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The Bottom Line

My husband Andrew is affected by certain fast-food commercials in a way I can only describe as black magic. When, for example, he sees an ad for the KFC Famous Bowl, he wants to eat it. He knows it looks disgusting, even on the poster. He knows it's going to hurt. He knows Patton Oswalt called it "a failure pile in a sadness bowl." Andrew orders it anyway, and regrets. And then a few months later he does the same thing with the Double Down.


I have the same reaction to phrases like "Russian Orthodox Christian breast-milk-fetish fantasy manga." I know I should run like hell. And yet here I am reading it.



Pros

• If you want to read a Russian Orthodox, breastfeeding-fetish fantasy manga, this is your one chance

Cons

• Incoherent plot
• Confusing action
• Two-dimensional characters
• Really, nothing going on except the breastfeeding

Description

• Original Title:Seikon no Qwaser (Japan)
• Author: Hiroyuki Yoshino
  Artist: Kenetsu Sato
• Publishers:
  • TokyoPop (US)
  • Akita Shoten (Japan)
• ISBN: 978-1427816740
• Cover Price: $12.99 US / $16.99 CANADA
• Age Rating:M – Mature, Age 18+ for violence, profanity, nudity, explicit sexual situations
  More about content ratings.
• Manga Genres:
  • Seinen (Men's) Manga
  • Action / Adventure
  • Anime Tie-In
  • Fanservice / Cheeky
  • Fantasy
  • Paranormal / Supernatural
• US Publication Date: August 2010
  Japan Publication Date: December 2006
• Book Description: 208 pages, black and white illustrations
• More Manga by Kenetsu Sato:
  • My Otome
  • My HiME

Guide Review - Qwaser of Stigmata Volume 1

The Qwaser of Stigmata is one of those high-fantasy manga that's hard to review because the creators won't get around to making the plot coherent for at least ten volumes. It'll take five volumes to explain the Qwasers and another five to explain Stigmata.

With only Volume 1, all I can say is that the action is set at St. Mihailov Academy, an isolated Russian Orthodox girls' school in Japan. Mafuyu Oribe, a student at St. Mihailov, gets involved with Sasha, a thirteen-year-old Russian badass who belongs to a group of supernatural warriors called the Qwasers. Also involved somehow is a legendary religious icon called "The Theotokos of Sary Su."

But this plot sketch does little to express the distinctive flavor of The Qwaser of Stigmata. It will help if I explain that the Qwasers get their power by breastfeeding from busty teenage girls. Fortunately, the entire student body of St. Mihailov fits that description, so Sasha and the Qwasers who descend on the school are able to keep replenishing their powers; they kind of treat the place like a gas station.

The plot may be nonsensical, the action confusing, the character designs boring (lots of identical baby-faced schoolgirls, plus a smattering of bishonen guys tricked out in scars and eyepatches), but darn if the manga doesn't come through on its very particular brand of fanservice. You get guys sucking on girls' naked breasts. Girls sucking on girls' naked breasts. Girls groping each others' breasts in their sleep. Girls groping each others' breasts while awake. Many close-ups of shirts being removed. And the occasional panty shot, although that's clearly of lesser importance. "Hello, do you love breasts?" begins the afterword by writer Hiroyuki Yoshino. "I love them very much!!" No, really?

Judging from this manga, he isn't as fond of the people attached to the breasts. Most of the non-breastfeeding action consists of violent threats against crying, topless teenage girls. "This girl's nipple will be burnt to a crisp," gloats a villain while holding a red-hot metal... thing (sometimes the art is confusing) to a bare breast. A few scenes later, another girl's nipple is threatened with a knife. At least the translation team tries to have fun with the confused mix of sex and violence; it's hard not to crack a tired smile when a villainess responds to a flurry of iron spikes with, "You know I like being jabbed with hard and thick things!"

Kenetsu Sato's art has the heavy inks and sharp chiaroscuro of an artist who noticed that Death Note was popular. Individual figures are nicely drawn, but too often the pages dissolve into an overly-rendered muddle.

The Qwaser of Stigmata panders to such a specific fetish that it's hard not to recommend it strictly on that basis. This may be the only time you will ever get a chance to read a Russian Orthodox-themed breastfeeding-fetish action-fantasy manga. In the balance of things, that's probably for the best.

Shaenon Garrity is a manga editor, writer and comics creator.



Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.