A beautiful story that’s even more beautifully illustrated that I could NOT translate properly, despite all my best efforts.

I would never say that I’m a manga guy, because so much manga is only in Japanese and even when it’s translated can be difficult to decipher and get the gist of. I’m probably just too lazy to be a manga fanatic, is the point. But I’m a huge fan of Bara art especially when it depicts thick, adult, masculine men who are fantastically comfortable with their bodies and their sexualities (like these works from Bo), or who learn to be that way over the course of an adventure (like in this story about a Japanese man visited by a rapey ghost in the night).

One of the most frustrating things is when one comes across a manga (especially what’s called a one-shot, where it isn’t part of a larger series but exists as a single, isolated short story) that has no English translation. This might not be such a hiccup, except that the type used in graphic novels is only occasionally machine printed, which is essentially what’s required to use OCR software to lift the words out of the panels and into google translate. Never mind that within the panels are many illustrated, hand painted and drawn characters, words, and phrases that can’t be read by any kind of software because they aren’t distinct enough from the illustration around them.

This is all to say that when I discovered Kikori No Shitei (or the Lumberjack’s Apprentice, loosely) I spent most of an afternoon trying to find a translation. When that failed, I looked for and bought some of the most recommended OCR software with the hopes that it might be able to swap the whole comic from Japanese to English for me. It kiiiiiind of did, but involved me taking each page, isolating and copying each block of text, pasting that into google translate, and then pasting that into a new photoshop document so that it would replace the original Japanese text. After about three pages of that, I decided that it wasn’t going to work out the way I wanted (and that I didn’t know enough to recognize when he software had missed a character or line that caused the meaning of an entire phrase to suddenly change) and I went looking for a third option.

What I discovered was a wordless version of the story that had been created by the author, and converted those images so that I could share them here.

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The essence of the story is that two men, a master lumberjack, and his apprentice live together in the woods. The master lumberjack has too much to drink one night, passes out drunk in bed with nothing covering him, and – concerned that he’ll get cold – the apprentice comes in with a blanket to comfort him.

What he finds is that the unconscious master lumberjack has an enormous, throbbing, dripping erection that has worked its way free from his shorts and begs to be attended to. The apprentice is shocked and dismayed at his reaction to the penis, immediately finding himself hard as stone, and unable to resist bringing himself closer to the big dong to smell it and finally lick, kiss, and suck it into his mouth.

This, of course, wakes the master lumberjack, who seeing his apprentice mortified and bowing in shame on the floor in front of him, reaches his leg out to pull the younger man right up against his aching cock. The apprentice is flummoxed at this response and can hardly believe it when the older man glides his hand across the younger’s erection to pull away a thick strand of precum. The master’s joy-filled smile and presentation of his well-ridden hole are all the convincing the apprentice needs to join his teacher in an epic and joyful flip fuck.

The story bounces around at first from imagined scenes of the pair with raging hardons to earlier interactions while they worked in the forrest. But once they begin to explore each other, you’ll be able to join right along in.

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I might never go to the trouble of translating this or sharing it here if this particular story weren’t so unbelievably thoughtfully and lovingly illustrated. On first viewing, it’s easy to be distracted by the hyperrealistic and enticingly crafted genitals, the furry, muscular bodies of each of the characters and the exaggerated facial expressions they make.

But on closer inspection, even the way the panels are blocked off, and the way elements slide, drop, or drip down across and through panels is meticulously thought out and brought to life. Not dissimilar from what Dale Lazarov and his crew do with their graphic novels. Most striking are the angles the reader is placed into; from POV of each character, to cutaway views of their penises penetrating one another, to inside the mind of the apprentice as he passes out momentarily on feeling his master inside of him, they build intensity and nearly force the reader to participate along with these burly men.

The pleasure that these men give to each other over the course of this story is palpable and stirring and I’ve now jacked off twice just to the skillfully shaded and gloriously imagined panels in these 24 pages. These men are MEN, and they open their bodies up to one another to provide an unparalleled kind of acceptance and pleasure. Sperm goes everywhere, and the story concludes with them holding each other tight. It’s fucking beautiful and the way that men are meant to connect with each other.

Please to enjoy:

“木こりの師弟 | Kikori No Shitei”

or the Lumberjack’s Apprentice

by Guffaw-Coccyx

As it says on that back cover, you can and should check out guffaw-coccyx.com for more shockingly beautiful and sexual illustrations, comics to buy, and even a game where you help a doctor test the penises of ‘working dads!’ I may be in love with this guy’s work.

Here’s to a whole new year of mansex cartoons and art, including the continuation of Julius’ “The Hardon Twins & The Mystery of the Golden Cockring”

I’d love to hear what you thought or what you’d like to see! And
Happy New Year!

-t