Asumi-Chan Is Interested in Lesbian Brothels! Vol. 1

⚠️ this review is going to cover touch on very adult content. This series should definitely be considered erotica. ⚠️

Normally I'd avoid manga about going to brothels. It just sounds like a cheap excuse to have lesbian sex scenes, but It had an excellent rating on Mangadex so I hesitantly gave it a try, and just kept reading.

Basic Story

The premise is pretty straightforward. The best friend of our our 20-something protagonist (Asumi) asks her if she's got a girlfriend and she mentions that she probably "peaked" in elementary school when she got a kiss but didn't even realize what was going on, and then the girl who kissed her (Mai) moved away and she's never been able to contact her before.

Her best friend mentions that the friend sounds like someone she encountered working at a lesbian brothel. One thing leads to another and Asumi begins regularly hiring the girls hoping to encounter her friend. Somehow they make this feel plausible; increasingly so as time goes by.

Overall this is just a very sex-positive story about 3 women: Asumi, her best friend Ouka, and later Nanao.

Why it's actually great

First off, all of the sex-workers are written respectfully, and always treated respectfully by Asumi and everyone else. They're never looked down on, or treated as lesser. While Asumi is embarrassed to share the fact that she's using their services it's because of the social stigma not because she feels she's bad for participating in it or that the sex workers are bad people to be avoided.

Secondly, they ignore reality and make it so that all the sex-workers love their job, do it because they enjoy making people feel good, and they all think Asumi is cute and enjoy spending time with her. The result feels like a really healthy friend-with-benefits situation instead of cheap hired sex.

Additionally, with each new sex scene the girls help Asumi to learn more about what she enjoys in the bedroom, and how to be more comfortable with those things. Later in the series, when some light BDSM is introduced, and they make sure there's a safe-word and that there is full consent as they proceed.

The sex scenes are explicit, but it doesn't feel like they're trying to get you off, so much as they're allowing you to be turned on by watching two women pleasure each other. That being said, there was a sex scene in the sixth volume (I think) did nothing to advance the story and did feel like cheap sex.

The reason I kept reading though, was what happens between the sexual encounters. You learn more about her best friend, and Asumi temporarily becomes a live-in housekeeper for another girl who falls for her. You watch their relationship blossom, and overall it's really healthy (mentally). Emotional complications feel believable, and it's not all jealousy and characters making themselves feel like crap because they refuse to tell someone they like them. You want to learn more about these three characters, and what's going to become of them.

Honestly there's so much sex, and the scenes between are so good that there were a few times where I was like, "ok, that's hot, but let's get back to the story."

Content warning / Elephant in the Room

My only real problem with this story is the unnecessarily pervy inciting incident. It is revealed that when Asumi was in Elementary School, and shared a brief kiss with Mai, Mai was in her late teens. The story would be no different if they were roughly the same age when they kissed.

Fortunately the story doesn't dwell on that fact or try and use the age gap as some sort of kink turn-on. It only briefly mentions it in a couple quick moments when Mai remembers it. You can mostly just ignore this, and pretend they were roughly the same age at the time.

Summary

If you can get past the "Elephant" and are interested in some surprisingly sex-positive erotic Yuri I think you should check it out.