Slow down, friend. The following content is incredibly perverted.

This manga is 18+, not safe for work, and is really rather sexual.

Should you be pure of heart, avert thine eyes.

Yep.

Alright, the last Dowman Sayman (道満晴明, Douman Seiman) manga I’ll be talking about for the week is Oddman 11 (オッドマン11) and boy, it is a doozy. This series is about 93% raw Dowman Sayman, the remaining 7% being a lack of uncensored genitalia. This series is serialized in pornographic magazines — “COMIC HOTMILK” and “COMIC Megastore Alpha” — and I’m telling you that so you might avoid them; the content in these magazines is…varied, it seems. Oddman 11 is not a pornographic manga, but there is at least one panel depicting sex in a manner that “pushes it”, let’s say. Beyond that we have a TON of sexual humor, a large amount of nudity, sexual acts, and rants about porn. Ah, and there’s also some sibling incest, because why not?

Right, so, now that I’ve gotten the content warnings out of the way: what is Oddman 11? Well, in the simplest terms I would say it’s a yuri harem manga that has lots and lots of gags. It is a funny series if this is a brand of humor you can get behind, but very, very weird. Not random, really, just weird. Honestly, I think the jokes on display here are brilliant. Most of it’s super simple stuff, but it really gets me. Like being told how two people had sex after finishing the last ending of Drakengard because of all the excitement. It seems like nonsense until you learn one of the two was a masochist. That’s hilarious, even if it depends on your knowledge of that wonderful and shitty game.

The plot (yes, this is the only of the three Dowman Series I covered to have a “normal” plot) is that a high school girl, Setsu, wants to date this guy named Itami. Itami is Number 3 among a group of eleven people called Oddmen, and he is the only male. Oddmen are odd humans…”humans” that each have a specific quirk. Itami is “The Masochist”. This makes him perfect for his sister (the two of them pictured in the first page of this review) who is Number 2, “The Sadist”. Itami has dated every single Oddman (though it’s unclear if he’s actually dating his sister) and Setsu determines that she will defeat all of Itami’s exes to earn the right to date him. You know, like in that movie!

Thus, Setsu sets out on an adventure to battle these Oddmen and win, no matter what it takes! …The “battles” are usually very tame, though.









Cast established. Don’t worry about those two girls who seemed to be Setsu’s friends, because after chapter 2 they don’t seem to ever appear again.



So, the premise is that a girl is trying to get together with a guy, right? But when describing what Oddman 11 is, I called it a yuri harem manga — what’s up with that? Well Setsu may have questionable motivations as the series goes on, because pretty much every time she “defeats” an Oddman that Oddman becomes her friend and falls in love with her.

Let’s talk about Setsu, then. Setsu is introduced as a normal girl who has never seen an Oddman before, and she declares she will become Itami’s girlfriend before actually establishing that she has a crush on him. She displays physical interest in boys and girls and gets embarrassed at times, but on the whole rarely shows interest in romance or sex in the first place. Number 5, The Slut, questions whether she has any passion at all. That said, she’s most definitely friendly, rather excitable, and her determination to defeat/befriend all the Oddmen is impressive.

Generally speaking, she plays the role of a straight man. She tends to stonewall weirdness rather than react to it, perhaps due to acclimating to the wild nature of Oddmen. Some things still cause her to be surprised, however, so she’s a versatile source of comedy. Setsu is quite perfect and fitting as the series’ protagonist, providing a nice grounding that readers can relate to while also being rather bizarre in some respects on her own.

As for the rest of the cast, I feel I should explain something that the series doesn’t. Before that, I should say that I actually avoided this series at first because it looked particularly weird, even for Dowman Sayman, and the biggest reason for the weirdness was the Oddmen themselves. I considered it a turn off and never bothered to pick it up. In fact, I actually read through it for the first time just for the reviews this week. You see, I thought the Oddmen were odd by choice: The Slut was just slutty, The Unclean was just disgusting, The Streaker was just a streaker and so on. In actuality, something you come to learn and understand as you read Oddman 11 is that the Oddmen are compelled to act the way that they do, and are bound by fairly hard rules. For example, The Streaker literally can’t wear clothing, which provides some major inconveniences for her. Furthermore some have extreme physical abnormalities on top of their quirks, just to make matters more unusual. Society has also actually adapted to the Oddmen, granting them some allowances that would otherwise be prohibited to them, like The Slut being allowed to purchase porn even though she’s still in high school. Generally speaking, you could treat their traits like curses and afflictions. They can’t go against their nature, and honestly that can be rather sad at times.

Their plight might have gotten through to Setsu once she came to understand them, because now she casually hangs out with them even if she’s yet to defeat them. What’s more, because of her the Oddmen become friendlier with each other, although they certainly weren’t before. Story progression and character development actually occur in this mad and comedic series, and oddly enough it can even be heartfelt.

Two Oddmen in particular standout as characters in this series: Number 5, Shiraishi, and Number 9, Fujou. These two regularly vie for the top spot regarding Setsu’s affections. Or, you know, for her virginity.

First up, Shiraishi “The Slut”. I genuinely find Shiraishi to be compelling and quite enjoy her presence in the series. As outlined in an earlier image, for the one she loves she’ll do any sexual act no matter how perverted. She can be surprisingly cute for a “slut”, and is guaranteed amusement whenever she appears. She is sort of the first Oddman Setsu befriends, coming to her aid when Setsu is up against “The Dog”, who she hates. Overall, she is particularly helpful in Setsu’s quest despite Setsu’s end goal being to date her ex.

Next is Fujou, “The Unclean”. Her quirk is that she can’t clean herself whatsoever. This is quite gross, and the page I linked to was a major reason I turned my nose from Oddman 11. Fujou smells terrible as a result of the rules she must follow, meaning she’s never had a friend before because nobody could ever get close to her. Setsu is the first person to ever bother to do so aside from presumably Itami, so naturally Setsu becomes her first true love. She’s aggressive in pursuit of Setsu, which honestly I find to be hilarious. The way she was defeated and befriended was really sweet as well. I really warmed up to her, funnily enough.

The rest of the Oddmen come in and out usually, getting an arc/chapter dedicated to them when they’re introduced. When the series isn’t progressing Setsu’s quest, it’s lazing around with slice of life segments. Most of the time you’ll be getting jokes from Dowman Sayman’s book of laughs. There’s all the usual stuff I described when I reviewed The Voynich Hotel (references, dumb stuff, good stuff, strange facts, and so on) with 400% more sex jokes and jokes that only make sense with an appropriately high PORN INT stat. Technically, this series might count as another “scene” from Nickelodeon due to the presence of “The Collector” who appears in both series, but on the whole Oddman 11‘s tone is nothing like Nickelodeon‘s. If you can appreciate this series, congratulations, you can now read pretty much anything from Dowman Sayman and enjoy it, including the porn. Have fun!



The following paragraph is old, you can buy Oddman 11 now, though I don’t know when it will be finished. The first volume goes to chapter 25.



Oddman 11 ran in COMIC HOTMILK, a monthly magazine, from 2011 to 2015. In 2016, it switched to COMIC Megastore Alpha and by the by, It’s 2016 as of this writing. 25 chapters have been released so far at 8 pages each. This series is slow, slooooooowwww to update. Right now, Dowman Sayman seems to only have two other series that are still ongoing along with Oddman 11: Ayame to Amane (あやめとあまね, Ayame and Amane) (which also runs in a porn magazine) and Paraiso (ぱら☆いぞ, Para Izo), Paraiso being the series Dowman seems to put the most of his effort into right now aside from Oddman 11 (although to be honest I have no idea what its release schedule is like). His major works, Nickelodeon, The Voynich Hotel, and Hana to Alice – Satsujin Jiken (花とアリス殺人事件, The Case of Hana and Alice) (import from honto or buy from ebookjapan) — an adaptation of a novel — have all ended. For the past several months Oddman 11 has been consistently released, and only two Oddmen have yet to be revealed in the series. In spite of all this the series still hasn’t had enough material to be compiled into even a single volume. Technically the only way to read this series legally right now is to order back issues COMIC HOTMILK and the latest issues of COMIC Megastore Alpha, which I don’t recommend for various reasons. I do recommend this series, though. It doesn’t have nearly as wide an appeal as The Voynich Hotel or Nickelodeon, but it’s still a riot for anyone it does appeal to.

I hope you enjoyed this week of Dowman and one of this odd man’s series earned your interest. As I’ve said, I’m a big fan of the guy, so I quite enjoyed writing about his works. I’m glad I was able to use this week to pick up something, myself; I’m quite looking forward to future chapters of Oddman 11. I wish Dowman Sayman all the best in his long and silly career. He seems like a good guy.

Practically all of the works of Dowman Sayman you can find translated into English are done over at thetsuuyaku (site NSFW). Seems to be a big fan.

Dowman Sayman

Nickelodeon

The Voynich Hotel

Not necessarily safe for work

Dowman Sayman’s tumblr

Dowman Sayman’s twitter

Dowman Sayman’s Bookwalker (guide) author page: [link]

Oddman 11

Amazon, honto (guide)