A DNF/dropped review
(NOTE: This is an 18+ NSFW review!!! 🔞 Also, this review contains spoilers. Spoilers are marked in brackets like this [spoiler]. Highlight the text between the brackets to read it.)
Sundome!! Milky Way by Kazuki Funatsu is a mature-rated, 9-volume tome published by Seven Seas’ Ghost Ship imprint. Funatsu wrote Sundome!! after Yokai Girls, which Seven Seas also published under the Ghost Ship imprint. I had no interest in reading Yokai Girls prior to reading Sundome!! Milky Way, and I definitely have no interest in reading it now. I picked up Sundome!! Milky Way because it sounded funny and had my kinks. I enjoyed the series up till volume 4, when the manga got way too cringe and spicy for me. So, let me walk you through each book up to the moment I dropped the series.
The story: Yoshitake Sakura, an average 25-year-old office drone, is tasked with saving an alien species from extinction by impregnating one while in its human form. Lune is that alien. She’s beautiful but shy, and she’s madly in love with Yoshitake. However, every time they try to have sex, she becomes too shy and reverts to her reptilian, kaiju-esque form. It’s a battle of wills between the world’s horniest man and the world’s most bashful alien. (Both are virgins.) Comedy and cringe ensue.
This series answers the age-old question, “What if, Ataru Moroboshi from Urusei Yatsura met Lum at 25 instead of 16?” I bet he would be a degenerate adult. Yoshitake is an irredeemable, trash protagonist. He’s a decent-looking guy who does his job good enough. You could mistake him for normal until he opens his mouth. The man has no filter and says (and does) the cringiest shit ever. He does what he wants and does not give-a-fuck. He doesn’t care if anyone knows he’s a virgin that gets knowledge about sex from porn and the internet. Yet, he gets bitches. Make it, make sense.
Volume 1 opens with the inciting incident. Yoshitake crashes his car because he saw a huge UFO flying overhead and is saved by its occupant Lune, who then explains her situation to him in her human form. They try to have sex when she freaks out and turns alien. This happens a few times until Yoshitake gets an idea. He’ll “train” her. So, the first few chapters are devoted to Yoshitake “training” Lune to have sex with him which mostly amounts to doing perverted things discreetly in public. Of course, this training doesn’t work, but Yokai Girls fans get a nice easter egg out of the deal.
At one point, Yoshitake thinks about drugging her. Putting the plan in motion, he talks to his senior co-worker Mistuboshi Kirao, dubbed the biggest fuckboy in the company, and agrees to buy drugs from him. Turns out Kirao is a worse human being than Yoshitake as he uses the same drugs on his dates. Of course, Yoshitake pulls out of the deal at the last minute and exposes Kirao’s misdeeds to all of his female co-workers in a dramatic flourish. Our protagonist will do anything to get laid, but at least, he won’t drug anybody.
Soon after, we learn that Yoshitake can’t have sex with Lune in her true form because the anatomy is too different. We find out in a later volume that artificial insemination won’t work either. No plot holes there. (Besides, where’s the fun in that?) Towards the end of volume 1, we also learn that Yoshitake must only have penile-vaginal sex with Lune or the mission will be deemed a failure, and Lune will have to return home. This tidbit is delivered by Lune’s younger sister Ane, who we briefly meet towards the end of volume 1. Volume 1 ends with Yoshitake attempting to have sex with his younger co-worker Haruka Yuizono at a company retreat.
Each volume involves more “training” and meeting the girls that will eventually join Yoshitake’s harem. Yoshitake fools around with these girls, short of penetration, for the funny. However, the non-penetrative sex acts get lewder. Sex acts include love bites (that go too far and draw blood), vibrators, exhibitions, and lots of pee. So much pee, which is the second reason I dropped the series. The reason I dropped the series occurred in volume 4.
In volume 4, Lune is asked to help with Yoshitake's job by running around as a supermarket mascot, and of course, Yoshitake made it weird by...
[ forcing her to wear the mascot costume buck-naked. She's wearing nothing underneath save for a bag with a vibrator inside. She's surrounded by kids hugging her. We get an x-ray vision drawing of Lune inside the costume as kids come up to hug her. She’s overwhelmed by the sensation which is illustrated as a full page of kids inappropriately touching her. When Lune can no longer take the stimulations that hugging provides, she uses the vibrator. The chapter ends with a little boy finding the zipper to her costume and pulling it. Lune flashes the crowd of parents and kids for a split second before turning alien. Yoshitake and Haruka play it off as a transformation-into-a-new-character thing, and the crowd buys it. ]
I can't get over the supermarket chapter, and even if there was a part of me, that wanted to ignore it; well, the next chapter cemented my decision to drop the manga. After the supermarket chapter, we get a chapter where we meet Yoshitake's boss and assumed future new member of his growing harem Ayuri Takanashi, a 31-year-old ice queen and a virgin, because of course. Well, Yoshitake and Ayuri get trapped in an elevator together, and...
[ Ayuri needs to pee. Yoshitake offers to drink her pee straight from the source. Ayuri is of course disgusted at first but quickly relents wanting to keep her professional dignity intact. She doesn't want her colleagues and subordinates see that she has wet her pants. So, we get panels of Yoshitake drinking pee from her coochie. ]
So, I dropped this series. Sundome!! Milky Way isn’t the first nor the last series I’ve dropped over the years, and I hold the opinion that did not finish (DNF)/dropped series reviews are just as helpful as completed series reviews, and this review has been sitting in my drafts for a long time. (Content, baby!) I can't recommend Sundome!! Milky Way, but you don't have to take my word for it. (Just don't say I didn't warn ya!) Volume 6 was released in May 2023, and volume 7 will be released in August 2023 per the Seven Seas website.
What to read instead of Sundome!! Milky Way if you’re looking for aliens, comedy, and/or romance:
A Galaxy Next Door by Gido Amagakure
Fly Me to the Moon by Kenjiro Hata
Meteor Prince by Meca Tanaka
Nighttime Just for Us Two by Maki Miyoshi
Urusei Yatsura by Rumiko Takahashi
So what do you think? have you read Sundome!! Milky Way? Let me know in the comments or via Twitter @ThatMangaHunter.