So What's So Bad About Konohana? Ohhh...
Awhile back it was reported that manga-ka Kazumi Yoshiyuk had his latest draft of the manga series Konohana rejected by the "all ages" magazine Champion Red Ichigo. He was told to tone down the ero, since the "guys on top" were now watching the manga magazine closely. This was surprising coming from a magazine who's slogan is basically "Push the boundaries as far as possible without making it 18+."
Of course, I naturally had to look the series up to see what kind of content "Konohana" has. It certainly couldn't as bad as Aki-Sora, right? Unfortunately using my usual methods, I found next to nothing about the series. I know of quite a few stories that run in Champion Red Ichigo- Aki-Sora, Yomeiro Choice, Canvas3, Vita Sexualis, Blue Drop, Aika R-16, Kimikiss, Maid in Japan, & Nyatto. But Konohana was a mystery to me. It seems it's a relatively new title, having only started about a year ago. But luckily I managed to find full issue scans of a bunch of older issues of Ichigo, including ones that contained the first two chapters (as well as a prologue chapter 0) of Konohana.
My thoughts after looking through them? Well first it should be pointed out that not every manga in Champion Red is as crazy as Aki-Sora is. While all the stories center around fan-service to some degree, most are pretty tame compared to Aki-Sora. That being said, Konohana IS as bad as Aki-Sora is in terms of ero content. By just looking at a mere two & a half chapters, I was shocked at the stuff this series got away with (well until now, anyway).
A common trend in ecchi stories is to have situations LOOK like they're erotic or sexual, but in fact more innocent then they appear & the reader was just lead to believe something else was going on. Like, say, it looks like a girl has something long & stiff in her mouth with white stuff around her chest, but it turns out it's just a melty ice cream bar! You see stuff like that in Champion Red all the time. Well the stuff in Konohana IS exactly what it looks like. You'll see what I mean, as I've posted some highlights from the first 2.5 chapters below. I would say the content below is NSFW, but since it runs in an all-ages magazine, surely it must be okay! Right? Proceed at your own risk:
Again, this is EXACTLY WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE. Kids of any age are able to buy this magazine legally. I couldn't find full scans of more recent chapters, but I did find some pics lying around the net here & there:
So as far as I can tell, the main little girl protagonist seems to get fondled/raped a lot. Why would they want the author to tone this down?