All the titles I thought of sounded dirty

This is a going to be a pretty strange little entry, I think, consisting mainly of bunnies and boys’ love. First of all, my husband took new photos of our bunny, Kino, the other day, and I wanted to share because, well, bunny. You can see them here on flickr. My favorite is this one.

I was going to ask for people’s opinions as manga fans on NY Comic Con, because I thought I might go, but then I realized that it is on the same weekend as UPTAs this year, which I am committed to attend for work. Very sad!

So, okay, boys’ love manga. I know I always say I’m not really a fan, and then I end up talking about it anyway. It just so happens that in the past week or so, I’ve ended up reading one of the nicest BL volumes I’ve personally read, and one of the worst. I won’t talk about the worst right now, because I’ll eventually be writing a review of it for Manga Recon. The other, though, I will discuss a little.

The book is Hinako Takanaga’s You Will Fall in Love, which I first became aware of thanks to Johanna Draper Carlson’s very thoughtful review at the beginning of the month. Her review is really right on, and there isn’t much I can add to that, except to say that what it really made me wish for was more of itself. I don’t mean more stories like it (though that would be fine too), but rather I wish it could have played itself out over a longer period, so that the characters and their relationships could have been more fully developed.

The author of You Will Fall in Love is the same as that of a series I read a while back, Little Butterfly. Little Butterfly was three volumes long, and I’d mentioned at the time that perhaps if it had been, say, ten volumes instead, maybe it would have been able to be told slowly and organically enough to be really good fiction. I wish You Will Fall in Love could have had even three volumes to work with. It’s got so much potential to be more than just titillating, and even with the space it has, it manages that to a great extent. I just wish for more. The characters are really intriguing and relatable, and their relationships are just complicated enough to be truly engaging, but not so much so that we lose the dreamy glow of romantic fantasy. Where I feel cheated as a reader is in the process. As in most of the boys’ love manga I’ve read, everything just seems to happen too fast, as though the writer is constantly rushing to get to “good stuff,” despite the fact that the good stuff would be even better if it just took longer to get there. I’m not really talking about the sex here (though certainly that’s part of it), but really the emotional climaxes, which could be truly spectacular, if only they were harder earned.

My opinion on this is nothing new. It’s been one of the main complaints I’ve had about the genre all along, I know. I suppose what’s new for me is that I’ve suddenly wondered if the the story might have been different if someone told Hinako Takanaga that she had three volumes (or more) to write it in. Is it the readers’ expectations (or the publishers’ more likely) that are behind my discontent? Do the writers rush the plot and character development because they have to? And I’m not sure where this line of thought is going, really, especially since I doubt Japan is terribly concerned about my opinions. I suppose I keep putting them out there just in case someone is. :)

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