Spotted Flower Chapter 14 (Manga)
Spotted Flower manga chapter 14 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

NOTE: For the purposes of this and future reviews, until the characters are given names, I will call the “not Saki” woman “Oku-san” (a term for a wife) and I’ll refer to the “not Madarame” guy as “Danna–san” (a term for a husband).

Not-Ohno drops by Oku-san’s home with baby, tape measure, and a suitcase full of cosplay outfits. As part of Oku-san’s plan to seduce her husband, she has Not-Ohno take her measurements. As this is happening, the two discuss Oku-san having sex in her last month of pregnancy as well as the affect having a baby has on a woman’s sex drive.  The discussion leads the two to agree that the best part of being pregnant is not having periods, something Not-Ohno says can be achieved by Oku-san getting pregnant again.

Although Not-Ohno is not privy to the details of Oku-san’s seduction plans, she does remark that the thing about being married is that the married couple are always discovering new things about each other, and that a relationship is always a work in progress. Oku-san agrees with this sentiment and asks if cosplay is what keeps Not-Ohno’s marriage kicking.

Not-Ohno has managed to slip part of a cosplay outfit onto Oku-san, who goes off on Not-Ohno for doing this, since Oku-san had said she didn’t want to wear anything Not-Ohno had brought. Oku-san is also displeased that the cosplay outfit is for a trap that can get pregnant.

Thoughts/Review:

So, it appears that Oku-san’s plan involves cosplay. Since Oku-san is basically Saki from Genshiken, I find her plan rather hilarious. In Genshiken, Saki was always very opposed to doing cosplay, yet has ended up doing it on a few occasions. In this chapter, as Oku-san, we get to see that same anti-cosplay attitude in her rejecting Not-Ohno’s attempt to get her to try on some stuff. At the same time, we get to see her deciding to do cosplay for a greater purpose.

I suspect that whatever cosplay Oku-san does, I suspect it will be something where she plays up the embarrassment factor that seemed to get Danna-san going.

The Not-Ohno character is funny to me because I can well imagine Ohno from Genshiken being exactly like this — still very much a cosplayer despite having an infant child.

I did enjoy Oku-san’s and Not-Ohno’s discussion on how marriage is a continuous work in progress and that husbands and wives have to keep on working at it.

I’ve noted that in the manga Paradise Residence, author Fujishima-sensei is breaking away from his tame seinen work in Ah! My Goddess by drawing naked teenage girls. Kio-sensei seems to have picked up this attitude in this chapter by drawing Oku-san naked. In Genshiken, Kio-sensei may have discussed ero-manga and ero-doujinshi, but he never really showed it. The times when characters were bathing or the like, it was Barbie Doll nudity. Even the chapters of Spotted Flower to date have avoided showing detailed nudity, even if they came close.

Anyway, I was surprised big time to see the pregnant, naked Oku-san in all her upstairs glory (’cause Japanese law forbids showing the ‘very naughty bits indeed’), even though this is a seinen title. Now that Kio-sensei has plunged into those waters, I expect we’ll see more of this in future.

Nudity aside, I liked the setup here for Oku-san getting the fires going in her marriage. It will be interesting to see where this goes.