Maya Kusonoki has hit a plateau in her sporting career. Her body is undergoing growth spurts, and her chest keeps getting bigger. She heard that drinking cum from her coach will make her a super athlete. Will he help her? Obviously, yes.

Secret Lesson with the Badminton Ace has a story and art by Kuroba Dam. English translation is done by Zorritoiv and lettering by Ailis Preston Bend. Published by Irodori Comics (June 6, 2026). Rated M.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

When the badminton ace enters the locker room, he finds Maya struggling with wrappings to cover her chest, which appears unwieldy even wrapped. She asks him to help her, then reveals she has another favor to ask. This manga is a “nice” version of power harassment, in which a young woman whose tits continue to grow larger as the pages are turned asks nicely for the ace to give her his “power juice.” So of course, it is not at all coercion or anything; it's totally consensual. Thank heavens, because she's going to need a LOT of that juice and many pages of sex in oddly uncomfortable positions until she gets over that block.

Also, thankfully, while Maya is young and waif-like (well, a waif with an enormous chest), she's not entirely innocent of all things, so the audience gets to appreciate the ace tutoring her in techniques, without feeling guilt that it is an actual power differential.

Like most doujinshi, this story has a panel as prologue and a page as a denouement, so there is little pretense at developing either characters or story. I would say the art was good, but as I mentioned, the sex puts her in a wide variety of positions that look variably uncomfortable. The ace must be training a lot, as he's got significant stamina. Most guys his age wouldn't have held out that long. To his credit, he at least cares whether Maya has climaxed or not. He's the “ace” after all, not some newbie.

As short and to the point as Secret Lesson with the Badminton Ace is, it could certainly appeal to people who like unequal relationships, young women with extremely large breasts, and women asking to have sex, as well as a paean to the super powers of male ejaculate. It's not rapey, and it's not not rapey, so I imagine quite a few folks might enjoy this doujinshi. Oh, and of course, yes, Maya does get past her block, so it even has a happy ending!

Kuroba Dam's Secret Lessons With the Badminton Ace is one of those works where I read it, stepped away from my computer for a little bit, and then by the time I sat down again I had completely forgotten everything I just read. This work is incredibly generic, features characters that are either boring or that I actively dislike, and is flagging some misogynistic politics. The nicest thing I can say about it is that it's less actively offensive than one of Kuroba Dam's past works, My Whole Country Stans Me, but considering how much disdain that past title inspired in me, that's not much of a compliment.

The plot of Secret Lessons With the Badminton Ace follows a nameless main character who stumbles upon the ace of his school's badminton team, Maya, changing in a supply closet instead of the locker room. Maya has it in her head that having sex will make her better at badminton and propositions the main character for intercourse. While he's surprised that such a good girl and model athlete would want to have sex, he says yes because she has big boobs.

That explanation isn't me being glib, by the way. The MC literally has an internal monologue where he's commenting on Maya's body throughout this story, and it's really distracting.

After they have a bunch of sex, Maya wins her next big match, and she and the MC celebrate by somehow performing sex acts while in a mascot costume together when she should be getting interviewed. Oh, and they're also having a full-on conversation about other women that the MC should be having sex with, while they're having public sex and trying not to draw attention to themselves.

I've forgiven (and even appreciate) other hentai that operate on bad ponro world logic, but the rampant misogyny in Secret Lessons With the Badminton Ace makes this read unbearable for me. Every other sentence expressed by the main character is objectifying or otherwise gross, and I can't help but feel like this work is actively trying to normalize having this kind of attitude towards women. I can't even say that the art or another element of this work offers redemption, because the paneling is distractingly cluttered and the character designs are aggressively forgettable. This hentai is actively a turn-off to me and my extremely open-minded sexual sensibilities, and I discourage anyone from reading it.

Secret Lessons is a fairly typical story; after walking in on badminton ace Maya, our nameless hero gets propositioned to help her do some illicit training (read: sex). What follows is our protagonist basically tricking Maya into going all the way with him.

The set-up feels a bit dragged out, since Maya is such an ingénue that she doesn't even recognize she's getting led into sex until it's too late. She's not much of a participant in this story at all, even until the very end; at least she's enjoying the entire ordeal. I give Secret Lessons credit for having a creative set-up for an encounter—at the very end of the book (Maya and the protagonist going at it inside of a big bear mascot costume, with everyone around them none the wiser). The story seems to set up following chapters with extra characters that Maya knows. If this is the start of a series, it's a serviceable one, and I'd hope that Kuroba Dam improves his writing some. If this is just a one-and-done, it's perfectly fine on its own—but I'd wait for a sale to nab this eromanga. Mildly recommended.

I've read a few stories like this where a female athlete is somehow conveniently tricked into thinking that engaging in sexual intercourse will make them a better athlete. I'm sure there are some studies out there that have gone into how maybe an active sex life can contribute to making it easier to train, but that's not what this story is concerned with. This story is concerned with showcasing an incredibly naïve girl who comes on to somebody to help her with training, and yet it somehow magically works out. Let's also ignore the fact that having constant unprotected sex could potentially get her pregnant and lead to her ending her career prematurely.

I'm mostly joking because that is clearly not the intention of the story, but it is a little bit distracting when the sex scenes themselves aren't titillating enough to get me to fully buy into the premise. This is the type of story that feels like it doesn't go far enough with what it's trying to do. The badminton athlete in question is naïve in a comical way more than a sexy one, and the artwork really doesn't sell just how intense the setup is supposed to be. The pacing feels really off as there are pretty much two sex scenes in this book, with the first one feeling as if it goes on way too long and the second one feeling as if it goes way too quickly to the point where it almost feels like that latter could've just been cut out of the end of the book. I think if the sex scenes were more intense or if the story really gave into the conquering aspect that the guy in question was trying to do with the athlete, then maybe it would've left a stronger impact. There are glimpses of it, but not enough to make me think that this was overall a titillating experience. I feel like there are better stories out there with similar premises.