Suehirogari
A prolific manga artist from Japan, Suehirogari (すえひろがり, often mangled into the vaguely English sounding Gary Suehiro) was one of the first adult manga artists to gain some form of recognition in the US, right around the time the Internet was helping Anime and Manga to really take off in the US.
Some of his early works were licensed as the title "Sexhibition" by Eros Comix. As such, Suehirogari's works were some of the first "Hentai" material that was heavily pirated by the growing Internet western Otaku subculture when said subculture was really breaking out. This puts him in the same boat as popular manga artists that were also licensed by Eros and equally pirated during that age: Toshiki Yui (Hot Tails, Boku no Futatsu no Tsubasa), Kozo Yohei (Spunky Knight), and Wolf Ogami (Super Taboo). When older Anime fans think "hentai", Suehirogari's art is one of the few artists that immediately come to mind.
Similarly, Suehirogari's My Life As... was one of the first hentai anime OAVs to be brought over to the US by NuTech Digital, in 1999. Again, this was heavily pirated and was a staple of the early "hentai fan" subculture online.
His art style is fairly distinctive, making heavy use of contrasting tone and monochrome watercolor in his monochrome pages and using vivid watercolors (or digital watercolors) on the color ones. However, more distinct is his repeated use of tropes in his works. A very large number of Suehirogari's works play tropes perfectly straight, not that there's anything wrong with that, with the occasional subversion. This makes his work particularly interesting as an example of tropes in an erotic media.
Many of Suehirogari's works are getting the fan translation treatment, as a result of Munyu Heavy Industries. To date, they have translated random segments from his one shots, as well as TAG, CAGE, CAGE 2, Ornitho and Road of Clouds. Other translators have taken up some of his other works: Color of Flowers (Soba-Scans) and K.A.A.R. (tonigobe).
His works include:
- Heartache (1993)
- So Young (1994)
- Exhibition[1] (1994/1996)
- Time Machine (1994)
- My Life As... (1998)
- Circle
- K.A.A.R. - Spring Story (1999)
- K.A.A.R. - Summer Story (2002)
- TAG (2003)
- CAGE (2005)
- CAGE2 (2006)
- Color of Flowers[2] (2008)
- Road of Clouds[3] (2009)
- Ornitho aka CAGE3 (2011)
- Somuniiru (2010-2011, 6 chapters, not put into a tankobon)
- Ornitho (Continued, put into one tankobon in late 2011)
Suehirogari's works in general contain examples of the following tropes:
- Author Appeal: It's hard not to find a Suehirogari work that doesn't have Exhibitionism, Public Nudity, or Softcore BDSM (heavy on the DS, almost never SM) in it.
- Bi the Way/Suddenly Sexuality: While his works are predominantly written from a female victim point of view, almost all of these female protagonists end up in lesbian situations at some point during the manga. In addition he has done several Yaoi one shots, including some which weren't yaoi until, erm, surprise!
- Bound and Gagged: Although DS is more prevalent, the occasional bit of outright bondage is in quite a few works.
- Public Exposure: Oh boy. Almost every single one of his works has exhibitionism as a subtext.
- More Than Mind Control/Rape Is Love: Almost exclusively, his victims will come to enjoy whatever situation they find themselves in, no matter how horrific the path that lead them there is.
- Schedule Slip: His monthly series tend to miss a month here and there. Publishers seem to be catching on -- Somuniiru is being published bi-monthly.
- Xanatos Gambit: His favorite storyline variant revolves around a person or group of people one step ahead of their victims, who repeatedly play right into their hands.
His one shots contain examples of the following tropes:
- Double Standard Rape (Female on Male)/It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It: In Night Swimming, the hermaphrodite student body president forces herself on the main character, Usuki. Outside of him looking really uncomfortable and complaining about being sore later, this is considered just one of her quirks. It helps that he's head over heels in love with her.
- Invisible Streaker: Taken to its most literal extreme in Moonlit Exhibition, Suehirogari's debut work -- Fukeda Mari, the main character, is a girl who can go invisible (her clothing cannot), but she's also an exhibitionist streaker, partially due to years of having to walk around nude in public if she wants to use her powers.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: In Moonlit Exhibition, Kataguri turns out to be a werewolf, which is why she can see Fukeda when the latter's invisibility should hide her. Unlike normal werewolves, she is not affected by the moon (and turns into more of a Japanese catgirl-style werewolf than a Western style one) but does revert to normal after orgasm.
- Rape Is Love: Stone Flower. Mozuki happens upon Uzura during her "live (nude) statue" job at a party and blackmails her into taking her clothing off for him. This excites her enough that they have semi-consensual sex (a common theme of Suehirogari's works) and start a relationship.
- Rescue Romance: Moonlit Exhibition -- Fukeda and Kataguri hook up after the latter saves the former from a rapist.
Color of Flowers contains examples of the following tropes:
- Bifauxnen: A couple. One of the girls is asked to be the "male" lead in the amateur film the club is putting on, and dresses accordingly.
- Fundamentally Female Cast: There are no named male characters in the entire series.
- Girls Love: The point of the series. There are no named male characters in the entire series.
- Genre Shift: Unlike his most recent series, this one is vastly more focused on consensual high school Girls Love than non-consensual exhibitionism slavery et al. It still revolves around a lesbian girl discovering the audio-video club is making lesbian porn in their spare time, however, and there are still a few exhibitionism scenes -- the main character is stripped while on the roof but gets away unseen, and she also gets caught up in an art class -- when she's too nervous to draw the nude model, she's made to model with the nude model... who takes the opportunity to basically have sex with her in front of the class. The series is considered on 2ch to be one of his lesser quality works, and the followups after it have all went back to Strictly Formula.
- Innocent Fanservice Girl: The teacher who is moonlighting as a nude model for the school has no qualms in dashing across the hall to use the restroom. Truth in Television -- most models don't cover themselves up much after the first few times doing modeling, the act of covering and uncovering is more risque than just leaving it be.
- Off-Model: The cover has the main character sitting at such a way that her body is directly away from the camera, causing a very big perspective failure.
- Punny Name: The title can also be read as "Lust of Maidens".
- Sempai-Kohai: Very much so. The main character is a freshman, the girl who catches her looking at lesbian porn in the AV room is a year or two her senior. She's also One Head Taller.
- Transparent Closet: Everyone who spends more than a few minutes with the female character can pick up that she's a lesbian.
- X Meets Y: Maria Watches Over Us Meets ... Suehirogari. Even the uniforms are vaguely similar.