Coming in at more than 200 chapters, Shimimaru's Sweet and Spicy focuses on young people of all stripes navigating their newfound adulthood and the myriad of fantastical sexual situations that come with it! From impossibly arousing musk kinks, to acts of perilous exhibitionism, and even some gender-bending, there's a little something for every sexually adventurous person in Sweet and Spicy.

Sweet and Spicy has a story and art by Shimimaru. English translation is done by Colin Crouse and lettering by Vladyslav L. Published by J18 (June 3, 2026). Rated M.

Content Warning: Depictions of Non-Consensual Sex Acts

Lucas Deruyter
Rating:

Shimimaru's Sweet and Spicy is an entertaining, if tonally dissonant, manga that would be improved tremendously if just a bit more forethought went into which stories were included in this anthology. All taking place in a scholastic setting, these chapters include an exceptionally sweaty young man being confronted by several of his female classmates about the aphrodisiac effect his smell has on them, different kinds of misanthropes hooking up, a gender bent bully connecting with a classmate, and some non-consensual group sex! None of these stories feel particularly mean-spirited or offend my personal sensibilities, but jumping from non-toxic nerds having a cute hook-up to a gangbang in the next chapter is whiplash-inducing. Constantly shifting between cozy — if still pornoworld — smut and hardcore, morally dubious sexual situations makes Sweet and Spicy work against itself in setting an overall tone and diminishes the individual chapters within this anthology.

Which is a shame since there's a lot I like about this manga! Shimimaru gives many of their characters stockier elements to their design that I don't see often in hentai. Even athletic characters have a noticeable tummy when they're posed in a way that would cause their stomach fat and skin to bunch up. For a work that features a hybrid physical and sexual education class and an occult club that uses fake hypnosis to have sex, giving these still hot characters more grounded qualities feels like a breath of fresh air. This isn't to say that the art style in Sweet and Spicy is better than the more exaggerated visuals that can appear in other adult manga, but Sweet and Spicy stands out from much of the other works playing around in this space thanks to its visual direction.

Unfortunately, the chapters in Sweet and Spicy have little connective tissue outside of their general setting, making them difficult to talk about holistically within the capacity of this review. Though I will say that my favorite installments include both parts of “Slave to that Sweet Scent,” “The Curious Incident of the Abandoned Vibrator,” and “Does Working Out Make You Horny?” While all of them require a healthy suspension of disbelief, at their core they're about various weirdos connecting over shared interests or feelings and then rapidly evolving into sexual situations. There's an earnestness and heart to all of these stories that I find compelling, and Sweet and Spicy is worth checking out for these chapters alone.

Sweet and Spicy is definitely less than the sum of its parts, but enough of those parts are good enough that this work is worth checking out; just maybe don't try to read through all of it in one sitting.

Jean-Karlo Lemus
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Just to get this out there: a lot of the stories in Sweet and Spicy have to do with smell fetishes. I know that smell is a completely different thing for folks in Japan, but a few of the stories revolve around folks getting hot and heavy over someone just being that smelly. And far be it from me to yuck someone's yum—smell is definitely something that can be fetishized. They just go really into detail, and I don't know how much people want to know about a guy's BO.

At any rate, Sweet and Spicy is a fun, charming romp through the escapades of several young, dumb folk. The scenarios are invariably funny, like the aforementioned two-parter of a guy whose smell gets every woman around him into a breeding mood, or the story of a young couple brought together when one of the two reveals their ability at repairing sex toys. It's nice to have one of these books with mostly lighthearted romps that still deliver in terms of the horny while also not getting too bogged down in darker stories.

Shimimaru's artwork impresses at every turn. While I'm pretty sure it's a much bigger issue if someone can reach a cervix that easily, the artwork is great. A few of the chapters do resort to rather simple backgrounds, and I do think that the women overall have very similar body types, but there's plenty to enjoy here. The lettering especially impresses; Vladyslav deserves their flowers for the effort on display. Strongly recommended.

Bolts
Rating:

This can best be described with the phrase, “well, that escalated quickly.” Honestly, half of this book is dedicated to just one story involving a chubby kid with some bad body odor issues. He just happens to release these pheromones that attract any girl that he comes across. It's actually kind of funny seeing the random escalation of behavior that some of these girls exhibit the minute they get a whiff of his glorious musk. Even though there is an actual phenomenon where smell can generate pheromones (and the book even tries to justify its premise with a weird monologue) I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to work this intensely.

This is a typical wish fulfillment story taking place at high school, and while there are some chapters that focus on other side characters in the school, a majority of the book is focused on this scent-based kink. Or at least, those stories really try to lean into that, but I feel like it could've gone farther with establishing exactly what this scent is doing to these girls. Outside of the First Girl that sleeps with the main character where she is constantly commenting on his body odor, the rest of the characters in this book only really comment on it once before it all just devolves into a typical sex scene. So it is a little bit disappointing, even if the sex scenes are quite solid.

It's clear that this kink is just there to get the ball rolling, but I do wish it actually went further with it since the art style does lean into that kink really well so it almost feels like a missed opportunity. There's not really a definitive ending to any of the stories present here, and a lot of the scenes just come as they go without much else. This leads to a very middle of the road porn book both in its style and execution, but maybe that's enough to get your rocks off.