What is Ecchi no City? Many moons ago, Ross E. Lockhart wrote a review of The Etched City in which he noted in passing that the book is rather heteronormative for a novel that nods in the direction of Decadence. There are reasons why it’s heteronormative, but they’re boring (basically, none of the characters wanted to be explicitly gay or bi). Possibly less boring, maybe, is Ecchi no City, a doujinshi I started writing in response to Mr Lockheart’s comment. “Ecchi” is a Japanese word meaning sexy, smutty or mildly perverted. “Ecchi no City” = “City of Ecchi”. This dubious project is probably best described as a parodic re-imagining of the romance plot of The Etched City by the part of my mind that never left the back of Year 8 math class. The artwork is inconsistent (though consistently bad!), and the content is puerile.

For anyone who doesn’t know about chibis, the only juvenile character is the fetus. Gwynn is in fact a swank bishounen, and Beth doesn’t really have cat ears. At present the level of smut is very mild, but that may change if I feel inspired in a pornographic direction.

If you’ve read The Etched City, enjoyed it, and you don’t like AU parodies where characters act OOC and end up in unlikely sexual situations, you probably won’t like this doujinshi!

Ecchi no City doesn’t make sense, but a passing familiarity with Bancoran, Takarazuka, A Clockwork Orange, Are You Being Served?, and Day of the Tentacle, might help clarify some of the nonsense.

Thanks to Ross E. Lockhart, Jenna for suggesting the theme of Beth picking up girls and drawing pictures of them, Roz Kaveney for the “female virtue” line on p.9, Christian Read for the black, mauve and plaid on p.11, and to Laurie and Scott for inspirational thoughts.

Ecchi no City archive