I have plenty of experience with the works of legendary hentai manga artist Yamatogawa. I’ve skimmed and scanned various manga of his for years, and just recently I reviewed his other FAKKU published hentai volume, Power Play. I was blown away by not just the incredible art and designs in that book, but the way it managed to tell a singular engaging story over multiple chapters while still having an incredible variety of naughty girls and raunchy action. I was excited to check out his other work released under FAKKU, Witchcraft, to see if it would end up being just as impressive. Thankfully, after reading it, I can happily say that Yamatogawa is still king.
Much like Power Play, Witchcraft by Yamatogawa isn’t an anthology of separate stories sharing a loosely connected theme. Instead, over the course of 211 gorgeously drawn pages and nine unforgettable chapters, Witchcraft tells a long story of hypnotism, sexual experimentation and, of course, witchcraft. It all starts with Mochizuki Kaoru. He’s a shy and meek young guy who’s always experiencing bad luck and misfortune. He’s also constantly harassed by a group of bullies, rarely ever putting up a fight. On a particular day, though, a sudden burst of courage hits Kaoru and he decides to stand up to the bullies, only to end up making the situation worse as he’s forced to run for his life to escape the angered bullies.
As he’s running away, he happens across a store that’s still open and rushes inside, begging the proprietress to let him hide there. That woman is none other than Kagami Kyouko, a fortune-teller who also happens to be conducting experiments on hypnosis in her spare time. When she talks to our meek protagonist and discovers his issues with fear and courage, she decides to make him her first case study on using hypnosis to change someone’s mental state. He needs to have a clear, blissful conscious to accept the hypnotism, so obviously, the quickest way to get him there is for Kyouko to give him a blowjob to help him ejaculate! After a sudden sexual experience and even more sudden hypnosis that produces immediate results, the two end up forming a partnership involving plenty of hypnotic experimentation and sexual debauchery.
The story doesn’t just focus on these two, though, which I appreciated. As much as I loved the stoic personality and silky white hair of Kyouko, having a variety of other girls get in on the action helped keep things fresh. There’s Sara, a self-proclaimed rival to Kagami when it comes to the world of the arcane arts. There’s also Megumi, a famous music idol who suddenly gives our protagonist a love letter one day. Finally, we meet a mysterious young girl with a mastery over witchcraft who ends up treating Kaoru and the others like her playthings. I really enjoyed the fact that something new was happening every couple of chapters. Rather than keep things stagnant and just explore different sexual scenarios between our main characters for nine chapters, Witchcraft isn’t afraid to constantly shake things up in order to make the overall story far more interesting.
It helps that the character designs themselves are varied and unique, as well. Kyouko is a tall and slender beauty with pale white hair and sharp eyes. Megumi, meanwhile, is a bubbly younger girl with full black hair and an expressive face. Sara has deliciously tanned skin and fierce white eyelashes, while the mysterious young mage girl has an incredible petite body and unique, hypnotic eyes. While the crew isn’t as varied in looks like the cast from Power Play, they still each have incredibly varied personalities and styles that ensure there’s something for everyone in this book. Plus, with nine chapters in total, every girl gets a decent amount of spotlight throughout the book.
Witchcraft doesn’t just excel in terms of story and characters. Yamatogawa also manages to impress with another volume of incredibly erotic and gorgeous illustrations. Being a few years older than Power Play, the art in Witchcraft is a bit less detailed and refined than what you’d expect from more current works by the artist. Regardless of that, though, every girl still has a gorgeously petite frame with soft, supple breasts and gorgeous lips. Characters have delightful expressions and dynamic poses during regular scenes, but they’re even more impressive once the sexual scenes begin. Gaping mouths and flushed faces complement the incredible anatomy of each girl as they’re endlessly ravaged. Yamatogawa puts wonderful detail into the sexual anatomy of both men and women, making the uncensored release of this book an absolute delight.
Witchcraft only has four colored pages to speak of in the entire volume. Normally, I would lament the lack of full-color action in a hentai anthology like this. After seeing the subpar quality of the coloring in this book, though, I’m thankful it only lasted for four pages. The colors in these pages feel like they’re picked at random, used more for the sake of adding contrast than actually complementing the character designs. Worse yet, though, is the fact that the colors simply aren’t applied well. The hair on each girl looks like it simply had a single tone of color dropped in with a paint-bucket tool. The bodies of each woman have tones of shadow on them, but they’re horribly inaccurate. One panel in particular drapes a huge block of shadow over the body of the mysterious petite witch that makes her torse look awkwardly elongated and sloppy. I often see colored art that is simply lazy or disappointing, but it isn’t often that I see colorwork that actively makes the original art look worse.
Thankfully, this is the only major qualm I have with Witchcraft. It’s still an incredible hentai volume full of gorgeous girls, unique designs and absolutely drool-inducing artwork. Despite telling a singular story throughout over 200 pages, it manages to keep things as fresh and dynamic as a regular anthology of separate stories would have. If you enjoyed Power Play and want more Yamatogawa action, this book is a must. Witchcraft by Yamatogawa is available at our shop here, along with many other great hentai manga series.
