Ai o kurae!! (Suffer Love!!)

This is a story of despair, romance, and salvation, portrayed through Renaissance YOSHIDA’s style of using words to excess in monologues that fill the page, and recurring obsessive dialogues. Momoka, the manager of a brothel in an old redlight district who had experienced physical violation by men in her past, acquires a twisted gratification in selling men to men. UCHIDA, a young man working at the brothel, starts to exchange words with Momoka and gradually becomes attracted to her, but without responding to his feelings she closes the shop and disappears. Slowly, the fate by which Momoka, her mother and her grandmother are bound, the relationship with her father, and the discord she has with her younger sister becomes clear. What is it that will save Momoka, a woman who hates men, detests her family, and wants to hurt herself? This is a work telling of Momoka’s scars and recovery.

“I don’t mind men as individuals… but I detest the existence of “men” as a kind of vague group…” These provocative words, uttered in great frequency by the main character to openly show her hatred for men, are expressed with a tense drawing style. The work is uncouth and selfassertive, and yet we cannot help but feel, through the subtlety of this work, the necessity of telling Momoka’s story. There will be people saved by this work, and I would like to see it reach them. This is an award vested with the wish to see YOSHIDA continue to draw for many years to come. (YAMADA Tomoko)