Mosaic Man

kay, this is technically a one-shot but I’m considering it as a single volume. Anyway, if you don’t know, in Japan, there are AV idols – or adult video idols. And, well, they’re porn stars. However, unlike here in the west, porn is just an acting gig. You can read more about a general description on Wikipedia but, generally, a lot of actresses come from the AV world and the opposite is also true. And there’s nothing wrong with it. In this case, the male porn star, Mizuki “Magic Fingers” Aoi, is known for his “Magic Fingers”. Hinata is the main character – she goesto deliver food on the set of his new movie but he mistakes her for the actress that was supposed to come in (but she’s late). As he’s coming onto her, and very much understandably, Hinata fights back – thinking he’s some kind of rapist when she manages to break his fingers in self-defense. Once she understood the situation, only then she realized that she was on an adult video set and she had just broken the star’s magic fingers – the very reason why he’s famous! They had insured the fingers for about one billion dollars (please don’t ask me to convert that to yen) and of course Akane had just started to work and started to live on her own and there’s no way she could afford it! While Mizuki is taking his time to heal (supposedly, up to a month), the manager demands that Hinata participates in the AV as well. However, Hinata doesn’t want to do it and has an aversion to sex. She begs if there’s another method of paying him back the medical bills and the insurance when Mizuki invites Hinata to his place and asks her to be his maid instead. At first, she almost refuses but Mizuki said it’s either that or become an AV idol. She chose the former. Hinata tries her best but with, of course, funny mess-ups, it seems that the two can’t get along until Hinata overhears a conversation with Mizuki and his manager. Since he’s taking an absence of leave, and he obviously couldn’t use his fingers, the only thing he could do to improve their reputations is to get nude. Mizuki refuses to get naked and would rather wait it out than get naked. After all, he’s a “hand model”. Hinata decides to go check out his movies because she was curious about what he actually does and finds out that he only gives women pleasure by fingering them instead of actually having sex. While she was doing some chores for him, the two have a talk about sex and if it’s really supposed to feel good. She gets personal and admits to him that she’s scared of having sex because there’s going to be pain involved. Mizuki asks her if she liked someone and she said she does, kind of. Mizuki offers to teach her how pleasurable sex can be so she won’t be so uncomfortable but once Hinata reaches her limit, he actually respects it! I shouldn’t be shocked but there’s too many manga out there where the male character tries to persuade the female character (or whatever the case may be) into doing it (“You say no but your body says yes!”) and it’d get uncomfortable really quick. But Mizuki actually backed off when Hinata said to stop. Anyway, one day, Mizuki gets an interview for a new project which he admits is called “The Virgin Rescue”. He literally says that it’s a project that “helps virgins who are scared of their first time into real women”. When asked where he got the inspiration, Mizuki replied with his everyday life. Now Hinata is watching this interview, and gets upset (who wouldn’t?!) and actually confronts Mizuki about it. She asked him if she was just a practice doll to test out techniques too but before he could answer, she runs away. There’s not really a clear indication of how much time has passed but the guy that Hinata was dating had decided to break up with her because she’s not having sex with him – not only that, he had found out that Hinata was living with Mizuki. So he sexually assaults her. Still feeling upset about Mizuki, she just about let him do whatever he wanted until Mizuki found her and him and he grabs the guy off of her. He punches the creep with his supposed broken hand and it’s revealed that his hand had been healed for some time. The only reason why he did it was because he honestly didn’t want to let her go. He admits that he likes her and the two finally reconcile with each other. The next scene is when the two are having foreplay for the first time so he uses his true technique on her and she tells him that she’s basically ready. The end. At first, I was uncomfortable with the fact that Mizuki tried to touch her – thinking that she’s an AV idol but looking closer at the art… he’s just rubbing her tummy. The other times are with her consent. So, I suppose I could just chalk that up to a misunderstanding. Anyway, the art is cute and I do like it but it’s kind of jarring that the art seems pretty plain (especially Hinata at times) but then when Mizuki’s on the page, he seems really super detailed. I get that he’s supposed to be this really hot porn star and I get that he’s prideful in his looks but, like I said, it’s a little jarring. Another thing that kind of confused me is that I wondered if Hinata is a high school girl or a college girl. I want to believe that she’s in college (only because it’s obviously a smut ridden manga and it’s about porn stars and it’d be really creepy) because I believe that there are still some virgins in their college ages. And I understood her fears perfectly as well since, well, I was in college when I first did it. But I can’t ignore the fact that she appears to be wearing a high school uniform in the last few pages of the one shot. It’s kind of disappointing and it would have been refreshing to see an older woman, unsure about sex because of that kind of fear. And I can’t help but feel disappointed. If the breakup between Hinata and her, I guess, boyfriend had taken place anywhere else besides a schoolyard and if Hinata wasn’t wearing a school uniform, I could have been unaware at that fact. The manga itself is pretty funny. I understand the jokes and everything that goes on and it’s actually done pretty genuinely. My only hope was that Hinata would have been an actual adult, instead of having the usual trope of high school girl and an older guy. That took me out of the manga faster than anything else.