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yaoi/boys' love

BL Bookrack: October 2011

October 20, 2011 by Melinda Beasi 6 Comments

Welcome to the October installment of BL Bookrack! This month, Melinda and Michelle take a look at three offerings from Digital Manga Publishing’s Juné imprint, Yakuza Café, Sky Link, and volume three of A Strange and Mystifying Story.


Sky Link | By Shiro Yamada | Digital Manga Publishing/Juné | Rated YA (16+) – Ritsuki Ban is a troubled young man just starting university. On his first day, he collides with a man who praises him for being his type, and who (of course) turns out to be one of his professors. The professor, Takagi, pursues Ritsuki vigilantly, despite his surface apathy. How does Ritsuki really feel?

Truthfully, there’s a lot more going on in this story than what I’ve just described, but I sort of wish there wasn’t. This story, more than any other I’ve read recently, really suffers from the limitations of being a one-shot, which means that all of its best character development amounts to nothing more than false promises in the end.

Things start out pretty well. Ritsuki is a sullen guy with a mysterious past, written just subtly enough to be more intriguing than cliché. Takagi is aggressive and over-confident, but with enough sensitivity to dodge that cliché as well. Their relationship develops slowly (and reluctantly) in the beginning, with just enough real sexual tension to allow us to root for it. Then, perhaps pressed for time, the mangaka suddenly rushes them to being “in love,” eliminating all their troubles and sending them off on a world adventure. None of the volume’s early tension is meaningful by the end, and even the characters’ title-inspiring bond over their love for the sky deteriorates into sentimentality of the most cloying kind.

Believable romance is incredibly difficult to write in a single volume, and many BL mangaka don’t even try. But while I might criticize those stories as being simply “not for me,” Sky Link actually would be, if only it succeeded, and that’s what I find so heartbreaking about it. I love a happy ending as much as the next romance-addict, but I prefer ambiguity (or even sadness) over unearned happiness any day. Ultimately, Sky Link is attractive but disappointing. – Review by Melinda Beasi

A Strange and Mystifying Story, Vol. 3 | By Tsuta Suzuki | Digital Manga Publishing/Juné | Rated Mature (18+) – The first two volumes of this series are the story of a sickly fellow named Akio who is cured of his illness thanks to the sexual healing provided by his family’s guardian beast, Setsu. These volumes are pretty good, but volume three beats them by a mile.

That’s because mangaka Tsuta Suzuki is wise enough to know when a story is played out and brave enough to risk angering her fans by taking things in an entirely new direction. Akio and Setsu appear but briefly, therefore, as Suzuki devotes the first half of this volume to the absolutely adorable love story between two of Akio’s coworkers and the second half to a teenager named Tsumugi who has just encountered a guardian beast of his own.

We’ve met Akio’s coworkers—cheerful middle-aged boss Keiichiro Minamiura and stoic twenty-something Tetsushi Hatoki—before, and there have been hints that something might be going on between them. The first chapter devoted to the pair reveals their history before Akio was hired, with Tetsushi being drawn in by Keiichiro’s personality (“Surely it’s a gift, such hearty, carefree laughter”) but unable to make a move because he is convinced he will be rejected, since others have pursued Keiichiro with no success. The second chapter seems to take place in the present. I loved both unstintingly and without restraint. Tetsushi may seem impassive, but he’s really straightforward with his emotions, and Suzuki adeptly captures the qualities that make Keiichiro simultaneously warm and enigmatic. I could seriously read about these guys forever.

The second half of the book pales in comparison somewhat, but is better than expected. Tsumugi Shirota—who, as it turns out, is Keiichiro’s former step-son—is one of those manga guys who excel at all manner of domestic tasks, especially cooking. On his 16th birthday, he finds out that he’s been assigned these chores as a means of training to become the “bride” for the family’s guardian fox-beast, Kurayori. Kurayori is displeased to find that his bride-to-be is male, but Tsumugi’s diligence wins him over and he decides to continue protecting the family until such time as Tsumugi is grown and can provide for them. It’s a little weird how accepting Tsumugi is of this arrangement (though I suppose that’s better than inflicting a lot of spastic flailing on readers), but I am overall intrigued and glad that this setup did not immediately lead to sexytimes.

As a final note, the volume’s mature rating is likely due to content in earlier volumes, because this one is markedly chaste. Suzuki writes in her afterward, “On a personal note, I am quite disappointed that I was not able to portray for you the panting of a middle-aged man.” Hee! – Review by Michelle Smith

Yakuza Café | By Shinano Oumi | Digital Manga Publishing/Juné | Rated M (18+) – When Shinri Irie receives an invitation from his father, absent from his life for many years, to come live with him, he decides to accept. As it turns out, his dad (Daigo) is the former head of the Fujisaki clan, a yakuza group he disbanded in order to devote himself to being a better father. Many of his former devotees have been cast out, but a select crew remains to help the boss in his new venture: running a café.

The café’s décor is rather abysmal and their tea is even worse, so Shinri works together with the business manager, Zaouji, to whip the place into shape. Everything’s going smoothly on opening night until the disgruntled former clan members return with mayhem on their minds until they are quelled by the sight of Daigo’s phoenix tattoo. Really.

The romance angle comes in the form of Shinri’s relationship with Mikado, the leader of the henchman. He has reportedly loved Shinri for years and is dedicated to protecting him, but he has a weird quirk: whenever anyone touches the dragon tattoo on his back, he goes into savage mode—seriously, he has a line of dialogue translated as “rawr”—and, on one occasion, this leads to a nonconsensual encounter with Shinri. Not only is Shinri forgiving about this, he actually gets kind of wistful about it. “Even though it hurt and I was scared…. I didn’t hate it, either.”

The comedic element of a group of yakuza attempting to run a café is kind of fun, and I did like the scene where Shinri and Zaouji are dazzling some coeds with their looks and tea-making skills. But the business with the tattoos is just ridiculous, and Shinri’s acceptance of Mikado’s violent assault grates on my nerves. Worst of all, though, is the characters themselves. Mikado has almost zero personality. And if I told you to think of the most generic uke in the history of ukes, you’d probably come up with someone just like Shinri. I don’t believe in their relationship at all, but it’s not just them: a side story about Zaouji and his lover’s death has no impact at all because the characters are so flat.

If you want to read about yakuza and tea, I recommend Crimson Snow or I Give to You. There’s no need to read something this tepid. – Review by Michelle Smith


Review copies provided by the publisher.

Disclosure: Melinda Beasi is currently under contract with Digital Manga Publishing’s Digital Manga Guild, as necessitated for her ongoing report Inside the DMG. Any compensation earned by Melinda in her role as an editor with the DMG will be donated to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Filed Under: BL BOOKRACK Tagged With: yaoi/boys' love

BL Bookrack: August 2011

August 26, 2011 by Melinda Beasi 11 Comments

Welcome to the August installment of BL Bookrack! This month, Melinda and Michelle take a look at three offerings from Digital Manga Publishing’s Juné imprint, Butterfly of the Distant Day, I Give to You, and A Liar in Love.


Butterfly of the Distant Day | By Tooko Miyagi | Published by Digital Manga Publishing | Rated Mature (18+) – As a fan of Miyagi’s Il Gatto Sul G., I was looking forward to reading this spin-off/sequel, in which Riya Narukawa, one of the main characters of Il Gatto and a gifted violinist now studying in New York, accompanies his pianist cousin Saki to the swanky Berkshires to perform in a concert for young musicians. There, Saki unexpectedly reunites with Irving Russell, a British man with whom he’d had a two-year fling, and ends up renewing this arrangement in an effort to prevent Irving from seducing Riya, which Saki has somehow convinced himself is bound to happen.

Those looking for more about Riya and his boyfriend Atsushi will likely be disappointed; aside from the opening chapter, Atsushi doesn’t appear at all, and Riya is mostly used in a supporting capacity. Instead, the story focuses on Saki and Irving. As Saki falls back into the same pattern of sleeping with Irving in the evening and being dismayed by his detachment the following day, he remembers more about their time together—how it began, how it ended, how he treated Irving—and eventually comes to realize that it was his own insecurity about Irving’s first love that made him defensively insist that what was going on in the present was merely a fling. Afraid to be hurt, Saki had denied the possibility that something real could grow between them and had instead kept Irving at arm’s length while pursuing a series of brief relationships with women. Now that he’s finally realized what Irving means to him, he wants to break this pattern.

There’s a lot to like about Butterfly of the Distant Day. First and foremost, the issues keeping the two leads apart are complicated, leading to the expression of some fairly complex emotions. Secondly, both of these men are adults, so we’re not dealing with a first-love BL scenario but rather a situation where one of the leads has already loved and lost. Miyagi-sensei has also done her homework where music is concerned—Riya and Saki are performing legitimately impressive compositions for the concert (notably a Fauré sonata for violin and piano) and when possible solo options for Saki are discussed, all of the composers mentioned genuinely did write suitable pieces for that instrument. The only glaring error occurs in a key signature; it’s too bad no one told Miyagi about the order of flats!

I did find it a little hard to get into at first and, looking back, the opening chapter with Riya and Atsushi doesn’t really fit with the rest, but overall, it’s quite an enjoyable one-shot.

-Review by Michelle Smith


I Give To You | By Maki Ebishi | Published by Juné | Rated YA (16+) | Buy at Akadot – I have a confession to make: I totally judged I Give to You by its cover. I didn’t know anything at all about the story, but the cover was so interesting and so unlike typical BL covers that I had to check it out. One of the characters has a kitty snoozing on his lap, for example, and there are a couple of cat toys on a nearby coffee table. How could I resist?!

In this case, it turns out that the atypical cover was indicative of the contents, because I Give to You eschews common BL artistic and story tropes. Instead, with its stark, high-contrast art and moody yakuza themes, it almost reads like a seinen series.

Ryoichi Iinuma is on the run. He cosigned a loan for his lover, Hiroshi, and when Hiroshi defaults, the debt collectors come looking for Ryoichi. He ends up at a tea house run by Ren Shirakawa, who allows him to work for room and board. Gradually, Ryoichi begins to learn more about Ren and his helper, Ritsu, like the fact that they’re both former yakuza who are shunned by their neighbors. In fact, the only customer the tea house has is a former detective who drops by periodically to keep an eye on the proprietors.

Ryoichi is openly gay, and that fact plays a big part in his choice to accept Ren, since he has been ostracized himself both for his sexual preference and his indebted status. He takes it upon himself to try to rehabilitate Ren’s reputation in the neighborhood, and though he soon recognizes that his feelings for Ren (whom he believes is straight) are romantic in nature, only gradually does he learn exactly why Ren is purposefully subjecting himself to the scorn and animosity of “civilians.”

I Give to You nicely balances dark and light elements—the story of Ren’s past, for example, is full of despair, but Ryoichi’s optimistic personality helps steer the story in a hopeful direction. (The occasional comic relief provided by the kitty helps, too.) One negative is that some lines of dialogue were difficult to comprehend; this may be a translation issue. On the positive side, I’ve never seen any other BL story depict the moment in childhood in which its protagonist realized he was different from others, and I loved how this experience enables Ryoichi to deflect Ren’s attempts to send him away to pursue a normal life.

Ultimately, I Give to You is unique, interesting, and definitely recommended.

-Review by Michelle Smith


A Liar in Love | By Kiyo Ueda | Published by Juné | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Akadot – When smooth operator Tatsuki gets a call from his younger brother seeking dating advice for a gay coworker, things seem pretty simple. Accustomed to letting his looks do all the heavy lifting, Tatsuki falls into his usual pickup routine, ready to love ’em and leave ’em as always. So what’s a jaded player to do when he finds he’s fallen in love?

Reading that description (or the even more generic official blurb) A Liar in Love sounds like nothing special, and in terms of premise, it’s not. Things progress exactly as you might imagine. Tatsuki reacts predictably to the discovery of his own feelings, pushing his lover further away, though there’s never even a moment’s doubt that we’ll eventually get our “happily ever after.” The story’s characters, too, are more of the same. There’s no shortage of beautiful playboy seme or quiet uke in BL manga, and mangaka Kiyo Ueda doesn’t stray much from type. What she does do, however, is bring enough real nuance into those types to remind us that they’re actually based on real, honest-to-goodness people, whom we probably all know or can relate to on some level.

Tatsuki is a typical playboy, confident in his ability to pick up whomever he wants, and dismissive of concepts like love and commitment. He makes his living translating romance novels, and seems content to live as someone who constantly pursues romance without ever dealing with the real-life stuff that follows.

Miura, his target, initially appears to be the typical shy, gullible uke and little else, but as the story goes on, he displays real maturity and insight, particularly concerning Tatsuki’s well-meaning younger brother who, at one point, imagines himself in love with Miura, though he’s never felt attracted to men. It’s a scene between Miura and the brother, in fact, where Ueda begins to display real brilliance, as she carefully exposes the brother’s feelings–sentiments that would pass for true love in most BL manga–for what they actually are: a childish crush with no meaningful connection to romantic love or grown-up sexuality.

Ultimately, A Liar in Love is a kind of rare gem, in that it manages to be a genuinely thoughtful, mature romance between grown-ups with jobs, while completely adhering to established BL tropes, and all in a single volume. Perhaps it actually is possible to please everyone?

-Review by Melinda Beasi


Review copies provided by the publisher.

Disclosure: Melinda Beasi is currently under contract with Digital Manga Publishing’s Digital Manga Guild, as necessitated for her ongoing report Inside the DMG. Any compensation earned by Melinda in her role as an editor with the DMG will be donated to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Filed Under: BL BOOKRACK Tagged With: a liar in love, butterfly of the distant day, i give to you, yaoi/boys' love

Pick of the Week: Boys, Girls, & Ghosts

July 25, 2011 by David Welsh, Katherine Dacey, Michelle Smith, Sean Gaffney and Melinda Beasi 1 Comment

It’s a slow but not quite dismal week at Midtown Comics. Check out the Manga Bookshelf bloggers’ picks below!


DAVID: It’s a narrow but interesting selection at Midtown Comics. In one of my experiments in crowd-sourcing, I ended up pre-ordering Kikuko Kihuya’s Entangled Circumstances, which will consequently earn my Pick of the Week status. I admit that I’m shallow enough that part of this was because I really found the cover design to be striking. It’s also about grown-ups with jobs, which makes my heart flutter, though the protagonists also share a past of some degree of awkwardness tracking back to their university days. I’m really just that easy to please, though: make it look nifty, and make your protagonists old enough to drink or sign a lease.

KATE: Them’s some slim pickings at Midtown Comics this week! But if I had to pick something from the list, I’d choose the sixth and final volume of Time and Again (Yen Press). I admit that I found the first few volumes a bumpy ride, as the script abounded in slangy phrases and anachronistic jokes that detracted from the spooky atmosphere. By volume three, however, author JiUn Yun had a better handle on the material, and the series began to evolve into something more interesting: a character study about a troubled young exorcist. The final volume explores the family curse that doomed Baek-On to a life of lonely wandering, allowing us to fully appreciate the origins of his prickly, detached personality. Oh, and that flashback? It’s a heck of a ghost story, too.

MICHELLE: You’re not kidding about the paucity of options on Midtown’s list! Still, like David, I find myself intrigued by the new batch of DMP releases. Entangled Circumstances has the prettiest cover, it’s true, but some of the others fare pretty well, too, like This Night’s Everything, which definitely doesn’t look like your typical BL. It also involves grown up with jobs—apparently a politician and his bodyguard who coldly handles dirty work—and sounds like it has potential to be an interesting story.

SEAN: I am going to rebel against the Midtown list, as they are apparently involved in some giant Kodansha boycott or something, and make my pick the thirtieth volume of Ken Akamatsu’s Negima!, which Diamond will be shipping to all non-Midtown stores this week. The manga has been in its ‘Magical World’ for about 10 volumes now, and things are finally getting to a big action-packed climax, which will take several volumes and is still ongoing as of this writing. This is the start of it, where Negi finds out the truth about his mother’s so-called treachery and the enemy makes their move against his students. Also, I believe this volume is low on fanservice, so it’s a great one to pick up if you dislike that aspect of it.

MELINDA: Since Kate’s already put the spotlight on what would have been my pick from Midtown, the final volume of JiUn Yun’s Time and Again, I’ll follow Sean’s lead and go rebel against the list by naming volume eleven of Peach Pit’s Shugo Chara! from Kodansha Comics, which by all appearances should be arriving this week, but isn’t. Shugo Chara! is a long-time favorite of mine, thanks to its feisty, deeply-conflicted heroine, her idiosyncratic team of friends, heart-pounding tween-fantasy romance, adorable artwork, and identity-searching themes that resonate more personally with this forty-something reader than they probably should. This is the final volume of the original series, with volume 12 picking up the published chapters of its sequel, Shugo Chara! Encore!, thankfully continued by Kodansha Comics after being pulled from Del Rey Manga. So if you’ve never tried this thoughtful magical-girl series, this is the time to start!



Readers, what looks good to you this week?

Filed Under: PICK OF THE WEEK Tagged With: negima!, shugo chara!, time and again, yaoi/boys' love

BL Bookrack: July 2011

July 21, 2011 by Melinda Beasi 9 Comments

Welcome to the July installment of BL Bookrack! This month, Melinda and Michelle take a look at three offerings from Digital Manga Publishing’s Juné imprint, including two from mangaka Kazuma Kodaka—the debut volume of Border and volume three of the Kizuna deluxe editions—as well as the first volume of Akira Honma’s Rabbit Man, Tiger Man. Michelle also checks out Shushushu Sakurai’s JUNK! from DramaQueen.


Border, Vol. 1 | By Kazuma Kodaka | Published by Juné | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Akadot – Yamato heads a private detective agency staffed by handsome men who will stop at nothing for their clients, even if it means consistently usurping the police. They’ll also stop at nothing to get into bed with Yamato, some in a platonic way, some not so much. Yamato is a playboy who will sleep with nearly any guy once, but he’s haunted by the memory of someone he lost. Also, Yamato was once some kind of secret agent, when he wasn’t taking care of a group of boys he grew up with back at the orphanage.

If that intro sounds disjointed, it’s for a reason. There’s a lot going on in Border, and it doesn’t all mesh as well as one might hope. Is it a smart, sexy story about gay male detectives? Is it a character-driven exploration of love and loss? Is it a heartwarming tale of self-made families and brotherly love? Yes and no, for though this volume tries very hard to be all three of these things at some point or another, ultimately it fails to succeed fully at any of them.

That’s not to say that Border isn’t worthwhile. Rather, it feels like a work-in-progress, still feeling around for its place. Yamato is an intriguing and well-developed character, and his history and dynamic with his coworkers is by far the most compelling aspect of the series, and though it is frustrating that we get so little of it in this volume, that bodes well for the series continuing forward. Even the story’s mild case of everyone-is-gay (or at least gay for Yamato) doesn’t feel like a problem here, with Yamato’s detective agency basically functioning as a group of close friends in need of an excuse to spend all their time together in order to ignore most of the rest of the world. Kodaka’s artwork, too, is a highlight, expressive and carefully skirting the line between pretty and too pretty.

The only potential deal-breaker here is Kodaka’s treatment of her female characters. The series begins with a case involving women who are basically being raped in the name of porn. Women in refrigerators is never a great way to begin a story, and Kodaka takes things one step further by making the villain in that case a (jealous) woman as well. Hopefully this is not an indicator of things to come.

-Review by Melinda Beasi


JUNK! | By Shushushu Sakurai | Published by DramaQueen | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy from DramaQueen – “Junk,” as the opening pages tell us, refers to ambiguous DNA whose purpose is as yet undiscovered. It’s also the name of our inscrutable and rugged protagonist, a “free agent” who has been contacted by the mysterious X, who threatens to blow up an upcoming international symposium unless Junk agrees to lead him to a heretical religious leader called Nagil.

Junk agrees to work with X, and when his employers betray him by crashing the rendez-vous and attempting to take X—actually a wanted criminal named Cross—into custody, Junk whisks him away to a safe house, where things quickly turn sexual between them. After bonding (again, quickly) over similar pasts as subjects of genetic experimentation, Cross and Junk work together to take out Nagil.

This is quite a lot of plot for a BL one-shot, and Sakurai scores points for sheer ambition. Ultimately, though, JUNK! reads a lot like one of those Harlequin manga adaptations, where many plot details are skimmed over and everything happens so fast that it’s hard to really buy into any of it. Cross doesn’t have much expression or personality, so when he abruptly decides that he wants Junk, readers have no idea why. Love declarations are likewise sudden, and the fact that they happen while one of the characters is dangling over the edge of a cavern doesn’t really help with the believability.

Insubstantial and a bit cheesy, yes, and rather too detailed in certain areas for my personal preference, but JUNK! really isn’t a bad read. If you’re interested, do check it out—DramaQueen could certainly use the revenue!

-Review by Michelle Smith


Kizuna Deluxe Edition, Vol. 3 | By Kazuma Kodaka | Published by Juné | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Akadot – I am so glad I continued beyond that first, uneven volume of Kizuna, because it improved so drastically that I now eagerly anticipate each new, double-sized release.

What makes Kizuna so special is that it is a shining example of BL that is more than just a romance. There can be no doubt that long-time couple Kei Enjouji—illegitimate son of a yakuza who wants nothing to do with his father or his organization—and Ranmaru Samejima—a former kendo champ injured during an attempt on Kei’s life—are seriously in love, but there is also quite a lot of genuine suspense as yakuza drama keeps intruding upon their life together.

In this volume, Kei has been captured and badly beaten by yakuza with a grudge against his family, and a desperately worried Ranmaru teams up with Kei’s half-brother, Kai, to find him. The situation is milked for every bit of possible melodrama, but in the best possible way, culminating in a tense standoff between Ranmaru—who shows that his kendo prowess is still very much intact—and the guilty party. Once Kei has been taken to a hospital, the tone shifts to something more light-hearted, with a frankly adorable marriage proposal.

Aside from the storytelling, another thing that sets Kizuna apart is the way it’s drawn. It’s not particularly pretty, and features simple page layouts with multiple small panels. Although characters occasionally comment on Ranmaru’s loveliness, he is certainly no willowy bishounen, and other character designs include massive and stern Masa, Kai’s protector and unrequited/not really unrequited love interest, and Jack, a middle-aged, beak-nosed, hairy-chested assassin.

Kizuna is clearly a classic for a reason. If you’re a BL fan, I’d go so far as to call this required reading.

-Review by Michelle Smith


Rabbit Man, Tiger Man, Vol. 1 | By Akira Honma | Published by Juné | Rated YA (16+) | Buy at Akadot – Young surgeon Uzuki gets more than he bargains for when he chooses to treat the gunshot wound of a gangster in the street. The yakuza, up-and-coming boss Nonami, delirious from blood loss, remembers little detail about the incident afterwards, but has developed a case of Florence Nightingale syndrome regarding his rescuer, whom he believes to have been female. What happens when he finds out the truth?

On one hand, the first volume of Rabbit Man, Tiger Man feels like a collection of some of the genre’s most tired clichés. A brilliant, manly, totally heterosexual hunk accidentally falls for a timid, pretty, totally heterosexual little guy, who of course is quickly smitten back, to the point that he basically manipulates the hunk into ravishing him (only semi-consensually, at least on the surface) so that he doesn’t have to admit that he’s turned on. Pretty much everything I dislike most about typical seme/uke tropes is featured prominently in this manga, which should be enough to send me running far, far away as quickly as possible.

On the other hand, this manga isn’t quite the sum of its clichés. Even within their rigidly defined roles, both Uzuki and Nonami display glimmers of actual complexity, especially Uzuki, whose frustration with the treatment he receives as a young resident suggests that his job may be more that simply a shallow plot device. Unfortunately, like so many BL tankobon, a full quarter of the volume is given over to an unrelated secondary story (in this case featuring both rape and the vilification of its female characters—not exactly a winning combo for this reviewer), leaving its title tale sadly underdeveloped.

Can this series overcome its tired beginnings? We’ll have to wait for the next volume to find out.

-Review by Melinda Beasi


Review copies provided by the publisher.

Disclosure: Melinda Beasi is currently under contract with Digital Manga Publishing’s Digital Manga Guild, as necessitated for her ongoing report Inside the DMG. Any compensation earned by Melinda in her role as an editor with the DMG will be donated to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Filed Under: BL BOOKRACK Tagged With: border, junk, kizuna, rabbit man tiger man, yaoi/boys' love

Soapbox: Women’s Manga

June 29, 2011 by Melinda Beasi 69 Comments

Over the weekend, I participated in a discussion about josei manga (manga for women) on Ed Sizemore’s Manga Out Loud podcast, along with Manga Out Loud regular Johanna Draper Carlson and guest David Welsh. I was pretty surprised to be invited to this discussion since I’m not particularly knowledgeable about josei manga, nor have I written much about it here at Manga Bookshelf. In the end, though, I was quite thrilled to be there, as the topic resonated strongly with me in one way especially.

I’ve harped a bit on this before, in articles like Twilight & the Plight of the Female Fan at The Hooded Utilitarian, about fan perception of fiction for girls, and most recently in a mini-rant (scroll to item 3) about industry perception of boys’ love manga. One of the things that bothers me most as a fan of comics created for female readers is how little respect they command outside of their target audience (and often even within their target audience), to the point that we as an industry end up either apologizing for or deliberately concealing their intended demographic in order to try to make them palatable to others.

Publishers do it, and who can blame them? Would Ooku and Bunny Drop sell if they were marketed as part of a josei line? Would Wild Adapter have remained in print so long if TOKYOPOP had released it on their BLU imprint? Sadly, the answer is, “probably not.” Everybody’s research has proven to them that while women will buy books marketed for men, the opposite is simply not true. So who can blame them for trying to attract a broader audience, if all that means is that they simply decline to mention that a book was originally created for women? It’s still the same book after all, right? Do I want to see these things in print, or would I rather they just faded away, like all the books from Aurora Publishing and NETCOMICS, whose awesome collection of women’s manhwa apparently couldn’t survive even in digital form?

Readers do it, and it’s hard to blame them either. Who hasn’t been put in the position of having to over-explain to a skeptical friend, “I know the cover is pink, but it’s really good, I swear!” We explain because we think we have to, and we think we have to because we’ve been conditioned to believe that something specifically created with girls or women in mind is less well-crafted, less intelligent, and less universally relevant than something that’s not. I came down pretty hard on female readers in that earlier HU article for distancing themselves from “girly” stuff, but there are a lot of reasons why that happens, a lot of traps set for women to fall into, and it’s really quite difficult to avoid those traps since they’ve been in place for so long.

We’ve been told repeatedly (and many of us, recently) that certain traits most often attributed to works for women are inherently inferior to those valued by men, and it’s difficult to make an argument against biases that are treated as fact to begin with. Not all that long ago, for instance, after I’d taken the time to write a thoughtful, heartfelt explanation of what I look for in fiction, how I talk about it, and why I think that is important, a man commented with this reductive statement, “Melinda: Your school of fiction was established over 200 years ago: sentimentalism. It had its virtues, but there are good reasons why sentimentalism is generally deprecated today.”

Well. How can someone argue with “facts” like those?

And the truth is, I’m far from immune to the traps, especially when it comes to talking about romance comics, and particularly boys’ love, which I’ve made the mistake of critiquing as a genre in the past. Take my writing for the recent Manga Moveable Feast, for instance. Though I think I should be able to say, “Wild Adapter is an excellent manga,” explain why it is excellent, and leave it at that, what I found myself saying (sometimes subtly) throughout all my features was, “Yes, Wild Adapter is BL, but you should read it anyway, because it’s an excellent manga,” or even “Yes, Wild Adapter is BL, but you should read it anyway because this really smart man says it’s an excellent manga.” It was desperate and out of character, but I could feel myself doing it, and I couldn’t stop because I felt so strongly that the series was being dismissed out of hand specifically for that reason.

So what can we do when the biases are so clear? What can we even ask for in an industry that struggles for readers regardless of demographic?

Maybe all we can do is continue talking about it, at least for now. So, readers, what do you think?


Download the podcast, “The Plight of Josei Manga,” at Manga Out Loud.

Filed Under: UNSHELVED Tagged With: Josei, manga out loud, rants, shoujo, yaoi/boys' love

BL Bookrack: Wild Adapter Roundtable

June 22, 2011 by David Welsh, Melinda Beasi and Michelle Smith 43 Comments


MICHELLE: In celebration of the Manga Moveable Feast, we’re devoting this month’s BL Bookrack column to a discussion of Kazuya Minekura’s Wild Adapter. Joining Melinda and me is our fellow Manga Bookshelf blogger and Wild Adapter enthusiast, David Welsh.

There was a time when I’d visit bookstores several times a week to assess their new manga acquisitions, and I vividly remember spotting early volumes of Wild Adapter lurking on the bottom shelf. It wasn’t until 2009, though, that I was sufficiently swayed by public opinion and actually read them. I’d been borrowing a set from one of Melinda’s friends but knew very quickly that this series was something I would have to own for myself. Its vast reread potential was already evident.

What was your first experience with Wild Adapter?

DAVID: I was an early Adapter adopter. I’ve always found Lillian Diaz-Przybyl to be a very reliable source of recommendations, even when she was editing a book and obviously had a heightened personal stake in a given title’s commercial success. She’s a straight shooter, and our tastes often overlap, so I tried the series right out of the gate. Obviously, I’ve had no reason to regret that.

MELINDA: I was still quite new to manga when my friend Deanna Gauthier reviewed the first volume of Wild Adapter here in this very blog. I had never even heard of the series, but she was a huge fan, and after she had read all six volumes, she put them in the mail and sent them to me.

She had wrapped them in plain brown paper for shipping, and when they arrived, bundled up neatly in a anonymous little brick, my husband jokingly asked if she had sent me a package of cocaine. Later that evening, as I emerged from our back room, having ravenously devoured the first volume and eager to begin the second, I told him that he’d actually been right after all, because Wild Adapter was like crack.

MICHELLE: And then you sent that same package to me and got me addicted. It’s a vicious cycle!

As mentioned in the introduction to the Wild Adapter MMF, the series is composed in such a way so that each volume is self-contained, with the first volume serving as prologue and the fifth later filling in the gaps between volumes one and two. As I stated in the post referenced above, the fifth is my favorite (and remained so on a reread), partially because I love Shouta so much. Do either of you have particular favorite arcs?

DAVID: For me, it’s a dead tie between the first and the fifth. I think the thing that they have in common is that they objectively should not work. The first is all about characters trying to convince the reader that the protagonist is fascinating, which is such a recipe for failure in so many cases, but Minekura’s work is so subtle and assured that I found myself nodding emphatically. The fifth runs the very great risk of lapsing into Cousin Oliver Syndrome, inviting readers to see the leads through fresh, adorable eyes. Of course, Shouta is as complex in his own way as Kubota and Tokito are, so another common land mine is sidestepped. Minekura is amazing.

(click images to enlarge)




MELINDA: I agree with both of you, and probably I have the same answer as David, but I also am fairly fascinated with volume four, which is partly seen through the eyes of a lonely salaryman who snaps after killing a prostitute in a drug-induced rage. That volume uses the Japanese concept of kotodama as its overarching theme, and uses it better than any of the more supernaturally-themed series I have mostly seen it crop up in.

There is a quote at the beginning of the volume that stuck with me for a long time. “In this country, we have something called ‘kodotama.’ The spirit of words,” the salaryman says. ” Whatever you say with intent becomes… real. When I was in elementary school, we had to write essays on what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wrote, ‘Section Chief.’ My teacher laughed. ‘What a small dream.’ Those words hit the air, and I breathed them in and just as the teacher said… I grew up to be a perfectly small man.” He later tries to harness kotodama himself by repeating over and over again how he’ll get away with his crime and how everything will be fine. It’s kind of heartbreaking to watch, even though he’s not an especially sympathetic character, and it completely shatters the pattern we’d usually see in a supernatural manga by suggesting that the power of kotodama really is just all in our heads. It’s startlingly true to life.

One of the things Minekura does so brilliantly in this series is that she doesn’t just use her side characters as windows into the protagonists’ lives, but also as windows into the lives of her readers and their world, for better or worse, and sometimes that can be just as revealing.

MICHELLE: And sometimes their interactions with Kubota and Tokito actually affect how they relate to the world at large. Going back to Shouta, there’s a scene where he casually mentions to Tokito (unnamed at this point) that his first name might be Minoru. It’s obvious that Shouta thought he was going to be springing a good surprise, and is completely stunned when his comment instead triggers a traumatic memory and sends Tokito into violent freakout mode. The experience stays with him, and later informs his decision not to ask his parents about the arguments he’s been overhearing. “But I don’t ask them anything about it. I can’t. The moment I touch that subject, everything will fall apart.”

One of the things I like about volume five so much is that here are a couple of guys who arguably would be a bad influence on an impressionable kid, but because of the context in which he knows them (Shouta never learns the details of what Kubota does for a living, for example) they end up being a good influence. When Kubota, surprised by Shouta’s insightful observation, “Saying you don’t want to hurt something because it’s precious isn’t fair. Because it’s not an object… it’s a living being with a heart,” tells him that he’ll be a great writer, it brings to mind the kotodama idea all over again. Maybe Shouta will believe it and come to embody it, just because Kubota expressed confidence in him.

DAVID: I think you’re getting at something that’s at the core of the appeal of the series: the protagonists don’t really fall anywhere on the hero/villain continuum. They’re fascinatingly amoral in that they’re extremely focused on their own interests. Pretty much everything else is kind of collateral. It’s incredibly interesting to see these two do what amounts to the right thing and know that the rightness of that action is only a small component of why they chose to do it.

MELINDA: Your discussion here reminds me of a scene in the fourth volume in which we’re given a glimpse into Kubota’s past and his acquaintance with a woman named Anna who turns to him for consolation after her abusive boyfriend has run off with all her cash. Anna laments the fact that she always falls for “guys like that” and wishes that she could have fallen in love with Kubota (just a young teen at the time) instead. Later, when Kubota has beaten Anna’s ex-boyfriend nearly to death with an iron pipe, he says to her, “See? Aren’t you glad it wasn’t me?”

As a reader, we’re on Kubota’s side. He’s protected his friend from an abusive guy and (from our perspective) avenged her for wrongs done up to that time. But from another perspective, he’s just terrifying, calmly beating a man to a pulp with no real concern for what’s “right” at all, outside of the way things affect him and those he cares about in some way or another. And he’s far more brutal when protecting Tokito, whom he cares about much, much more.

MICHELLE: When Kubota kills in volume one, his mentality can be summed up by the line “It was him or me, and I always choose me.” After he meets Tokito, the jobs he takes may be dirty, but they’re not deadly. This side of him reemerges in volume six when his old boss, Sanada, orders Kubota’s replacement, Osamu, to kidnap Tokito and grill him for information related to Wild Adapter. Kubota’s revenge is swift, sure, and incredibly, incredibly lethal. Osamu realizes that he’s to blame for “baiting the monster,” which ultimately leads to an absolutely haunting page when Tokito and Kubota together take aim at Osamu and fire. They’ll leave you be if you return the favor, but provoke them and they will do anything to protect what they care about.

DAVID: And I think the key phrase there is do. I’m a big fan of talky manga where characters really articulate and examine their feelings, like in so many of Fumi Yoshinaga’s works. But the way that Minekura has these characters express the depth of their feelings for each other in actions is so effective and fascinating. It’s a brilliant execution of the “Show, don’t tell” mentality of storytelling. There’s terrific, astute, consise dialogue in Wild Adapter, but Minekura’s techniques in sharing the emotional truth of her leads is just amazing. It’s an appropriation and subversion of stereotypical masculinity, the whole “You touched my stuff” thing, and it’s been given so much urgency and truth.

MELINDA: That’s exactly it, isn’t it? That’s how Minekura so successfully creates such intimacy between her characters without ever having to pull them out of character by forcing them to reveal themselves with words they’d never say. In your post about volume three, David, you described the series as containing, ” improbably sexy characters posing through mostly outlandish scenarios, all of which manage to be unexpectedly involving beyond their considerable surface sheen.” And this is really how she manages that. Whatever else is going on–all the crazy plotting and stylized sensuality–it’s always grounded in emotional truth, which allows us to enjoy the cracktastic plot for all the fun that it is without sacrificing any of the stuff we’re really reading for. It’s satisfying on multiple levels.

MICHELLE: And it’s that very intimacy that helps the series to function as boys’ love without containing any scenes of overt sexuality. The art helps, too, of course. My favorite sexy pose is at the very beginning of volume six, where we first see Kubota lying shirtless in bed with Tokito’s discarded glove next to him, and then on another page see a shirtless Tokito holding Kubota’s glasses in his beasty hand. The glasses are such a part of Kubota, that for Tokito to be holding them in so familiar a manner is positively suggestive.

DAVID: Not to derail anything, as everything we’ve just been talking about is entirely true, but I feel like we’re neglecting the fact that the series is frequently, intentionally hilarious. There’s character-driven humor and some extremely clever scene construction.

MELINDA: I was thinking about that during our introduction, and trying to find good examples to scan in, but I realized that so much of it is hilarious over the course of a really well-crafted scene, it was often difficult to capture in a single page or two. Minekura’s humor is so much more clever than just a series of gags or punchlines.

MICHELLE: She does play with readers’ BL expectations a few times, though, by having Tokito make suggestive sounds while Kubota is beating him in a video game, or having them both play out a seduction scene for the benefit of the guys in a surveillance van outside. One of my favorite amusing things isn’t actually laugh-out-loud funny at all but just really neat, and that’s seeing the characters depicted in the style of the shounen manga Shouta is drawing. I especially loved Kou’s scientist persona.


MELINDA: Michelle, I’d say that Kou in general is some of what I find most funny in the manga. I absolutely adore his coded conversations with Kubota.

DAVID: Kou is a treat, no doubt. And that surveillance scene is still possibly the funniest scene I’ve ever read in a manga, just slightly ahead of the school festival in Flower of Life and the synchronized swimming in Sgt. Frog. It’s funny because that dialogue is note-perfect BL, right down to the faux-reluctance.

Minekura is an amazing mimic, and not just with BL tropes. Her seinen credentials also seem particularly strong, and I don’t think Wild Adapter would be out of place in something like Big Comic or Ultra Jump, especially with contemporary catering to a fujoshi audience. Frankly, her capacity to render credible, dramatic violence is right up there with the stars of the noir seinen category.

MELINDA: I absolutely agree, David, and I’ve wondered if there are regular MMF participants who have decided not to try Wild Adapter because they generally don’t like BL. I’m hoping that’s not the case, but I expect it might be. If so, that’s a shame. Not that there’s any guarantee they would like Wild Adapter, of course, but it’s definitely not exclusive to that audience in terms of appeal.

DAVID: I can honestly think of few series with BL elements that would cast as wide a net as Wild Adapter could.

MICHELLE: There’s definitely a lot about Wild Adapter that isn’t typical of the BL genre, and I totally agree that it would not be out of place at all in a seinen magazine. Fujoshi would see what they want to see, but for everyone else, the relationship between Kubota and Tokito could be read as a kind of intense bromance, like the one between Ban and Ginji in the thoroughly seinen GetBackers. In reality, though, the series run in a BL magazine (Chara). I’m wondering what about the series (if anything) does seem like typical BL to you.

DAVID: For me, the thing that’s most BL-ish is the lack of examination of sexual orientation or identity. It’s merely an intense and surprising relationship that happens to be between two men. There are asides where supporting characters wonder whether Kubota is gay or not, or prefers guys to girls, if that’s their reference point, but that’s just one component of the character’s mystique that people around him find puzzling. But Kubota and Tokito are both so enigmatic that a definition of their specific sexual orientation doesn’t really matter, though. For me, it’s one of those rare cases when that kind of real-world consideration wouldn’t make the BL elements any sharper or more interesting or persuasive. Minekura delivers their relationship without delving into specifics.

MELINDA: I agree with David about this being the most prominent BL element in the series, and I’ll also add that I actually quite appreciate the fact that other characters speculate about their sexual orientation, because it softens this issue for me a bit. Generally I dislike this aspect of BL, but at least Minekura acknowledges that same-sex orientation exists in the world and that people are thinking about these characters in those terms. Actually, along these lines, there’s a scene in one of the uncollected chapters of the series in which Tokito asks Kubota what kind of relationship they have, because somebody has asked him. Kubota’s reply is basically to say that it’s fine to just tell people something casual and vague, at which point he abruptly changes the subject. It’s a pretty interesting little moment, and it does make one wonder if Minekura might have planned to revisit the question later on in the series.

Other than that, I think the next most BL-like aspect would be the vilification of the series’ actual gay characters, Sanada (the yakuza boss who comes on to Kubota in volume one) and Sekiya, the youth leader from a rival group who is overtly feminized (in the Japanese version, he refers to himself with the feminine “atashi”) and frequently insulted by other characters using anti-gay slurs. The fact that both these characters are villains in the story actually reminds me a lot of Banana Fish, in which all the gay characters are rapists or pedophiles. Not that Banana Fish is BL (we’ve discussed that at length in this blog already), but you get my point. I’m not saying that Minekura intends to vilify gays. I don’t think she does. But homophobia is pretty common in BL, in my experience, so it does spring to mind.

MICHELLE: Wild Adapter does seem to have a touch of the everybody-is-gay syndrome that one sees in BL from time to time. Even though this isn’t overtly specified for the leads, you do have Sanada and Sekiya right off the bat, with each of them (in varying degrees) seeming to expect sexual favors from their underlings. So I don’t know that it’s a case of Minekura vilifying gays so much as the villains are just gay, too.

On the other hand, we do see plenty of other characters whose sexual orientations are not known or even part of the story, like Kou, Kasai, and Takizawa. And there’s some hetero boffing going on as well.

DAVID: For me, part of the appeal of the series is that Minekura is so vague about the specifics of the core relationship. It’s not that she’s entirely being a tease, because the emotional architecture is entirely clear, but she clearly has her own idea of what constitutes necessary detail beyond that. She either trusts her readers to come to their own conclusions, or she wants to leave the potential spectrum of those conclusions wide open, and she’s talented enough to get away with it.

MELINDA: I think you’re right, she does get away with it, and beautifully too. In that way, it’s more successful than Banana Fish and most other manga I’ve read in which the mangaka deliberately keeps the specifics of the main relationship vague. And actually, given the characters’ particular circumstances and personalities, I think it’s entirely possible (maybe even probable) that the specifics are vague on their part, too, which aids the believability of the whole thing.

MICHELLE: I’m conflicted a little on this point, because although I definitely think Minekura has skillfully crafted their relationship, I’m still a fairly literal-minded person, so I simultaneously wish for some kind of confirmation while being glad that Minekura isn’t giving me any. Does that make sense? Until I see proof otherwise, I’m going to assume they aren’t sexing it up. That obviously doesn’t preclude loving each other, of course.

DAVID: Count me among those who assume that they are sexing it up all the time, but I think your point is totally fair. And I’ve certainly enjoyed titles where we know exactly where the potential couple is on their road to intimacy. I’d list Sanami Matoh’s Fake (Tokyopop) as my very favorite from that subcategory. But I do have a weakness for mangaka who are confident and skilled enough to leave things unspoken.

MELINDA: And just to clarify my position, I’m assuming they probably are, but that it’s none of my business. So I suppose I’m in-between.

MICHELLE: And thus we provide a bit of something for everyone! :)

DAVID: And thus confirm Minekura’s genius.


MICHELLE: Earlier, Melinda mentioned that some regular MMF participants might have decided not to try Wild Adapter because they’re not big fans of BL, but another deterrent for some potential readers might be the fact that it remains unfinished (though, I stress, it does not end on a cliffhanger). How much does that impact your enjoyment of the series?

DAVID: It does make me sad that the series is on hiatus, but it doesn’t leave me dissatisfied with the series itself. As you both noted in the introduction to the series, the volumes are largely self-contained, and they can be enjoyed individually. (I can’t really understand how someone could read one volume of Wild Adapter and not want to read all of them, but that might just be me.)

There are so many reasons that readers of translated manga may not see the end of a series — the publisher cuts its losses on a commercially unsuccessful property or goes out of business altogether — that can result in perfectly legitimate complaining, but I always feel reluctant to get up in a mangaka’s business when he or she is facing health issues. I mean, I’d love to read more Wild Adapter, volumes and volumes of it, but I don’t feel any sense of grievance about it. Does that make sense?

MELINDA: That makes a lot of sense to me, and I feel much the same way about it. Wild Adapter could go on forever, and I’d be thrilled. And yes, I’d very much like to get to the bottom of the W.A. mystery and learn the truth behind Tokito’s past, but the overarching plotline was never really the point. So while I’d read as much of it as Minekura and Tokuma Shoten were prepared to give me, I don’t feel left in a lurch at all. I do wish we would see some official release of the five chapters that have been left hanging. I’d buy that in a second, whether they filled an entire volume or not.

I will admit a bit of utterly unjustified pettiness over the fact that various incarnations of Saiyuki (which I like much, much less) demanded so much of Minekura’s time when she might have been producing more Wild Adapter, but I realize how ridiculous and entitled that sounds. I mean, seriously.

MICHELLE: I’ve only read a tiny bit of Saiyuki (the first three volumes) but I definitely understand your grievance.

And, like you say, the plotline is not really the point. I’m less interested in W.A. and Tokito’s past (though of the two, the latter is far more compelling) than I am in the characters’ reactions to this. There’s a particularly poignant scene in, I believe, volume six where Kubota has engaged Kou to look for Tokito and says something like, “If he’s regained his memory, then you don’t need to tell me where he is.” He also believes there’s a chance that Tokito, like some amnesia patients, might forget everything that happened while he was “ill.” Kubota isn’t hindering Tokito’s quest for answers, but at the same time, he realizes that when Tokito gets them, things may be over for both of them. That is the part of the story I’m most sad we haven’t seen and maybe never will see.

DAVID: And I am becoming leery of series about hot, emotionally disturbed, possibly romantically involved boys who are linked in some way to illicit pharmaceuticals. Between Wild Adapter and CLAMP’s Legal Drug (Tokyopop), I’m wondering if these series ever get finished.

MELINDA: You do have a point. Sadly.

MICHELLE: I guess the only thing left for us to do at this point is wish Minekura-sensei a full and speedy recovery.

MELINDA: Well said, Michelle. Thank you, David, for joining us for this special edition of BL Bookrack!

DAVID: It was my pleasure!

Filed Under: BL BOOKRACK Tagged With: Manga Moveable Feast, MMF, roundtables, wild adapter, yaoi/boys' love

Pick of the Week: Trio

June 13, 2011 by David Welsh, Michelle Smith and Melinda Beasi 5 Comments

With Kate out of town, we’re a trio this week, perusing the expected arrivals at Midtown Comics. Check out our picks below!


DAVID: I’m not quite sure what the deal is with my pick. Shigeru Mizuki’s Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths (Drawn & Quarterly) came out months ago via Diamond, but it’s apparently just hitting Midtown on Wednesday. As I noted in my review, it strikes me as a little odd to go deep and dark before giving Mizuki’s best-known work a proper English-language release, but it’s certainly better than no Mizuki at all. This autobiographical tale of ill-used soldiers serving in the Pacific at the end of World War II isn’t quite as grim as it sounds, but it’s hardly a beach read. It’s deeply heartfelt, though, and it’s fascinating to see Mizuki apply his distinctive style to this kind of material. For those interested in the full scope of how manga can be used, this is essential reading. And if it succeeds commercially, maybe we’ll get GeGeGe no Kitaro.

MICHELLE: My pick is about as far from David’s as possible. It’s probably going to be exceedingly silly, but I am looking forward to the first volume of Bad Teacher’s Equation. It’s by Kazuma Kodaka, whose Kizuna I’ve really begun to enjoy, and is an older series, originally started in 1993. It’s a longer series, too, with its original ten volumes condensed to five for the bunko edition, which is what DMP has licensed. I admit the plot doesn’t sound thrilling—a high schooler enrolls in a particular school in order to reunite with his crush, the school nurse, but it seems the fellow is no longer as friendly as he once was and is maybe someone else altogether—but I suspect it will be a fun read anyway.

MELINDA: Probably my real choice would be to agree with David, whose review of Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths has made me quite anxious to pick it up, but I noticed another item on the list that intrigues me at least a little, so I’ll give it a spotlight here. I quite enjoyed Tooko Miyagi’s angsty BL melodrama, Il Gatto sul G when I first took a look at it, and even picked up a couple of its volumes in print. Its sequel, Butterfly Of The Distant Day ships this week, and I admit I’m quite interested in checking it out. After all, how often do you get to read yaoi about a “schizophrenic genius violinist”? Truth be told, I can’t resist!



Readers, what are your picks this week?

Filed Under: PICK OF THE WEEK Tagged With: onward towards our noble deaths, yaoi/boys' love

BL Bookrack: May

May 19, 2011 by Melinda Beasi 5 Comments

Welcome to the May installment of BL Bookrack, a monthly feature co-written with Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith.

This month, we take a look at three offerings from Digital Manga Publishing’s Juné imprint, The Color of Love, That Was Good, and Your Story I’ve Known, as well as a rare offering from Yen Press, volume two of Tale of the Waning Moon.


The Color of Love | By Kiyo Ueda | Published by Juné | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Akadot – Although we generally review new releases for these BL Bookrack columns, I wanted to take the opportunity to check out The Color of Love (released in 2008), as it is among several DMP works recently pulled from Amazon for violating their content requirements. After reading the book, it is hard to see why it was targeted, when much more explicit BL—Under Grand Hotel, anyone?—is still available for purchase.

Like many BL releases, The Color of Love is a collection of short stories. Most of them, including the title story, feature pairs of friends who are in love with each other but concerned about what this will mean for their friendship. In “The Color of Love,” Nao is worried that his best friend Taira might learn about his “wicked thoughts,” and so helps a classmate cover up her romance with a teacher by posing as her boyfriend. Taira is demonstrably jealous, and a confession ensues.

In “The Ideal Love,” a recent college graduate with a particular type gradually realizes that his former classmate might just be the perfect match. In “How to Be Happy,” Kouta can’t quite believe that his best friend, Kazuyuki, has confessed his love since Kazuyuki rejected him back in high school. In “Mix,” Yoshino can’t reconcile Yamazaki his best friend with Yamazaki his boyfriend, so removes his glasses during intimate moments to make his partner look like a blurry stranger. In “Friendship Formula,” Nitta attempts to cheer up a jilted (straight) classmate by confessing his own feelings. The one exception to this theme is “Direction of a Smile,” depicting a romance between a hotel front desk manager and a bellboy.

In all of these stories, the characters involved care about each other very much. Are they depicted in the act of sex? Well, yes, but it’s generally only a panel or two showing bodies locked together lovingly. The Color of Love is no more explicit than your average BL manga and actually far less explicit than many. I suspect that whoever filed the complaint didn’t get past the first page, which, admittedly, devotes its first couple of panels to Nao enjoying a private moment whilst indulging in those “wicked thoughts” of his. This might give an undeserved impression of overall smuttiness.

So, don’t let Amazon’s actions fool you. In reality, The Color of Love is far more nice than naughty.

-Review by Michelle Smith


Tale of the Waning Moon | By Hyouta Fujiyama | Published by Yen Press | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Amazon – Memory is a funny thing. When the second volume of Houta Fujiyama’s Tale of the Waning Moon arrived at my doorstep, my first reaction was “ugh.” I’d remembered clearly reviewing the first volume, at which time I’d declared it, “…unrealistic, essentially plotless, outrageously fluffy” and most emphatically, “Not My Kind of Yaoi.” What I apparently forgot between then and now, however, is that I also called it “energetic,” and “genuinely funny,” qualities I’m unfortunately having difficulty attributing to the series’ second volume.

Though this manga first won me over with its simultaneous satire of common BL tropes and RPG-style questing, Fujiyama’s sly humor doesn’t wear all that well. The questing in particular has begun to lose its luster, as the characters are sent out on a seemingly endless journey to acquire a series of objects required to get our hero, Ryuka, to his celestial destination, and what once read as sharp humor now resembles too closely the very things it strives to lampoon.

The same can be said for the series’ campy, everyone-is-gay landscape, which risks outright earnestness in this volume—a trait that should never be blended with scantily-clad cat boys. And were jokes about constipation ever funny? Perhaps I missed the memo.

That said, there’s a consistent sense here that the comic is in good hands. Even at her worst, Fujiyama writes smoothly and confidently, stringing us along with the promise of better things.

Will she make good on that promise in volume three? We live in hope.

-Review by Melinda Beasi


That Was Good | By CJ Michalski | Published by Juné | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Akadot – When I go into a BL anthology, I’m always expecting the worst. Questionable plot, shoddy characterization, outrageously rushed romance—these things are standard in any romance anthology. It’s almost guaranteed. Also common in this type of BL is humor so broad it borders on homophobia. Oh, and don’t forget: lots and lots of smut.

That Was Good has everything I just described and more. Its three stories each feature a previously heterosexual, dashing hunk who falls for a (questionably heterosexual) boyish beauty whom he forces into sex, but it’s okay ’cause HE’S IN LOVE. Other special features here include grown men making jokes about eating sausage to a toddler who catches them in bed, and vampire/elf cosplay, though I’ll admit the latter offers up the only genuine bit of humor in the entire book. Skip to the cosplay, people, just skip to the cosplay.

If I sound a bit sarcastic and jaded… okay, yeah, I’m feeling slightly bitter over having read the whole thing. Thing is, it was listed as an anthology, so I should have known better.

Michalski’s straightforward artwork is more crisp than expressive, though she at least depicts sex more deftly than some. This can’t save the book by any means, but it’s perhaps enough reason to read for the porn. Overall, however, the title is sadly ironic. That Was Good is one to miss.

-Review by Melinda Beasi


Your Story I’ve Known | By Tsuta Suzuki | Published by Juné | Rated YA (16+) | Buy at Akadot – Although I’d stop short of calling myself an outright fan of Tsuta Suzuki’s series, A Strange and Mystifying Story—sexual healing as administered by guardian beast isn’t really my thing—it is nonetheless memorable, and I’ve been looking forward to reading Your Story I’ve Known ever since the license was announced.

There aren’t any supernatural elements in these stories, which I consider a good thing. The first three stories, including the title piece, depict the relationship between Hart Matsumoto, a dim-witted but handsome boy with an abusive mother, and a yakuza named Shibuzawa, who was the kindest of his mother’s many boyfriends. Shibuzawa provides a safe place for Hart to go when his mother turns violent and continues to look after him into young adulthood.

Although he’s aware of Hart’s feelings for him, Shibuzawa maintains a policy of gentle discouragement until Hart’s mother is killed. Somehow, Shibuzawa ends up in bed with Hart—as consolation, perhaps? Giving the boy what he’s always wanted while withholding the upsetting news? Shibuzawa’s motivations here are quite complex, and it’s a shame that the story of his relationship with Hart wraps up quickly thereafter.

A similar problem plagues the next story in the collection, “Sautéed Onions,” a mostly forgettable story of two friends who’ve recently become a couple and are feeling insecure about the other’s feelings. It’s not bad, but it’s so short that there’s no chance whatsoever to get to know either of the characters. “As Long As You Can Hear Me,” about a fight-prone kid and the samurai ghost who protects him, fares somewhat better.

The real gem of the collection is the final story, “Without the Gods Seeing.” When Narasaki was in high school, he reacted harshly to a friend’s confession of love, and in the intervening ten years, has come to regret that he responded the way he did. When Wakakki, a handsome coworker, makes his own confession, Narasaki reacts more thoughtfully, taking the time to talk to Wakakki about his feelings and gaining new perspective on how much bravery is required to make such an admission to a friend.

It’s a really sweet story and Suzuki makes good use of her pages, painting Narasaki’s and Wakakki’s characters in quick strokes that define their personalities reasonably well. I absolutely love, for example, that it was Narasaki’s habit of feeding neighborhood kitties on his lunch break that caught Wakakki’s eye in the first place.

While a couple of the stories are disappointingly brief, on the whole this is an enjoyable collection, complemented by Suzuki’s unique artistic style. I’m not sure whether devotees of A Strange and Mystifying Story would find it to their liking, since it is quite different, but I’d personally rate it the better of the two.

-Review by Michelle Smith


Review copies provided by the publisher.

Filed Under: BL BOOKRACK Tagged With: tale of the waning moon, that was good, the color of love, yaoi/boys' love, your story I've known

BL Bookrack: April

April 20, 2011 by Melinda Beasi 9 Comments

Welcome to the April installment of BL Bookrack, a monthly feature co-written with Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith.

This month, we take a look at two offerings from Digital Manga Publishing’s Juné imprint, Love Syndrome and Right Here, Right Now, as well as BLU Manga’s Crimson Snow.


Crimson Snow | By Hori Tomoki | Published by BLU Manga | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Amazon – “Crimson Snow,” the three-part title story in this collection, is a compelling character piece, focusing on the surprising bond that grows between two very dissimilar people. When Kazuma, a yakuza gangster, is shot in the act of exacting revenge for the killing of his beloved boss, he has nowhere to go. Pausing for a moment’s rest in the snow, which he stains red with his blood, he is discovered by Yukihiro Shibata, the rich bastard son of a renowned tea ceremony master. Without a moment’s hesitation, Yukihiro takes Kazuma in and begins to nurse him back to health.

This reaction utterly baffles Kazuma. “Don’t you know what kind of person I am?” he inquires. His background makes no difference to Yukihiro or his servants, however, and as Kazuma comes to know his caregivers, he begins to understand why they’re willing to help him. For one thing, one of the servants is himself a reformed gangster, and for another, Yukihiro is so used to accepting only what he is given—a holdover from many disappointments in his relationship with his absentee father—that when he is actually adamant about something, the servants will do anything to make sure he gets it.

Despite the yakuza connection, “Crimson Snow” is actually a quiet kind of story, largely because Kazuma, for the first time in his life, has the opportunity to simply be still and spend time reflecting on his life. He loved his former boss, and loved being by his side, but it did lead him into a life of violence. Life by Yukihiro’s side is different, peaceful, and in time, Kazuma realizes that he must leave in order to avoid bringing ruin upon his friend. (“I don’t know how to protect things I care about. My hands only ever break things and take things away.”)

Awesomely, however, Kazuma makes his decision with a minimum of angst, and with the clear-eyed intent of paying for his crimes. I would have been perfectly happy if the tale had ended here, but the brief and satisfying “Galance” provides some closure to Kazuma and Yukihiro’s story. There are two other stories in the collection, as well. “At First Sight” is a simple and happy love story between two students who follow up on mutual staring with some highly consensual intimacy. “Cry for the Sun” is a little odd—being the story of a young man who falls in love with his father’s former lover—but the premise is interesting.

On the whole, I enjoyed Crimson Snow quite a lot. Hori writes that this was her first foray into BL, and she shows great promise both in storytelling and in art. (Kazuma, in particular, often looks disconcertingly realistic.) I’d love to read more by her someday.

-Review by Michelle Smith


Love Syndrome | By Yura Miyazawa | Published by Juné | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Akadot – As a regular reader of boys’ love manga, I’ve developed my share of pet peeves. Romanticization of rape, the excessively tortured uke, demonization of female characters–all are common elements of the genre that invariably make me cringe. The greatest sin of all, however–the one most hurtful and difficult to forgive–is that of the advertised single-volume story that turns out to be an anthology. This is the sin of the publisher, not the title, of course. Yet when reading for review, it’s the poor manga at which I’ll usually direct my wrath. Fortunately, in this case, that wrath is a bit subdued.

Most BL anthologies share a few tragic failings, and Love Syndrome is no exception. Though typically revolving around a common theme (in this case, friends-turned-lovers), the stories are rushed and underdeveloped, forced to a romantic climax (pun intended) by whatever means necessary, with little attention given to minor issues like characterization and basic believability.

Take a look at this volume’s first story, for instance. An unexpected water leak in his apartment building compels college student Serizawa to seek shelter with his old friend, Shinoda. Shinoda agrees, but inexplicably dictates that his guest agree to kiss him every morning. As Serizawa quickly discovers that he enjoys Shinoda’s kisses, he also finds out that Shinoda has been in love with him for years! Now Serizawa’s in love too! Hurray! The end. While the specific circumstances of the volume’s subsequent pairings differ slightly, the general trajectory remains the same throughout. Yura Miyazawa’s characters fall fast, overcome obstacles immediately, and declare their love (with a few panels left over for the suggestion of sex), all in the span of about 30 pages.

With all that in mind, though it would be an overstatement to suggest that Love Syndrome really *succeeds* at anything, it doesn’t completely fail either, thanks in great part to its author’s relentless good cheer. If these stories are obviously spun from the thinnest wish-fulfillment fantasies, they’re also crafted with a genuine delight for those fantasies. Miyazawa’s characters beam with love, creating a sense of real warmth within their hopelessly clichéd world. And in the cold, murky depths of the BL anthology market, a little warmth goes a long way.

-Review by Melinda Beasi


Right Here, Right Now!, Vols. 1-2 | By Souya Himawari | Published by Juné | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Akadot – If I were to describe this two-volume series as a time travel historical romance, probably you’d imagine something a lot more fluffy than what Right Here, Right Now! actually has to offer. Oh, sure, it’s not particularly deep or dramatic, but it also doesn’t gloss over some of the problems with falling in love with a guy who lived over 500 years ago.

On his way home from school one day, Mizuo Yanase decides to shirk his tea ceremony lesson and loiter at the run-down local temple instead. While sitting in the spot where the Buddha altar should be, he is suddenly tranported back in time to the Warring States period, where he is hailed as the living incarnation of Buddha. He is promptly introduced to Takakage, a boy about his age, who wastes no time glomping Mizuo and requesting that he become his “page,” which seems to be a euphemism for “bedmate.”

Mizuo demurs, and spends most of the first volume learning about Yamako, the land in which he finds himself, and taking combat lessons as a way to fend off his own feelings of insecurity because Takakage is so much more manly and mature than he is. After a brief visit home, he turns to find that Takakage has aged six years and become a hardened military general. Too, Takakage’s mother is pressuring him to produce an heir, and when a proposed marriage to an enemy princess seems like the path to peace for the people of Yamako, Mizuo thinks it best to remove himself from the picture, lest he be the cause of Takakage’s refusal and, therefore, the citizens’ suffering.

Mizuo is a bit of a milquetoast protagonist, but I still enjoyed his growth as he becomes more interested in trying his best, thinks of others before himself in a way that isn’t actually annoying, and ultimately resolves that he needs to find a way to contribute if he’s ever going to feel truly at home in the past. His dilemma over whether to stay with Takakage or return to his family is also a nice touch—many such stories give the characters an easy out in this regard, but not this one. The situation with the proposed marriage is also resolved more rationally than I expected, and with a minimum of melodrama.

As a time travel fantasy, therefore, Right Here, Right Now! is pretty decent. It’s in the romance department that things didn’t work for me. Right off the bat, Takakage is eager to get physical with Mizuo, which makes him look more like a horndog than someone actually in love. Mizuo protests for a while, then eventually submits without much enthusiasm. I can totally buy that Mizuo admires Takakage and wants to be by his side, but have a hard time seeing them as a couple.

In the end, Right Here, Right Now! isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly better than expected.

-Review by Michelle Smith


Review copies provided by the publisher.

Filed Under: BL BOOKRACK Tagged With: crimson snow, love syndrome, right here right now, yaoi/boys' love

BL Bookrack: March

March 31, 2011 by Melinda Beasi 12 Comments

Welcome to the March installment of BL Bookrack, a monthly feature co-written with Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith.

This month, we take a look at four offerings from Digital Manga Publishing’s Juné imprint, Honey Chocolate Pancakes, Intense Rain, My Bad!, and Then Comes Love.


Honey Chocolate Pancakes | By Keiko Kinoshita | Published by Juné | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Akadot – The two-part title story in this collection by Keiko Kinoshita (Kiss Blue) is alone worth the price of admission. When famous actor Tougo Kijima takes a sudden sabbatical from his job and claims to be unemployed and homeless, he’s taken in by pasty chef Chiharu Abe, whose creations Tougo adores. They soon begin fooling around, with prickly Chiharu gradually lowering his defenses towards his uncouth houseguest.

Of course, when he finds out Tougo’s secret and realizes he’s been lied to, Chiharu feels like a fool. Tougo claims that it wasn’t his intention to trick Chiharu, but the damage has been done. Kinoshita handles this scene extremely well, especially in the way she allows silence to hang between them when there’s nothing more to be said. The second part of their story is a little less polished, since we don’t learn exactly why Chiharu allows Tougo back into his life, only that he does and that Tougo is a pretty jealous guy.

Subsequent stories are less successful. The best of the remainder is “For Love,” in which a businessman named Miyasaka, who has nurtured an unrequited love for his friend Minami for ten years, believes the time has come to wish Minami happiness as he embarks on a relationship with a woman. Miyasaka’s pain and Minami’s confusion are nicely conveyed, though the abrupt ending is somewhat of a disappointment.

Neither of the other stories in the collection impressed me much. “Tomorrow Will Be Rosy” is about the efforts of a teenaged couple to consummate their relationship while “A Clever Man at Work” features a very manipulative character who purposefully acts incompetent on the job in order to frustrate his mentor into making cute expressions. He also lies about his background to elicit sympathy and is just overall very unappealing.

In the end, it’s a fairly uneven collection, but not a bad read by any means.

-Review by Michelle Smith


Intense Rain | By Shinri Fuwa | Published by Juné | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Akadot – It’s been five years since smooth operator Takaaki lost his college boyfriend, Ryuji, as a consequence of his own chronic infidelity. But when Ryuji turns up as a substitute at the high school where Takaaki teaches, old feelings rush back on both sides. Though Ryuji resists falling back into a relationship that was once so painful, confusing signals from Takaaki beg the question, can people really change?

If there’s one thing about this manga that deserves high praise, it would be the cover. The book’s cover image describes and contextualizes its contents more accurately than any review ever could. The tall, masculine aggressor, his tiny, disheveled prey, the melodramatic pose struck between their rain-soaked bodies, framed by flowers and dark desire–all these things together provide a pretty succinct overview of Shinri Fuwa’s Intense Rain. Perhaps the only the book’s inner cover could go one better.

If this sounds a bit snide, well, maybe it is, but there’s an element of reluctant praise that I simply can’t deny. For a book to be so forthright about what it hopes to accomplish (and so utterly successful in accomplishing it!) is something rare indeed. Intense Rain is, in execution, exactly as advertised, no more, no less. And if I might have hoped for more, can I really complain?

From the very beginning, Intense Rain exemplifies BL in its most surface terms. Seme Takaaki is dark, mysterious, vaguely brutal, and a predator of men and women alike. Uke Ryuji is delicate, emotionally frazzled, perpetually blushing, and helpless in his man’s arms. As maddening as these baseline characterizations may be, however, it’s the characters’ “growth” that is the story’s primary weakness. Takaaki’s transformation from classic rake to caring lover is left too much offscreen to be believed, while Ryuji’s acceptance of his lover’s sudden reformation is enough to send one’s book flying across the room. A secondary story involving the romance between a 30-something salaryman and a high school student fares a little bit better, though it is no less shackled by standard BL tropes.

What Intense Rain does offer is a strong dose of romantic melodrama and some pretty, pretty pictures, for those who have the craving. Then again, you could just stick with the cover.

-Review by Melinda Beasi


My Bad! | By Rize Shinba | Published by Juné | Rated YA (16+) | Buy at Akadot – I’m generally not one for BL comedies, much less those that center on underwear thievery, so I initially did not think I’d be reading My Bad!. That changed after I checked out Intriguing Secrets, another title by the same creator which was favorably reviewed by Melinda in a Bookrack of yore. I liked it very much, which prompted me to give My Bad! a shot.

It turns out that My Bad! is a quirky and amusing collection of short stories that share some common themes and flaws. I appreciate how often the younger, smaller men are actually the driving force in the relationship. They haven’t merely been sought out by some horny seme whose advances they initially resist, but are shown to have their own drives and desires.

In “Lovely Beast,” for example, it’s teenage Hiroki who is obsessed by Izumi, a tenant in the building Hiroki’s grandparents oversee. He goes so far as to let himself into Izumi’s place and make off with a pair of his boxers. Smutty discovery ensues. “Won’t You Be My Wife?” and “Miracle Voice,” in turn feature younger men falling in love with a housekeeper and the guy who makes the announcements on the subway, respectively.

My favorite in this line is “Stamp Please!” in which a huge, genial postal worker named Yuji Kikkawa delivers a letter to Ayato Mashiba. Ayato is instantly smitten, and sends a letter to himself just so he can see Kikkawa again. Throughout the story, he puts himself in Kikkawa’s path while simultaneously avoiding the desperate pleas of a stalkery ex-lover. The plot takes a dark turn, but I ended up liking it a lot. Shinba writes in her notes that she regards this as a serious story, even though others perceived it as comedy, and I quite agree.

Where some of the stories fail is in making the reciprocation scenes believable. I’m not sure if blame should be laid at the feet of the short-story format or if Shinba just couldn’t communicate the characters’ true emotions clearly, but there are a few stories in which I found the happy moment extremely abrupt. Probably the biggest culprit here is “Won’t You Be My Wife?” where a surly character is suddenly revealed to care about his housekeeper far more than was ever previously suggested.

On the whole, I enjoyed the collection and feel pretty certain now that I’ll like anything Shinba produces.

-Review by Michelle Smith


Then Comes Love | By Riyu Yamakami | Published by Juné | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Akadot – When happy-go-lucky college student Takahiro approaches aloof loner Midori to try to gain an introduction for a smitten female friend, it’s surprising to both of them that this would eventually lead to close friendship. But things get complicated fast when an encounter with another student forces Midori to admit to himself and his friend that he’s gay. Though Takahiro claims not to be bothered by this new information, he’s also clearly angry about Midori’s new relationship, calling his own feelings for Midori into question.

While this type of love triangle is a pretty standard setup in the “best friends turned lovers” BL sub-genre, Riyu Yamakami makes better use of it than most. Though there’s never any question about where the story’s primary relationship is headed, its journey is surprisingly believable and comparatively un-rushed. Even the characters’ “popular guy” and “aloof guy” stereotypes work in the story’s favor here, allowing Yamakami to thoroughly explore the way two contrasting personalities process all the various difficulties and emotions common to falling in love.

Yamakimi’s only real misstep is in her use of the love triangle’s third party, a smooth talker named Soejima who alternates between promiscuous playboy and sneaky matchmaker. Though technically no less a BL cliché than the story’s two leads, Soejima unfortunately crosses over into uglier real-life stereotypes, spouting lines like, “Gay men are always looking for the chance to have sex with tons of other guys,” as he works on seducing a desperate Takahiro during the book’s single descent into truly absurd fantasy.

Yakamimi’s artwork, though awkward in some of the characters’ more physical encounters, is generally a highlight, providing much of the contrast and emotional nuance that make her characters so compelling.

Though not without its minor stumbles, Then Comes Love is a genuinely refreshing addition to Juné’s BL one-shot catalogue.

-Review by Melinda Beasi


Review copies provided by the publisher.

Filed Under: BL BOOKRACK Tagged With: yaoi/boys' love

Fanservice Friday: Intimacy porn

March 4, 2011 by Melinda Beasi 42 Comments

I’ve had fanservice on the brain quite a bit lately, most recently thanks to this article by comics creator Michael Arthur at The Hooded Utilitarian. In it, Michael discussed his perspective on BL manga as a gay man and an artist, and though reception was mixed (for the record, I have pretty much equal appreciation for both his points and much of the criticism he received from female BL fans) what it really got me thinking about is fanservice for women, which inevitably led to thoughts about fanservice for me.

Pretty guys in shoujo and BL? Sure, I like ’em. I like them (maybe even more) in Korean manhwa as well, where “blond and willowy” also tends to equal “kick-ass,” at least in the stuff we’ve seen imported over here. It’s well established that girls frequently like their male idols to be pretty as, well, girls, and that taste doesn’t necessarily vanish with age, at least when it comes to fiction. The muscle-bound hunk has never done much for me, and while that may lend itself in “real life” to a preference for nerdy guys, I’m perfectly happy with the rail-thin pretty boys offered up to me in girls’ comics.

Pretty boys aren’t my real hook, though, not even if we’re talking porn–and when I use the term “porn” here, it’s in the broadest sense of the word, the sense that includes things like “food porn” and “shelf porn” or basically anything that feeds our inner obsessions with powerful visual stimuli. My real “porn,” what services me as a fan the way eye candy does for many, is emotional porn. Intimacy porn, if we’re going to get specific.

What’s great about intimacy porn, is that it is able to manifest itself in a number of different ways, none of which is exclusive to girls’ and women’s comics, though you’ll find it there in abundance. Some of it is clearly romantic in nature, like this scene from Ai Yazawa’s Paradise Kiss.

Read right-to-left. Click for larger image

The scene takes place in the first volume of the manga, when these characters, George and Yukari, are just barely beginning to explore their attraction. It’s the small bits of physical intimacy that really work for me here… George’s fingers circling Yukari’s, the soft kiss on the back of her hand, the tilt of his head as he leans in to kiss her–not the kiss itself (which doesn’t happen here, as you may know), but the anticipation of it, the electricity in the air between two bodies so clearly attracted to one another. The moment feels intensely intimate, though they’re standing outside where anyone could see them. That’s what I’m talking about here. That’s the way to service me as a fan.

With this in mind, I took another look at this scene from Jeon JinSeok and Han SeungHee’s One Thousand and One Nights. I’d mentioned in my discussion with Michelle that it was a ridiculously obvious image, and that its success in context was a testament to the artists’ skill with romance, but I think its success with me goes even further than that.

Read left-to-right. Click for larger image

Where indeed skill comes into play, is that the characters’ intimacy has been so well-established before this point, without the use of such blatantly erotic imagery, that when this stunning show of emotional and sexual intimacy is played out right in front of enemy Crusaders and the sultan’s court, it actually feels real. Sehera’s expression of devotion here is so honest, so utterly without embarrassment, its public intimacy feels not only appropriate, but genuinely romantic.

Intimacy porn doesn’t have to be romantic, though, and often the best of it isn’t. This scene from Kazuya Minekura’s Wild Adapter for instance:

Read right-to-left. Click for larger images

   

   

Though Wild Adapter is serialized in a BL magazine, the relationship between its two protagonists, Kubota and Tokito, is only subtly romantic. What the two really have is intimacy, and that’s what draws me so strongly to them and to their story. This scene has plenty of elements that might be typically used as fanservice–a shower, slouchy skinny guys, even nudity–but there’s no service here, not unless you count my kind, of which there’s service aplenty. This kind of intimacy–Tokito’s pain, unspoken, but acknowledged and understood between just the two of them–that’s my kind of porn, there.

To stray even further from romance, you can find this kind of intimacy porn far, far outside shoujo, josei, or BL. CLAMP’s xxxHolic, for example, was originally published in Young Magazine, a men’s publication, typically featuring bikini-clad women on its cover. Still, it’s filled with my kind of porn, including this scene:

Read right-to-left. Click for larger images



Here, Watanuki and Doumeki discuss the events of the day, while Doumeki makes his demands regarding the contents of rice balls. Their intimacy is apparent from the start… the verbal shorthand, the way the rice ball conversation weaves itself out of habit around the real issues at hand. At page 139 their surface banter comes to a halt, as Watanuki makes a rare, open statement revealing the true value of their relationship. It’s a gorgeously thick moment–you can just feel the weight of emotion in the air, all the unspoken trust and gratitude that Watanuki is usually unable to express–suspended just briefly in time, before Doumeki quickly swings things back into their comfort zone. The banter continues, no less intimately, but comfortable again for both of them. I probably read this scene ten times when I first picked up the volume. It’s exactly my kind of porn.

Intimacy porn doesn’t have to be between two characters, though. Sometimes an author is able to create this between a character and his/her readers. Going back to Yazawa for a moment, this time with NANA, note here how she’s used narrow close-ups of her characters’ eyes to open them up to the audience.

Read right-to-left. Click for larger image

Though the scene takes place between Reira and Shin, their circumstances make it difficult for them to connect with each other honestly. Instead, though they hide their feelings from each other, they’re sharing them with the reader, as openly and intimately as possible. This kind of intimacy has the effect of not breaking the fourth wall, but expanding it to include the reader, and can be even more powerful than something that’s established between characters. It’s difficult to do well, but Yazawa’s a master, and it most certainly contributes to my love of her work.

Is it fanservice? Maybe not, strictly speaking. But it services me better than a thousand pretty faces ever could on their own.


So, readers… what’s your porn?

Filed Under: Fanservice Friday, UNSHELVED Tagged With: nana, one thousand and one nights, paradise kiss, Romance, shojo, wild adapter, xxxholic, yaoi/boys' love

Pick of the Week: Girls’ comics sweep

February 21, 2011 by David Welsh and Katherine Dacey 7 Comments

It’s all shoujo, sunjeong, and BL this round, as the Manga Bookshelf bloggers make their Picks of the week!


From Melinda: My choice this week is probably pretty obvious, considering how much love I’ve already heaped onto SangEun Lee’s supernatural romance, 13th Boy. This quirky manhwa is easily one of my favorite currently-running teen series, made up of drama, humor, and outright weirdness in pretty much equal parts. Check out my thoughts on the last volume here. “… one thing I consistently enjoy about this series is how deftly Lee combines drama and cracktastic humor so that neither ever dominates the story … served up together with a helping of true whimsy, every piece of this meal is utterly delectable.” Yen Press ships out the series’ sixth volume this week, which looks to be packed with extra talking-cactus goodness–truly the way to my romance-loving heart.

From David: As a gay man who’s extremely picky about yaoi and boys’-love titles, I generally like to do advanced research before I commit to a title. I haven’t done full due diligence on Riyu Yamakami’s Then Comes Love (Digital Manga), but it does sound promising. Okay, so my ears perked up when I saw the word “outs” in the product description. Any time there’s the possibility that sexual identity matters even a little, I feel compelled to at least investigate a book further. So while I can’t promise I’ll pick up Then Comes Love, I’m curious to hear from people who may be familiar with the title, which sounds to me that it’s about people with lives and stuff.

From Kate: Do I have to pick just one? Because I’m torn between two Yen Press titles: the final volume of Dragon Girl, and <the sixth volume of 13th Boy. Dragon Girl is dumb as hammers, trotting out every cliche from the shojo manga handbook: secret siblings, omnipotent school councils, aloof guys that only the heroine can reach. I couldn’t hate it, though, because it’s fundamentally good-natured and just a little weird: how many stories can you name in which the heroine’s father is a handsome, globe-trotting ethnobotanist who wears an earring and a leather vest *and* used to lead the pep squad? (Come to think of it, I’d read a manga about Rinna’s dad. *Ahem.*)

I feel the same way about 13th Boy: on many levels, it’s the kind of story I normally loathe, as it features a bossy girl who single-mindedly pursues an unavailable boy. What won me over was the lively supporting cast, a cast that includes a walking, talking cactus who wears a do-rag, adores his owner, and occasionally transforms into a handsome teen. Beatrice (yes, I know: Beatrice?) may have started out as a comic-relief character, but he’s evolved into 13th Boy‘s most sympathetic figure, a lovelorn young man who’s willing to make big sacrifices for the chance to tell his owner how he feels. I don’t know about you, but Beatrice’s dilemma is making me wonder what, exactly, the spider plant in my kitchen is thinking.


Amazon.com Widgets


So, readers, what are your picks this week?

Filed Under: PICK OF THE WEEK Tagged With: 13th boy, dragon girl, yaoi/boys' love

BL Bookrack on the road!

February 17, 2011 by Melinda Beasi 1 Comment

BL fans may have noticed this week’s glaring omission of our BL Bookrack column, but that’s because this month, Michelle & I took our Bookrack act on the road!

Today at The Hooded Utilitarian, you will find a post, One Thousand and One Nights with Melinda & Michelle, in which Michelle and I take on Jeon JinSeok & Han SeungHee’s Arabian Nights manhwa adaptation Off the Shelf style!

Premise: “About a month ago, Noah asked if we’d be interested in having a conversation about comics here at The Hooded Utilitarian, similar to our weekly manga discussion column, Off the Shelf (at Manga Bookshelf), and our monthly art-talk feature, Let’s Get Visual (at Soliloquy in Blue). He suggested at the time that we might try discussing a mutually admired series (as we once did with Ai Yazawa’s Paradise Kiss), and that the subject need not be manga.”

So go forth, BL fans, and check out this month’s special BL Bookrack, complete with jokes about sheep lovin’ and pretty, pretty pictures!

Filed Under: BL BOOKRACK, UNSHELVED Tagged With: bl bookrack, manhwa, one thousand and one nights, the hooded utilitarian, yaoi/boys' love

Failure Friday: BL edition

January 28, 2011 by Melinda Beasi 40 Comments

One of the things about “failure” when it comes to something like fiction is, that to a pretty significant extent, whether or not something fails is influenced by the taste of the individual. Sure, there are particular standards we set up–ways we believe we can measure skill and craft–but so much of what makes a story work (or not) really comes down to taste, no more, no less.

As a critic, it’s part of my job to evaluate things against the standards set by history, the industry, and my peers, and as a blogger, it’s my job to give readers a reason to care about my conclusions. With so many manga blogs out there, what do I have to offer that’s unique? My background, perhaps, my personality… and a slew of similar items that mainly come around to “taste.” And in a genre like boys’ love, my taste is pretty specific.

Why the long introduction? Before I begin to discuss what makes a BL manga fail for me, I want to be clear that “failure” here means “failure to satisfy my tastes.” I’m specifying this, because I’m going to be making a lot of sweeping points about failures in BL manga, and since this genre lives and breathes on its readers’ private fantasies, I want to be very clear that I’m judging these manga against my own, not passing judgement on anyone else’s.

Part of the impetus behind writing a BL edition of Failure Friday was a visit to my old post My thoughts on yaoi (no, really), written quite a long time ago, when I’d read very little BL manga and had limited vocabulary for discussing what I found problematic. I’ve read quite a bit between then and now, and my tastes have refined themselves accordingly. I’ve also found books that defied my taste, by making me love them regardless of some of their content. So, now that I’ve disclaimed, here we go!


Four common BL failures (and some manga that overcome them):

1. Non-con: Rape fantasy is probably my most common deal-breaker when it comes to BL manga, most likely because it is so common in the genre. Even as a casual BL fan, it’s pretty much impossible to escape. And though it’s obviously a popular fantasy among readers, it’s definitely not mine. While rape as a plot element is something I don’t eschew (witness my love for Akimi Yoshida’s Banana Fish), as a precursor to romance, I find it personally abhorrent and far from romantic.

Successes: Some BL manga (and manhwa) I’ve found worthwhile despite the presence of non-con include U Don’t Know Me (Rakun/NETCOMICS), Gerard & Jacques (Fumi Yoshinaga/BLU), Ludwig II (You Higuri/Juné), and the second volume of The Tyrant Falls in Love (Hinako Takanaga/Juné).

2. Split focus: As evident by the range of works we’ve seen imported to the west, sexual content in BL manga runs the gamut from sweet, chaste romance to outright pornography. Now, any reader of romance knows that a believable relationship takes time to develop, and with so many BL anthologies and one-shots out there, it’s no surprise that many of them are unable to achieve that goal. There’s nothing wrong with plain ol’ porn, after all, and it certainly has its place in any grown-up demographic. Where BL writers frequently fail, however, is with story-killing indecision. One of the complaints I find myself frequently making when I review short BL is that, within a limited number of pages, and without a clear commitment to either story or porn, many manga simply fail at both. Mangaka, please choose! Tell a great story or give us some great porn, but please don’t do either half-heartedly.

Successes: A notable exception to this rule is Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ichigenme… The First Class is Civil Law (801 Media), which in just two short volumes manages to excel at both.

3. Identity white-out: While it’s understood that BL manga has nothing at all to do with queer identity, more and more BL appearing in English is managing to at least address the concept, while keeping its fantasy space intact. Books like Future Lovers (Saika Kunieda/Deux Press) and No Touching At All have proven that you can make your gay characters actually gay without causing a riot amongst female readers. And even among the usual identity-free BL, there’s still a difference between glossing over the characters’ sexuality and actively stamping it out. Even worse, are stories that cross into real homophobia, emphasizing the “shamefulness” of the characters’ sex lives, or trivializing them altogether by making all characters gay at random, like a lusty caricature of an English boys’ school.

Successes: Among series that deftly avoid queer identity, there are some that still manage to project a sense of positivity on the subject, like Eiki Eiki & Taishi Zaou’s Color (DokiDoki) and any book by est em (Deux Press, NETCOMICS).

4. Crack overload: I love cracktastic storytelling as much as anyone (and probably more than most), but when it comes to romance, I nearly always prefer believability over hilarity, if I have to make a choice. Even in a single chapter or one-shot, if the sex isn’t moving the story forward or, at the very least, really hot, it’s difficult for me to be interested. And anything that bothers to take up an entire volume without giving me something real, is pretty much a complete failure. Outrageous antics? Sexual humor? Pretty boys romping around? All of that is pretty much lost on me as a reader, and when I encounter a manga of that kind I mainly wish I could get my twenty minutes back.

Successes: This is probably the toughest kind of story to sell me on, as I’ve discovered very few of its ilk that have managed to woo me. Notable exceptions include Blood Honey (Sakyou Yozukura/BLU) and Deeply Loving a Maniac (You Higashino/801 Media).


It’s been quite a pleasure over the past few years to discover how many BL manga don’t fail for me as a reader, quite a few of which I’ve taken the opportunity to mention above. Whether there’s more BL being released today that suits my tastes, or whether I’ve simply discovered how to find it, I can’t quite say.

So, readers, what makes a BL story fail or succeed for you?



Filed Under: Failure Friday, UNSHELVED Tagged With: yaoi/boys' love

BL Bookrack: Yaoi for the New Year

January 26, 2011 by Michelle Smith 6 Comments

Welcome to 2011’s first BL Bookrack, a monthly feature co-written with Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith.

This month, we take a look at three offerings from Digital Manga Publishing’s Juné imprint, No Touching at All, volume one of Treasure, and volume two of The Tyrant Falls in Love, as well as BLU Manga’s You & Me, ETC..


No Touching At All | By Kou Yoneda | Published by Juné | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Akadot – The chief characteristic of No Touching At All is one that simultaneously boosts and deflates my enthusiasm for this well-done one-shot—it reminds me a lot of Future Lovers. Now, on the one hand, this is high praise, because Future Lovers is one of the best BL series I have ever read. On the other hand, being compared to something so awesome makes the very few complaints I have about No Touching At All stand out more than they ordinarily would.

Toshiaki Shima is awfully serious for a 26-year-old. When he reports to his new job and discovers that the stinky drunk he met in the elevator is his boss, Togawa, he’s less than enthused. Togawa is pretty insistent on getting to know his new employee, though, and somehow, after an evening out, the two end up in bed. Afterwards, Shima is upset. “I never learn,” he laments.

It turns out that Shima resigned from his previous job because the straight coworker with whom he’d been having an affair began to lob accusations of sexual harrassment towards Shima in order to save face. Shima’s tortured by that experience, and even when Togawa tells him quite plainly that his feelings have grown into love, Shima can’t believe it. Early in their relationship, Togawa expressed a desire for a family, and this conversation dogs Shima throughout the volume, making him certain that soon Togawa will tire of him and cast him aside.

This is similar to the plight facing the two leads in Future Lovers, but I think the constant reiteration of the theme here gets a bit repetitive. Both characters are very well-developed, so it’s not hard to sympathize with Shima, prickly and awkward though he may be, but man, that guy can angst!

I do like that the resolution to the story is satisfying, even though the couple’s problems haven’t been tied up in a neat little bow. This is something they’re going to have to deal with, and if there was ever a BL story I wanted a sequel to, this is it! In fact, even though I read an online review copy furnished by the publisher, I liked this so well that I plan to shell out my own hard-earned cash for a print copy when it gets released.

So, no. It’s no Future Lovers. But it is a story of two professional adults trying to have a relationship while dealing with their own personal baggage, a recipe for the very best kind of BL. Highly recommended.

-Review by Michelle Smith


Treasure, vol.1 | By Riyu Yamakami | Published by Juné | Rated YA (16+) | Buy at Akadot – Raised by his grandmother in a remote island village, teenaged Naoyuki is shipped off to the big city to live with relatives who can help give him “a broader perspective on things.” And though a “broader perspective” is indeed what Naoyuki receives, it’s probably safe to say that being coerced into exchanging sexual favors for tutoring wasn’t what grandma had in mind.

The “tutor,” Naoyuki’s older cousin Satoshi, is a tall, gorgeous bully, who loves to mock Naoyuki for his country-bumpkin ways nearly as much as he loves to bone him. And if you think I’ve had my fill of emotionally abusive, semi-incestuous love interests, you wouldn’t be wrong.

Mangaka Riyu Yamakimi pushes the envelope here by providing Naoyuki with a possessive lech both at home and at school, where Naoyuki meets sweet-faced Seitaro, who’s so determined to make “Nao” his, he follows him all around the school grounds, screeching things like, “What can I do to make you love me?”

With two such charming men in pursuit, is it any wonder that Naoyuki ends up passed out in the nurse’s office just a few weeks into school?

The story’s one saving grace is its protagonist, Naoyuki, who isn’t afraid to jump out of a second-story window to evade an unwanted suitor, or to punch out a roomful of would-be gang-rapists. And though it’s undeniably disappointing to watch him trudge down the well-worn path of BL heroes who fall in love with their harrassers, at least he gets in a few good swings on the way.

Yamakimi’s artwork is simple, but surprisingly effective, conveying a level of darkness that one might otherwise think she was entirely unaware of. If only she’d been willing to embrace that a bit further, what reads now as “disturbing romance” might have graduated to just “disturbing,” which would be a marked improvement in my book.

Maybe next time?

-Review by Melinda Beasi


The Tyrant Falls in Love, vol. 2 | By Hinako Takanaga | Published by Juné | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Akadot – This volume opens two months after the end of the last, with absolutely nothing of a sexual nature having occurred between Morinaga and his tyrant in that time. Finally reaching critical desperation, Morinaga jumps Tatsumi in the lab, only to discover that Tatsumi’s been waiting to see how long it would take him in order to determine the frequency of their future encounters.

While the ensuing bout of haggling could easily read as just plain crass, Hinako Takanaga’s sharp sense of humor keeps the banter running smoothly and hilariously. The volume then takes a serious turn, as Morinaga’s estranged family launches a campaign to bring him back home for his older brother’s wedding, despite their continued refusal to accept his sexuality.

Man, I hate to admit that I’m wrong, but at least with manga, there’s a bright side to it all. After my overall dismay with this series’ first volume, nothing could possibly have surprised me more than my sincere enjoyment of the second. Though the series still wades into the murky waters of nonconsensual sex, this time, the main characters’ intimate history and visible affection really steal the show, even during the story’s roughest moments. While this dynamic was certainly present in volume one, it wasn’t quite enough to cover for its unfortunate romantic trajectory. But even with that damage already done, Takanaga’s wonderfully rich characterization is enough to rescue the series.

Morinaga is more genuinely relatable in this volume, still ruled by his sexual urges but revealing some real thoughtfulness about his own feelings, particularly when confronted by a painful memory from the past. It’s Tatsumi who really shines here, though, finally letting some of his own feelings show, at least enough so that even a cranky, jaded reader like me might actually believe he loves Morinaga.

Despite the series’ over-the-top sensibility, there’s a real subtlety to Takanaga’s storytelling that displays some pretty powerful craft behind the flailing. Her artwork, too, is especially expressive here, even in the throwaway side story at the end of the book.

There’s no doubt that The Tyrant Falls in Love was one of 2010’s most eagerly-anticipated English-language BL releases. It’s nice to finally be able to understand why.

-Review by Melinda Beasi


You & Me, Etc. | By Kyugo | Published by BLU Manga | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Amazon – It can be hard to know what to expect with a collection of boys’ love short stories. Sometimes all are unappealing—the tales in Hinako Takanaga’s A Capable Man come to mind—but more often they’re a mixed bag. It’s much more rare for every story in a collection to actually be good, but You & Me, Etc. achieves this feat.

The collection is bookended by two stories about a pair of childhood friends, Keita Kanai and Iku Kirishima. They did everything together as they were growing up, including joining the junior high baseball team, but when Keita is injured in a car accident and can no longer play, guilt-ridden Iku gives up the game as well. Not only that, he distances himself from Keita and cultivates the air of a misanthropic loner. “Someday We…” recounts Keita’s efforts not to let their friendship slip away, and a dramatic scene in which he pleads for a return to closeness ultimately ends in a kiss. In the title story, the boys are unsure how to proceed from this moment, but end up working things out.

It sounds simple when described thusly, but there are plenty of moments that show how much the boys care for each other, and some amusing panels, as well. Two female characters play important roles—indeed, the first page features Keita’s girlfriend complaining that he doesn’t seem interested in making out with her—and I just generally love couples comprised of one seemingly surly guy and one more cheerful one. There’s a recurring theme of Iku showing rare vulnerability by clutching at Keita’s sleeve that’s nicely done, as well.

The other stories are equally as strong. “Cherry Blossom Pilgrimage” isn’t even a romance, though there are hints one could develop in time. Takahisa Sugaya is a ladies’ man, with plenty of girls but no real friends. He’s a bit of a slacker and is sure that upwardly mobile Yuu Fujishiro, generally considered to be the heir to the class presidency, would have nothing to do with someone like him. That is, until he discovers that Fujishiro is having a relationship with a male teacher. A genuine friendship develops between the boys, since Fujishiro doesn’t have to worry about appearing perfect when with Sugaya, and I would have liked to have read more about these two.

Indeed, that’s my one complaint—the stories end too quickly! Only the longest, the two-part “A Beautiful Tomorrow,” feels like it had enough time to develop. It’s the story of a famous writer who encounters the son of a former professor who has been cast out of his home by his step-mother after his father’s death. Their relationship builds slowly and naturally and, like the fellows in the title story, they’re never shown doing more than kissing. In fact, the volume earns its mature rating due to heterosexual content, not for the BL!

You & Me, Etc. was a very pleasant surprise. Kyugo doesn’t seem to have written too many original works, but her work is certainly impressive. I hope we see more of it soon!

-Review by Michelle Smith



Review copies provided by the publisher.

Filed Under: BL BOOKRACK, FEATURES Tagged With: no touching at all, the tyrant falls in love, treasure, yaoi/boys' love, you & me ETC

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