Homunculus already blew me away with his gorgeous hentai volume Bashful Break. The wonderful blend of erotic art and adorable characters left me wanting even more by the time I was done reading. Thankfully, Renai Sample perfectly delivers on even more of that classic Homunculus hentai perfection.
While there isn’t a significant amount of colored artwork in this volume, there’s certainly a wide variety of applications of Homunculus’ gorgeous full-color work in Renai Sample. At the front of the volume, there are a handful of gorgeous full-page illustrations rendered in color, as well as an incredible 2-page spread pinup poster. These are hands down, the most well-drawn pages in the entire book. The delicate and slender style of Homunculus is complemented beautifully by his crisp and detailed use of color. The light, peachy color of skin and the red shine on the girls’ cheeks and shoulders are rendered flawlessly. There’s an incredibly natural and vivid look to the shadows and light spots bouncing off of every character that adds an incredible sense of depth to every illustration, as well.
At the end of the book, there’s even a set of mini-chapters drawn in color. The first one is four pages long, but the other three are brief single-page stories. The first story, Contrary Teacher, is about a boy named Tooru who begins dating his beautiful but serious teacher Honoka. She’s always told him to show moderation and not go overboard, but today he’s reached his limits and decides to finally close the physical distance between the two. Being four pages long, we get a few scenes of sexual activities that are all beautifully illustrated, but it ends up feeling like a bit of a rushed story.
The three single-page chapters, meanwhile, are so interesting specifically because of how rushed they are. With just one page, we’re given character backgrounds, a shot of a sex scene, a minor twist in the story and a quick ending. They’re truly fascinating experiments in hentai storytelling, jamming the entire arc of a full chapter into one page. On top of that, though, they’re a nice way of combining all of the great aspects of this book into one thing. We get the jaw-dropping and sexy full-color artwork of the Renai Sample pinup posters, while also mixing in the unique character and story details of the full-length chapters.
In regards to full-length chapters, though, there’s only one in Renai Sample that features fully colored pages. The first story in the volume, Rule of Bikini, is about a group of high schoolers who decide to take a trip to the beach during summer break. At first, the stone-faced and science-focused Shizuka would rather stay in her lab performing experiments all summer. When her friend tells her that a certain boy named Konno will be at the beach, though, Shizuka decides to test a new hypothesis: do swimsuits drive men insane? When she arrives at the beach and Konno sees her in her sexy swimsuit, the answer is quickly proven as the two engage in hands-on experimenting in a secluded part of the beach for the rest of the day.
This chapter was a lot of fun, especially thanks to the unique personality of the protagonist. You would expect a straight-laced character like Shizuka to be totally stone-faced and lacking emotions, but you quickly see that this isn’t the case at all. She’s a shy girl craving romance but can only process this stuff through the veil of science. The way she awkwardly tells Konno he can do whatever he wants to her as long as he supplies data for her experiment, or the way she analyzes his body temperature as the two fool around, add an adorable layer of quirkiness to her personality. That fun dynamic, combined with the beautiful artwork, made this chapter a highlight of Renai Sample.
There’s just as much to enjoy in the black & white chapters of Renai Sample, though. One story in particular that stands out is Younger Sister Warning. In this chapter, a young man named Chihiro has been living by himself for a little while after moving out of his family home. When his younger sister Mei comes over to check up on him, she brings along a shy and gorgeous friend of hers named Chigasaki Kanako. Chigasaki seems to have issues interacting with boys, so Mei brought her over to Chihiro’s place so she could get comfortable with being around guys a bit more. With a stern face, Mei commands her brother not to touch Chihiro, look at her, or even move without permission. She wants nothing to happen between the two, and after making her wishes known, promptly falls asleep.
What she doesn’t know, however, is that her brother and her friend are actually going out. The two have hesitated to tell her out of fear of her reacting negatively, so instead, the two spend their sleepover having passionate sex all while younger sister Mei is asleep right next to them. I really enjoyed the silly and somewhat tense setup of this story. The two constantly being on guard and scared of alerting Mei or having her run into them fooling around kept things interesting, and the contrast between Chigasakis’ seemingly shy and awkward nature according to Mei with the true sexual appetite she has once she’s alone with Chihiro made things even more interesting.
Some of the stories in Renai Sample are a little more complex, though. In Summer’s Beast, Arata is a young guy who’s spent every Lantern Festival and New Year’s holiday since he was little as his uncle’s house in the countryside. His uncle has a daughter the same age as Arata named Chitose, and Arata has always been in love with her. One summer, though, Arate discovered that Chitose got a boyfriend. Later that summer on a certain rainy day, Chitose comes home and Arata tells her that he’s going back home early. When she tells him to stay and begs to spend more time with him, he loses it. Pushing her onto the bed and confessing his feelings to her, the two have sex and, when Arata realizes that Chitose is curled up and crying, he runs away and never talks to Chitose or visits that home again.
Three years later, she’s getting married. When his uncle demands that Arata come to visit because it’s been so long, he decides to go back and finally apologize for what he did. Things take an unexpected turn, though, when Chitose seems totally happy and excited to see him. Things get even wilder later that night when she visits Arata’s room to continue what they started three years ago. While there are a lot of emotional highs and lows to this story, things end up finishing on a really sweet and funny note that I appreciated a lot. I was always concerned that the story would lean toward the darker side of things, but Homunculus managed to balance drama and romance with fun and sexiness perfectly in this story.
And that’s a perfect summary of Renai Sample as a whole. It’s a perfectly even balance of ideas that shows off just what makes Homunculus stories so great. There are unique characters and sometimes tragic beginnings, but they’re always complimented by gorgeous sex scenes and happy endings that make this a volume worth remembering. Renai Sample by Homunculus is available at our shop here, along with many other great hentai manga series.
