The Fall 2024 Manga Guide

LuvSlave (18+)

What's It About? 

In the not-so-distant future, a secret game designed to lead young men to a sexual awakening has taken root in Japan...and its name is LuvSlave! Enter into a master-slave contract with a young woman, and battle it out with the cards in your deck!

The bond between master and slave is tested with every battle! This is the birth of a new generation of card game manga!

LuvSlave has a story and art by Mizuryu Kei, with English translation by William Schenler. This volume was lettered and retouched by Vadim K.. Published by J18 (September 4, 2024).

Content Warning: This manga is intended for 18+ older audiences only.

Is It Worth Reading?

The thing about reviewing straight-up porn is that a lot of the regular rules for critical assessment go right out the window. Fussy things like "structure" and "themes" must be secondary to the primal question of whether what's in this wank material is enough for the effective target audience to get, uh, what they want from it. The other thing in this case is that LuvSlave is hardly straight-up porn. From the often overwrought imagination of Mizuryu Kei comes what must be pitched as a Yu-Gi-Oh! porn parody—a tale of decks and dicks revolving around mostly consensual sex-slave battles and the power of incestuous family bonds. Sure, you could analyze the strictly enforced gender roles driving the gameplay in this battle titty city, but where would that get you? Hardly anybody comes into a comic like this for the character of its content.

That said, LuvSlave still seems to have designs of being something a little more than a regular raunchy manga. It's just barely skirting being full-blown porn for one, even as it seems patently absurd that a story that regularly has characters deploying weaponized facesitting and fellatio shies away from actually depicting any private parts. I feel like if you're dealing yourself this handjob you're probably past the point of caring about raw nudity anyway. The characters partaking in these rude duels are obviously intended to be compelling, and maybe it's just my particular tastes, but they mostly fell flat for me. Lead character Yuta is a self-described "hopeless, boring little man" whose recurring dreams about watching his sister get raped mostly indicate that he could do with many, many years of therapy. Akemi, said sister, has even less going on, being a fantasy cipher who pledges herself to her brother after gifting him the family heirloom sex-slave card game kit. As you do.

The absurdity on its face (and other body parts) is the driving thrust (phrasing) of LuvSlave—what keeps the pages turning even as the actual plotting is pretty basic. The flavor of things does pick up a bit when Yuto swaps his sister for the much cooler Saki, but even she doesn't get a ton to do. Besides, it's basically impossible to seriously invest in any of these comings and goings on account of said absurdity. These characters can give all the stirring speeches about believing in themselves and each other they want, but they're still doing it while the dudes are all fully-torqued through a whole card game that climaxes with a compulsive incestuous spitroast. Luvlslave's first volume is probably at least worth checking out to confirm that it is, in fact, a real comic. Whether these sticky cards are worth picking back up after that initial novelty has worn off is going to be entirely down to your own tastes.

After reading this entire manga full of underage shotacon, dubcon, noncon, NTR, blood-relation brother-sister incest, sexual abuse by a family member, and, since I'm sure I'm forgetting some let's use the dubious modifier of “more,” I was not surprised to learn that LuvSlave creator Kei Mizuryu holds some pretty vile political views. However, as much as I wouldn't want to go to him for moral guidance, I have to admit that his erotically charged and lore-heavy Yu-Gi-Oh! parody was rather funny! I cannot emphasize enough that there is some icky content here, or as one says in the fanfiction community: DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT. Nobody takes their clothes off completely, but there's nothing ambiguous about what's happening here. It's hilarious, but no amount of humor will make those tags more palatable if they are deal breakers for you.

Yuto is 12 or 13 years old, and he's ready to become a man! As all Yu-Gi-Oh! fans already know, that means it's time to play a card game. LuvSlave is all the rage among teenage boys: a totally normal and above board game in which players team up with adult women to engage in sexual situations! Nothing weird about that, agreed? Good, so you won't think it's odd that Yuto decides to partner up with his sister. Akemi is a loving big sis with a freaky streak—acting as Yuto's “slave” awakens something in her and suddenly she's down for anything. But when Akemi gets in trouble, Yuto has to find another woman willing to partner as his “slave” to get her back.

Strong worldbuilding and a sincere commitment to the bit make this salacious story stand out among its contemporaries. With a rigid and NTR-based system, characters are loyal to the rules of the game, if not to each other! And despite many squicky tropes, it even has its sexy moments, like when Akemi's switch flips and she gets down with her bad self. Mizuryu's adult female characters are particularly compelling; they're instantly recognizable archetypes, plus they're refreshingly confident and in touch with their own sexuality. If you enjoyed the sexy and strongly established world of Keijo!!!!!!!!, you'll want to give this manga a try.

This might be the most bizarre thing I have read in this entire guide and that is saying a lot. What happens when you take the structure of a Yu-Gi-Oh! shonen series and mix it with porn? You get LuvSlave and credit where credit is due, they commit to this bit so hard it's impressive. I didn't even find the book titillating despite the rather attractive women in the book because I was more fascinated at how they were able to “gamify” sexual acts in such a way. I also wasn't titillated because these women were performing sexual acts on young boys, but there's only so much you can say about that at this point.

The setup is pretty typical if you've watched Yu-Gi-Oh!...or Beyblade…or Gundam Build Fighters or anything along the lines of these young boy competitive shonen's that mostly exist to sell merchandise. Except they're not selling any actual merchandise with this series (at least I hope we're not) because what they're selling is sex and if you'll do that, I have to give points for the creativity. It wasn't the structure of the narrative that kept me interested as much as it was, again, the rather fun and completely bizarre ways that they were able to reference sex. The structure of the card game is that you have a real person acting as your main monster or sex slave. All of the attacks are sexual acts inflicted on your opponent's sex slave or you directly. When you climax, you lose. You use cards that are indicative of sexual acts or put your slave into provocative outfits and kudos to the fact that they heavily emphasize this idea that the slave can turn down the request of the card player. I like that extra layer of communication and how you can't force people to perform things they don't want. It's not a particularly high bar to cross, but the bar is in hell so at least there's that.

This is admittedly a difficult book to recommend because while the artwork is great and the concept bizarrely works, the game still revolves around noticeably young boys. Honestly, as long as you don't find that part titillating, then I think it's fine and I would argue that it isn't the point of this book anyway. There's a large degree of self-awareness present here from the way that things are named to the blatant way that narrative beats are executed. Even the twist at the end of the book doesn't make sense when you sit down and think about it for a couple of seconds. If you read the book less like serious porn and more like a bizarre adult comedy, then it's probably perfect.