Kichiku Eiyuu (Savage Hero) is borderline ecchi to hentai ongoing manga featuring a perverted protagonist in pursuit of power through his sexual adventures. If the first sentence caught your attention, the plot below clarifies it up. This also contains gore and edgy content because it's not your standard ecchi story.
No heavy spoilers or NSFW images included in this post.
Takamichi was transported into another world, specifically Hell where he lives as a demon under the Incubus class. Being in hell where he is free to fulfill his desires for 10 years, he has amassed enough experience and powers for every sexual encounter until he reach a maximum limit.
So he decides to leave Hell and venture off into the Human realm on a quest to unlock the other hidden skills.
The Story:
The ecchi genre is synonymous to depicting lewd content but it's a step down from hentai most people are familiar with. I didn't tag this manga as hentai despite a lot of panels showing what you'd expect from hentai for reasons that there's more plot to the actual story than relying on images that depict carnal pleasures. If I were to classify this story with Ecchi being the lighter side of lewd versus Hentai being an extreme, Savage Hero sits in between given how there's a substantial amount of character building that's been going on with the series.
Conventional Hentai relies on the sex as the main selling point why would even pick up the content while Ecchi content uses lewd to tease but not deliver the entire package. Savage Hero falls in between because some panels do show straight up sex with censor bars. But even without sex, this story can still fall under R18 given how much violence the show also depicts.
If you're familiar with the brutality of Goblin Slayer or Berserk, this makes it easier to explain how this story can catch an unsuspecting reader off guard with the grotesque and gore scenes.
Some of the chapters features both extreme contrasting details like light-hearted comedic sex humor to cursed images content which asks whether you should be aroused or disgusted. It's this kind of manga that guarantees it's less likely going to get an anime adaptation soon.
The protagonist is overpowered and levels up the more he has sex as a side quest which are stated as receive blowjobs from a demoness x times, participate in an orgy with x race x times, that sort of lines as part of his growth stat being an Incubus. And if you think his path to power ridiculous, wait till you see how his interactions with other supporting characters go down. The closest match would be Saitama from One-Punch man where Takamichi plays himself lowkey and would only resolve the problem quickly.
Following your standard adventurers guild trope, adventurers are ranked according to F-S class (lowest to highest in order), their power system further classifies S (Hero) class into lower, mid to high rank. The gap in strength between a lower rank hero class versus a mid rank hero class is large and this sets up the stage for Takamichi's entry as being overpowered right from the start.
Takamichi's quest for power isn't driven by the pursuit of power for the sake of power, it's more of him being true to his sexual desires and trying to find relief of boredom after reaching a limit then being told there are more hidden feature to be unlocked. He not an agent of evil that exists to torment but is a product of his pursuits to pleasure. While most of the jokes play around Takamichi's flaw of being a depraved sex maniac, he exercises some degree of restraint despite knowing he no one else can stop him. Just by showing this thing can seduce a woman into submission and any woman mating with him will release their limiter leveling their power to a higher tier. This gives another plot incentive for harem building now that women are incentivize to get in bed with him.
There's also politics and conspiracies mixed in the story that made me think this is a story which sex is a plot device rather than the end point in contrast to what conventional hentai is often known for.
The artist is known as Yonoki but I didn't find much information about him or related works. They fulfilled the basic requirement of producing beautiful drawn women and the panels are amazing. What I appreciate most about his artstyle is the range of expressions in visual story telling. When the scene is funny, the colors tend to be light and when it gets gruesome, the art style shift to a ominous set of shading. Even if the story is bad, I find it bearable to continue any series if they were good at rendering the art.
I don't mind the series being ongoing because it gives me something to look forward to it would be a bummer if the author went on hiatus or the manga got axed. There's just plenty of lore and mischief happening with this story that sex became the means and not the ends.
Thank you for your time.
