additionally, with a lack of penetration, once again, things seem to read as "softer," and different from the usual, "plug the hole" fare.

It’s more because you can maneuver around the censor requirement quite well when you’re just showing breasts, buttocks, and hairy vaginas, but there’s an elegant air to a hentai that lacks garish black bars and/or hilarious white-outs.

Probably the best thing in the art's favor is the fact that it's in beautiful full-color.

Honestly, with how different this manga reads, I assumed that this written for women by a woman. But no, Torajiro Kishi is a man. As a man myself, I cannot tell you if this manga will be enjoyable for women on a sexual level. Personally, however, I enjoyed it greatly. Purely speaking in regards to sex, Maka-Maka is a masterpiece.

But it's supposed to be more than that.

I can't help but feel that Maka-Maka ultimately does too little in terms of setting itself apart as the conscientious, "manga about two people in love" that it thinks it is.
And I want to stress that there's nothing wrong with a purely sexual work, but as Maka-Maka seems to frame itself as more, I'm allowed to critique it accordingly.

Maka-Maka is told in vignette format, showing us various snippets of Jun and Nene spending time together. While this is great for jumping into fluff sex scenes, this format seems to absolutely neteur any character growth. Nene and Jun can have a very serious heart-to-heart at the end of one chapter, but the very next, we've jumped forward in time with seemingly no reflection on what had occurred in the previous chapter. It serves to make the story feel cheap. It feels like the mangaka doesn't really take the characters' relationship seriously.

It also feels this way because, for the life of me, I cannot tell you what their relationship is. Their Anilist pages describe them as being "friends with benefits," but from my limited knowledge of casual sex, I'm going to go on a limb here and say that's not the case. Friends With Benefits (or FWB) seem to be strictly sexual in nature; their interactions sometimes similar to prostitution without the element of pay. Make no mistake, the "friend" in FWB simply refers to the fact that the two parties meet multiple times; it's essentially a recurring one-night-stand. The worst nightmare of many in FWB-relationships is the phenomena of "catching feelings;" of the casual nature evolving into something more serious, be that platonically or romantically. This is why Nene and Jun absolutely do not have a FWB relationship as I understand it. They are way past the "catching feelings" phase. Feelings have been caught and the disease known as "love" is now terminal. (Granted, I suppose there's credence to the idea of them being in a FWB-type relationship seeing as the panties seem to drop literally every time they're together) Logically, they should be in a relationship, but they aren't. There's the possibility that the author wrote them as just friends. And I don't mean "just friends." I mean, quite literally, just friends who happen to be banging each other every time they get together. This is curious and could lead to the conclusion that the mangaka thinks, "haha, women just have sex with their friends and it doesn't come with any labels like ‘lesbian.’ That's just the way women are. Aren't they soooo hot, fellas?" Which, naturally, would be pretty gross. If we give the author the benefit of the doubt here, the question remains: what the flippity flop is their relationship? They both talk of boyfriends which is...concerning, given how much salad they're tossing behind their backs. But in a late chapter, it's casually mentioned that one of them has boyfriends , implying they're using "boyfriends" to mean "dating" in general. But this begs the question of why in the world are they dealing with boyfriends if they love and crave one another so much? Are they closeted and feel their love is wrong? This is never addressed, so I can only assume no. You might be thinking, "But Pockey, what if they're heteromantic+homosexual or homoromantic+heterosexual? That would explain why they're still with men; they make up for something the other doesn't provide them." That would indeed make sense...if it were true. Jun and Nene love each other and they quite obviously lust for one another, so that explanation doesn't hold up at all. Weirdly enough, they can't even be described as having the "bi-" version of these labels. From what we see in the manga, the two of them absolutely loathe having sex with men and don't seem to gleam much romantic satisfaction from them, which would naturally lead one to conclude that they're both homosexual and homoromantic. Which, again, begs the question: why are they not together?
I've been at this for a while now, but goddammit,

But Torajiro won't give them to me. He goes, "lalalala, this isn't that type of mangaaaa. We're not focused on a deep-dive into relationships, we don't ascribe to those nasty labels." Fine, then. This manga could just be about the tender and sexual relationship of Nene and Jun. However, the manga often comes across as just being centered about sex. The entire reading experience is set up to kind of blitz past their interactions as friends to get to their interactions as (admittedly caring) lovers.

The "some" in "some of the chapters are just about sex," really should be "most," for that's what a vast majority of chapters boil down to. This is the format for most of the chapters:

CHAPTER START

-Nene and Jun talk about something.-

-The conversation Tokyo drifts to being about sex.-

OR

-One of them (usually Jun) touches the other-

-SEX SCENE ACQUIRED-

CHAPTER END

With nearly all chapters ending in sex, much like Ring x Mama, it feels like sex is the "goal," to the detriment of other aspects. In Maka-Maka's case, that aspect is character relationships.

Oh, sure, the two genuinely care for one another and are friends, but this doesn't amount to much when their interactions are essentially:

"We're such good friends*," said Jun.

"Haha, stop tickling me," giggled Nene.

"Haha, whoops, touched your vagina, guess we're fucking now," said Jun.

(*=with benefits, idk)

Like, is the two of them having a fun shopping session too much to ask for? Nice stroll in the park? Hangout at the arcade? Anything without them just devolving to touching in the end? The mangaka does a really good job of showing tenderness, I just wish it could breathe a bit more. The sex is nice, but ultimately I end up feeling gross looking at it. The sex is so focused-on that it feels less like I'm simply observing two loving women who have sex, and more I'm a creepy horndog choking my goblin to a lesbian porno (with "we're such good friends!" interspersed throughout).

It sounds kind of screwed up for me to say, but I think the strongest chapter was chapter 12, in which Nene has sex with a stranger and hates the experience. She goes to Jun to comfort and the chapter ends without them having a sex scene. It shows the depths of their relationship and showcases one of the best instances in which it's supportive. It frames sex as a negative thing and in doing so, switches up the formula and shows us how Jun and Nene truly need one another.

The two later chapters delving into Nene and Jun's psyches are also good because we get more insight into their characters and they show how the two use sex as therapy.

Naturally, absolutely no real developments come from these chapters.

And I understand that Ring x Mama and Maka-Maka being serialized in hentai publications shot them in the foot. Their chapters nigh-always ending in sex is simply due to the weekly format that they operated in dictating that they must have sex. Acknowledgement of this fact doesn't make it any less annoying, however. Their relationship could have been honest-to-God explored without the sex constraint.

At least the characters were very defined. That's not much of a feat considering there are two, count 'em, two characters, but I swear to you, if they were indistinguishable cardboard cutouts, I'd actually hate this thing.

At the end of the day, I'd be remiss to call Maka-Maka bad. I was looking for something very specific. Maka-Maka wasn't that. Shocker, I know. Maka-Maka remains a pretty unique, wholesome hentai that still manages to be sexy. I was looking for something more, but that doesn't mean Maka-Maka should be ignored. If a more tender, yuri hentai is something you're looking for, give Maka-Maka a shot. Just don't expect anything more than that.

6.9/10

D+

(Don't you just love when it works out so nicely?)
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