Gacha Gacha: The Next Revolution, Vol. 1

Shy high schooler Akira Hatsushiba fruitlessly lusts after nubile classmate Yurika Sakuraba, and when his not-so-innocent desires can't get past his crippling timidity, he resorts to a dating scenario in a state-of-the-art virtual reality game. But things go awry, and Akira emerges from the simulator with the ability to randomly transform into the female character that appears as the game's menu guide, thereby opening a doorway into the mysterious world of females in general and Yurika in particular. The gender switch genre has been a staple of manga at least since Ranma 1/2 , and subsequent entries in that niche have steadily upped the ante of nudity and smarmy situations. This series is a T & A festival of a magnitude that would be considered gratuitous even by the standards of the genre. Though charmingly illustrated, Tamakoshi's story offers mostly titillating shots of semilesbian encounters between the scantily clad Akira and Yurika as they innocently grope each other's curvy bits while in underwear or bikinis, rub sun tan oil on one another and generally wander around wearing very little. Definitely not recommended for those who read Archie comics. (Jan.)