• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Comment Policy
    • Disclosures & Disclaimers
  • Resources
    • Links, Essays & Articles
    • Fandomology!
    • CLAMP Directory
    • BlogRoll
  • Features & Columns
    • 3 Things Thursday
    • Adventures in the Key of Shoujo
    • Bit & Blips (game reviews)
    • BL BOOKRACK
    • Bookshelf Briefs
    • Bringing the Drama
    • Comic Conversion
    • Fanservice Friday
    • Going Digital
    • It Came From the Sinosphere
    • License This!
    • Magazine no Mori
    • My Week in Manga
    • OFF THE SHELF
    • Not By Manga Alone
    • PICK OF THE WEEK
    • Subtitles & Sensibility
    • Weekly Shonen Jump Recaps
  • Manga Moveable Feast
    • MMF Full Archive
    • Yun Kouga
    • CLAMP
    • Shojo Beat
    • Osamu Tezuka
    • Sailor Moon
    • Fruits Basket
    • Takehiko Inoue
    • Wild Adapter
    • One Piece
    • After School Nightmare
    • Karakuri Odette
    • Paradise Kiss
    • The Color Trilogy
    • To Terra…
    • Sexy Voice & Robo
  • Browse by Author
    • Sean Gaffney
    • Anna Neatrour
    • Michelle Smith
    • Katherine Dacey
    • MJ
    • Brigid Alverson
    • Travis Anderson
    • Phillip Anthony
    • Derek Bown
    • Jaci Dahlvang
    • Angela Eastman
    • Erica Friedman
    • Sara K.
    • Megan Purdy
    • Emily Snodgrass
    • Nancy Thistlethwaite
    • Eva Volin
    • David Welsh
  • MB Blogs
    • A Case Suitable For Treatment
    • Experiments in Manga
    • MangaBlog
    • The Manga Critic
    • Manga Report
    • Soliloquy in Blue
    • Manga Curmudgeon (archive)

Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

March 27, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Little Butterfly Omnibus

butterfly_omnibusAs a feminist, yaoi puts me in a difficult position. On the one hand, I love the idea of women creating erotica for other women, of creating a safe and fun space where female readers can explore their sexual fantasies. (I don’t know about you, but Ron Jeremy has never factored into any of mine.) On the other hand, I’m often uncomfortable by the way in which rape is conflated with extreme romantic desire in yaoi; it’s disappointing to see the “you’re so irresistible, I couldn’t help myself!” defense trotted out as a justification for sexual violation. To be sure, the rape-as-love trope abounds in romance novels and mainstream pornography as well, but as a feminist, it makes me just as uncomfortable to encounter it in yaoi as it does to encounter it in an episode of General Hospital. Then, too, there’s the issue of the characters’ homosexuality, which is sometimes trivialized (i.e., they’re not gay, they’re just so good-looking they couldn’t help themselves!), ignored, or “explained” by a character’s tragic past, as if sexual orientation were a simple, situational decision.

Still, I’d be remiss in my manga critic duties if I ignored such an important publishing category. With a little encouragement from readers, therefore, I decided to take a chance on Hinako Takanaga’s Little Butterfly (DMP), a title I’ve heard praised by folks whose interest in yaoi fell everywhere on the spectrum between Can’t Get Enough to Not My Cup of Tea. And you know what? I liked it. So much, in fact, that I would recommend Little Butterfly to just about any manga fan as a first-rate character study about two teens exploring the boundary between friendship and love.

Those teens are Kojima, a popular, cheerful student, and Nakahara, brooding loner with a troubled home life. (Dad is abusive; mom is mentally ill.) Kojima finds Nakahara intriguing and makes a concerted effort to befriend him — overtures that Nakahara ignores or rebuffs until circumstances (namely, a class field trip) throw them together. To his great surprise, Nakahara discovers that Kojima is kind and sympathetic, while Kojima discovers that Nakahara is intelligent and mature for his years, qualities that Kojima greatly admires. (In a genuinely funny and revealing scene, Nakahara names an NHK newscaster as his “favorite celebrity.”) As the teens spend time together, Nakahara develops an intense, romantic attachment to Kojima that leaves Kojima bewitched, bothered, and bewildered: is he falling for Nakahara? Is he gay? And is he ready for a sexual relationship?

What makes Little Butterfly work is Hinako Takanaga’s ability to capture the ebb and flow of close, same-sex friendships; anyone who’s ever felt a strong attachment to a high school friend will recognize the dynamic between Kojima and Nakahara as it vacillates between intense candor and intense self-consciousness. As their friendship shades into romance, Takanga shows us, through her characters’ awkward body language and behavior, how uncertain both boys are about what to do next. In one chapter, for example, Kojima frets that his lack of sexual experience will be a turn-off for Nakahara (who, in reality, isn’t much more experienced than Kojima is), nearly derailing their relationship in the process. That realism carries over to their actual encounters, which are clumsy, start-and-stop affairs, characterized by miscommunication and fumbling as each boy tries to figure out what he feels comfortable doing. These scenes feel real enough, in fact, that they aren’t sexy; anyone reading this book out of prurient interest will be sorely disappointed.

Though Takanaga handles the boys’ friendship with great sensitivity, Little Butterfly has some dramatically unpersuasive moments. In one unintentionally comic scene, for example, Kojima throws his arms around a friend to gauge his interest in other men, concluding that he only has eyes for Nakahara. (Presumably he didn’t get the memo that being gay doesn’t mean you’re attracted to every member of the same sex.) Takanaga also lays it on thick with Nakahara’s home life; not only is Nakahara’s father violent and emotionally distant, he’s also willing to use his wife and son as a bargaining chip for a loan, while Nakahara’s mother is such a perfectionist that she suffered a psychotic break after Nakahara failed to gain admission to an elite elementary school. I suppose these things happen — undoubtedly, New York Magazine has published a trend piece about Upper East Side moms afflicted with the same condition — but these touches register as melodramatic excess, as if having an abusive father and a crazy mother wasn’t quite enough to explain why Nakahara sought an emotional and physical connection with Kojima.

Still, it’s impossible not to read Little Butterfly without growing attached to the characters; their sincerity and awkwardness are genuinely endearing. I can’t say that Little Butterfly worked for me as yaoi, but I certainly enjoyed it as a coming-of-age story (no pun intended) that captured the difficulties and joys of teenage relationships in an engaging, emotionally honest manner. Recommended.

LITTLE BUTTERFLY: OMNIBUS • BY HINAKO TAKANAGA • DMP • RATING: MATURE (18+) • 560 pp.

Share this:

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • Tumblr
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Filed Under: Manga Critic Tagged With: DMP, Yaoi

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Melinda Beasi says

    March 27, 2010 at 7:54 pm

    Well, wow. I really need to give Little Butterfly another shot. I read it quite a while ago, decided that the romance was rushed and unbelievable, and never gave it another thought. Even the collective praise of the manga blogosphere has not been sufficient to urge me to try it out again. But with this review you have done it. I hereby pledge seek this out and give it another chance.

  2. Katherine Dacey says

    March 27, 2010 at 11:03 pm

    I can definitely see where you’re coming from; Kojima’s initial interest in Nakahara seems a little far-fetched, given how withdrawn and hostile Nakahara is. On the other hand, I can remember how quickly (and illogically) I formed attachments to people at that age, so that plot contrivance didn’t strike me as terribly off-base.

    If you’d like, I’d be happy to lend you my copy of the omnibus edition; reading it in one sitting might make all the difference in the world (assuming you didn’t do that the first time around).

  3. Jade says

    March 29, 2010 at 7:32 pm

    Ah, that was a really thoughtful preface to the review! I wish I could comment more, but things have been stressful and it’s hard to pull the words together.

  4. Katherine Dacey says

    March 29, 2010 at 8:47 pm

    Thanks for the feedback! I wanted folks to understand that I’m not a knee-jerk yaoi hater, just someone who feels torn between liking the idea of it and not liking a lot of what I read.

    Sorry to hear things have been stressful in your neck o’ the woods, BTW. Hope things are looking up!

Trackbacks

  1. Tweets that mention The Manga Critic » Blog Archive » Off the Cuff: Little Butterfly Omnibus — Topsy.com says:
    March 27, 2010 at 5:11 pm

    […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by The Manga Critic. The Manga Critic said: New blog post: Off the Cuff: Little Butterfly Omnibus http://mangacritic.com/?p=3899 […]

  2. The Manga Critic » Blog Archive » The Next Off the Cuff Review…? says:
    March 27, 2010 at 5:37 pm

    […] my energy on these categories. Which of the following titles would make for a good follow-up to Little Butterfly? <br /> <a href=”http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/2966883/&#8221; […]

  3. Character studies « MangaBlog says:
    March 29, 2010 at 6:53 am

    […] Worth Reading) Nancy Thistlethwaite on vol. 1 of Itazura Na Kiss (Manga Bookshelf) Kate Dacey on Little Butterfly (The Manga Critic) Lori Henderson on vol. 1 of Raiders (Comics Village) Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. […]

  4. Everyone’s A Critic | A round-up of comic book reviews and thinkpieces | Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources – Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment says:
    March 30, 2010 at 12:57 pm

    […] Kate Dacey mulls over the dilemma of being a feminist and a yaoi fan in her review of Hinako Takanaga's Little Butterfly. […]

  5. Hinako Takanaga at Yaoi-Con 2010 | Manga Bookshelf says:
    May 20, 2010 at 9:37 am

    […] that the main relationship was too rushed to be truly believable. Though Kate Dacey’s recent review has inspired me to put Little Butterfly back on my list for another try, I can’t help but […]

  6. Short Takes: Calling, Gorgeous Carat Galaxy, and Scarlet « The Manga Critic says:
    August 31, 2010 at 11:44 am

    […] a Short Takes column focusing on yaoi manga. Back in March, when I reviewed the omnibus edition of Little Butterfly, I explained my ambivalence about yaoi: On the one hand, I love the idea of women creating erotica […]

  7. Short Takes: Calling, Gorgeous Carat Galaxy, and Scarlet says:
    December 27, 2011 at 2:37 pm

    […] a Short Takes column focusing on yaoi manga. Back in March, when I reviewed the omnibus edition of Little Butterfly, I explained my ambivalence about yaoi: On the one hand, I love the idea of women creating erotica […]



Before leaving a comment at Manga Bookshelf, please read our Comment Policy.

 | Log in
Copyright © 2010 Manga Bookshelf | Powered by WordPress & the Genesis Framework
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.