RING X MAMA

DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

MANGA ComedyRing x Mama: Bangaihen

REVIEWS

• 

  Pockeyramune919

  60/100
  Despite a promising premise, Ring x Mama is simply a hentai with a "plot" instead of a sports manga with sex.

  

  Hello and welcome to my first hentai review.

  As hokey as it sounds, I originally didn’t know this was a hentai manga. While reading Outlanders, I decided to look up other works by Jouji Manabe. One such work was Ring x Mama, and Myanimelist said it was ecchi, so I did do my homework...

  ...that doesn’t necessarily mean I did my homework well. Anilist correctly lists the manga as a hentai. Furthermore, it was published under Namaiki! which exclusively serializes hentai.

  In my defense, one review of Ring x Mama praised its story, saying it did a good job of job of blending fanservice with a compelling sports theme. So, what is the story, anyway?

  Ring x Mama tells the story of Ryoma, a young-man who idolized the wrestlers of the disbanded joshi puroresu (Japanese women’s professional wrestling) team, Gigamax. Most of all, he loves their leader: Justice Asuka. In his apartment he watches and masturbates to Justice’s wrestling matches. One day, while watching a match, his landlord checks up on him. After having sex, he soon discovers that his landlord, Sanae Takamori in fact Justice Asuka. Thereafter, he becomes both Justice’s boyfriend and the manager of Gigamax.

  From this, I thought the manga could end up being actually pretty good. The sports element was established early on. Getting Gigamax back off the ground and watching Justice’s struggles in the ring, both from a professional and personal standpoint could make for a compelling story. But, depending on what you focus on, it sounds like it could be the plot (well, “plot”) to a cheap pornographic film. So which does Ring x Mama end up being? is it? A compelling story tthat happens to have sex? Or a porn with a plot?

  It's very, very much the latter.

  To begin with praise, I must give credit where credit's due: Ring x Mama works well as an erotic manga. Manabe is a very, very good artist, drawing people that are realistic and pleasing. He's good at making proportions large while not dipping into absurd territory. It's surprising considering how cartoon-y the characters in Outlanders look. The sex scenes are long and quite detailed. Manabe knows his intended audience quite well. Ring x Mama is harem manga, so Ryoma ends up having intercourse with many women; all of various appearances and personalities, so readers will likely find a character they're drawn to. In a harem manga, it's important to ensure that everyone is distinct, and Manabe does this well. A lot of different sexual techniques and situations are explored, making it even more likely that someone's interests will be appealed to. Footplay, cunnilingus, anal, snowballing, sex outdoors, to name a few.

  I didn't find the story laugh-out-loud funny, but it has its moments when I chuckled. I wouldn't recommend checking it out for the comedy, however.

  

  Now, it's time to talk about where Ring x Mama flounders like a dying fish: the story.

  You can probably tell the story won't be of that high-caliber from the very first chapter. Ryoma has an extensive collection of his idol. Fine. Then Sanae comes in and everything falls apart. One: if he really is obsessed with Justice as much as the manga would lead us to believe, how in the hell can he not recognize her face nor her voice? Two: why is Sanae not at all put off by the fact that her tenant has been systematically masturbating to her? Three: Ryoma's hero worship of her persisting through her retirement causes her to realize that her fans still care about her. Okay, that makes sense. Why have sex with Ryoma though? What makes him any different than the countless other creepy fans she doubtless has? Because he was the first one she met? Why start a steady relationship with him? Why give him a managerial position despite his lack of credentials besides having knowledge that any devout fan of joshi pororesu would have? Because he's good in bed?

  You might think that I'm getting a bit nitpicky, but it's to prove a point: Ring x Mama isn't really focused on the story and it shows in the first few chapters. Things don't really get better. The harem is downright nonsensical. Women, no matter who they are, no matter if they have a partner or not, will drop everything to have sex with Ryoma. If the character is a woman and appears in Ring x Mama, they will meet the wrath of Ryoma's spear (that was bad, I'm sorry). Why does every woman find him irresistible though (ignoring the fact that he's the nigh-only male character in this world, of course)? Because he's described as being skilled in bed and being very well-endowed? Okay, well what about before they get to that part? Eventually, this question is somewhat answered when Ryoma's exploits are told via word-of-mouth, but still, why Ryoma?

  

  Not to mention, I'm unsure of the dynamics of Ryoma and Justice's relationship in terms of exclusivity. With how much Ryoma gets around, this question would naturally come up. Thankfully it's answered in the story...but not really. Justice will often show annoyance at Ryoma's promiscuity, but its seemingly forgotten in a few pages. The only time Justice is shown getting angry at Ryoma's sexual exploits is when he has sex with Justice's sworn enemy. Given Justice's attitude, I'd like to think they're in a poly relationship of sometime, but this is never confirmed. Clarification would have been nice.

  The characters don't know what seem to be obvious dynamics, either. A few chapters before the end, a character laments that Ryoma must only see the women as "fuck buddies." The poor woman wasn't genre savvy enough to figure out that she was some 40-odd chapters into a harem hentai manga.

  I was annoyed at a small detail: Ryoma never, ever uses condoms. Maybe I seem like a prude, but if you're a sexual work with a plot, I'd think this aspect needs to be acknowledged. How has no one gotten pregnant? Are they taking birth control pills? Does literally everyone connected to Gigamax and its parent company, Jiang Piang have their Fallopian tubes tied? Somewhat uncomfortable questions for some, I'm aware, but you can't have your cake and eat it too. Either you have a long, drawn-out plot that takes its world seriously, or you have a nonsensical and inconsequential serial hentai.

  And I get it. I get the harem, I get being irresistible, I get the unprotected sex. It's a wish-fulfillment fantasy, with readers placed inside the shoes of every man, Ryoma. There's nothing wrong with wish-fulfillment, it's the backbone of many types of works, including a large portion of pornography. But the problem comes in trying to have a good story with it. The things that occur in our lives happen with a reason. If a work changes details about life, there needs to be a reason why things are different, lest the story ends up being shallow and, to be blunt, often nonsensical.

  

  But fine, it's not a Shakespearean play, so what? A lot (if not all) of the anime I love aren't. Ring x Mama's story could still be interesting, right? Well, the fact that the manga focused on sex above all else makes the story objectively sub-par as well as bland. For this, let's look at the first chapter again.

  It culminates in a sex scene. Okay, nothing terrible, but it's a bit strange. A work with sex not as the focus generally doesn't have it so early on. But maybe the author just wanted to show readers what they were getting into. The second chapter culminates in sex, then the third. The story doesn't have to try because it comes second to the sex.

  And things just get stale soon. Manabe's art doesn't get worse, but if you're reading it as a story, having each chapter be nothing substantial followed by sex gets old. Reading it as porn might work, but the manga's a bit long for that, and it does try to have a story.

  Sports hardly is incorporated into the story. Characters seldom learn new techniques, fights are hardly shown, and Ryoma's role as a manager is hardly shown. The best parts of the work are when the logistics of wrestling are shown, but those are very few and far between. If Manabe wanted to tie sex and wrestling together (besides the very surface-level observation that female wrestlers might wear less clothes than the average woman), he could have made it like Keijo!!!!!!!! where the sexual aspects are incorporated into the sport (such as an attack utilizing a wrestler's breasts). But this didn't happen. I never got what I came to the manga for and I was left pretty annoyed.

  

  There are some arcs. The story seems to pick up after Darkness Aoi, Justice's sworn enemy, starts becoming an active player in the plot. However, the story begins to stagnate again and not enough happens to make Ring x Mama a good story. It ends on a cliffhanger, but I didn't really care enough about the story to wonder what happened afterward.

  For this review, I’m not sure if it’s best to try to be as objective as possible (thus giving a final verdict based on Ring x Mama’s own merits) or simply judging based on my own experience with the manga (thus having the fact that I read a hentai expecting an ecchi color my view of Ring x Mama). Mixing the two is best, but there’s a problem.

  I don’t review porn.

  

  Not because I hate pornography, but because it’s inherently hard to review. What would I even base my score on? How it made me feel? How good the characters were drawn? In that case, Ring x Mama would get an 8.0 at worst. Everything I criticized the manga for wouldn’t matter. After all, it would be porn. It’s not held to the same standards as story or character-driven works. Even if things could be better, all porn has to do is its job, nothing more. If nothing else, Ring x Mama is tantalizing.

  But I don’t think that would be quite fair to me. I didn’t read Ring x Mama as a hentai, and my personal experience makes me rate Ring x Mama much lower than I would, objectively. Sure this is mostly a fault of my own, but I don’t think Ring x Mama can escape all blame. Given the manga’s length and given that the story goes through arcs and changes (albeit infrequently), it’s safe to say that Jouji Manabe did wish to tell a stronger story than what’s typically seen in hentai. Unfortunately, Ring x Mama doesn’t do enough to be taken seriously as a story.

  Ultimately, Ring x Mama is too focused on being a good hentai to be a good story. I suppose I can recommend it as a hentai, if you're fine with the length. If an engaging story with sexual elements is what you're looking for, then I really cannot recommend Ring x Mama on any grounds. It could've been better, but that would mean decreasing the sexual content, and that wouldn't work for the type of anthology it was released in.

  

  And hopefully this is the last hentai I end up reviewing, because they really aren't meant to be reviewed.

  6.0/10

  D-

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