yaoi/boys' love

By Yuna Aoi
Digital Manga Publishing, 200 pp.
Rating: M (18+)

Awaken Forest is a collection of three boys’ love stories, each featuring men who use lying and manipulation to get what they want. The title story is a tale of two brothers—an author who was injured as a child and his older brother who is bound to serve him for life in order to atone for injuring him. When he realizes that his brother has fallen for a young editor from his publishing house, the author (who has been faking his ongoing injury for quite some time) decides to release him from service, but even then he uses cruelty and manipulation to do so, going so far as to order his brother to molest the editor in front of him.

The most blatantly manipulative character, however, is in the collection’s second story, “Loose Bonds,” which features a man named Ren who hires a former school bully to steal his best friend’s girlfriend, leaving the friend with nowhere else to turn but to him. This story is easily the darkest of the three, as it is the only one in which the victim remains unknowing to the end. “If you don’t want him to go outside, then make him never want to,” Ren says as he pricks his pet bird with a sharp pin to keep it from leaving its cage, providing a deeper glimpse into his true pathology.

This manga provides the beginnings of what could be an interesting exploration of the darker sides of human nature, but its stories’ scenarios are too neatly contrived to be believed, making it impossible for any of them to rise above pure romantic fantasy. Most of the boys’ love staples are present—rape, incest, pretty straight men lured into a web of “forbidden” love—and though the author manages to pull off these fantasies more delicately than some, there is no sense of anything richer lurking below the surface. The art, too, is very typical of the genre, featuring generically pretty, interchangeable men over dull, sparse backgrounds.

Though its stories’ themes suggest the potential for something deeper, in the end, Awaken Forest is just another disposable yaoi title to be consumed and quickly forgotten.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at PopCultureShock.

By Itsuki Sato
Digital Manga Publishing, 200 pp.
Rating: M (18+)

Seven years ago, just as his life was falling apart, Yoshiyuki Nomura was approached out of the blue by a small-time private detective, Yasuie, who offered him employment and, more importantly, escape. Yoshiyuki agreed and the two have been working together ever since, though they have more work shampooing cats than anything else. Their relationship with each other is easy and playful and Yoshiyuki has never thought much about Yasuie’s touchy-feely nature and frequent sexual teasing, but when Yoshiyuki’s estranged adoptive parents seek him out to schedule a marriage interview, Yasuie freaks out and rapes Yoshiyuki, claiming afterwards that he’s always loved him and begging him to stay with the agency. Being raped, of course, only makes it easier for Yoshiyuki to leave and he returns to his family, ready to go through with the marriage interview.

It’s really difficult not to become weary of the overabundance of rape in yaoi manga and in this case it really is a shame, because Live for Love is otherwise an extremely charming story. The relationship between Yoshiyuki and Yasuie is frankly adorable and unusually well developed for a yaoi one-shot, filled with playful banter and obvious affection. The humor, too, really hits the mark, as the men resign themselves to the fact that their business has devolved into a cheap cat-grooming salon. Even the art is charming, with attractive character designs and an ease of expression that matches the story’s off-the-cuff feel. What’s saddest is that the rape serves no real purpose other than to hasten Yoshiyuki’s departure from the detective agency, which could have easily been achieved by other means that might have also made his eventual return to Yasuie much easier to believe.

For those who can stomach the nonconsensual sex, Live for Love is smart, engaging, and fun, with good humor and endearing characters who deserve better treatment than they get.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at PopCultureShock.

By Yaya Sakuragi
Digital Manga Publishing, 200 pp.
Rating: M (18+)

Isa is a high school math teacher who discovers, not uncommonly, that one of his students has a crush on him. What’s unusual about this student, however, is that he happens to be a boy, Homura, who is also the younger brother of Isa’s ex-girlfriend. At first believing Homura’s advances to be a joke perpetrated in retaliation for his sister’s broken heart, Isa resists, despite recognizing his weakness in the face of Homura’s charms. Homura perseveres, Isa eventually succumbs, and the two of them begin a relationship.

Though this student-teacher relationship is problematic from the outset, putting aside Isa’s blatant irresponsibility as a caretaker of young minds, the story is really quite charming. The mutual history of the two characters gives them a place of intimacy to start from that helps to soothe the worst concerns, and Homura is so self-aware, it’s difficult to feel that he’s being taken advantage of. Both characters are lonely misfits of a sort—even Homura with his good looks and popularity with girls—and it’s gratifying to watch them finding a sense of belonging with each other as the story goes on. Though Homura’s impatience nearly causes him to take Isa by force at one point, thankfully he realizes this is not at all what he wants and does not go very far with it.

Yaya Sakuragi’s art is also a highlight. Her faces are expressive (both in the main feature and in the short extra story, “Unbreakable Bones”) and her lanky character designs help to alleviate worries about the age difference between Isa and Homura as well, as Homura’s body is unambiguously adult.

With its sweet, idiosyncratic characters and warm love story, Hey Sensei? is easy to recommend to any fan of the genre.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at PopCultureShock.

By Hiroko Ishimaru
Digital Manga Publishing, 200 pp.
Rating: M (18+)

Keigo Someha is a private detective who retrieves a boy he finds collapsed in the street and brings him home. To his shock, the boy (Emiya) asks to stay with him forever, which Keigo refuses until it turns out that Emiya has extrasensory abilities that can help Keigo in his work. Unfortunately, Emiya can also see Keigo’s hidden secrets, including the fact that he moonlights as an assassin. When Keigo discovers that Emiya has escaped from a secret government facility he tries to protect him, but with a tracking device implanted in Emiya’s neck the government is capable of finding him anywhere. Soon Keigo and Emiya realize they have fallen in love and Keigo becomes even more determined to wrest Emiya from the powerful grip of the government.

This manga has numerous elements that could make up an interesting story but they are all so underdeveloped that there is honestly no real chance. All the most intriguing bits–Keigo’s side job as an assassin, Emiya’s life-long isolation from the real world, the government project Emiya is being used for–are addressed only on the most surface level. Keigo mentions how surprised he is to fall in love after so many years as a killer, but he displays no evidence of any psychological damage or any real attachment to the job, so when he finally declares he is going to give it all up for Emiya’s sake, it’s about as dramatic as if he’d declared he was giving up sweets. Emiya’s innocence ends up being used only as running gag and a rather creepy device for explaining his ignorance in bed. The government project is barely explained and its main scientist’s sick fixation on Emiya is too shallow to be believed. The story’s art is serviceable and blandly attractive, but fades quickly from memory.

On the upside, Keigo and Emiya’s relationship is warm and consensual, even if develops much too quickly to be real, and there are a few nice scenes played out between them. Unfortunately this isn’t nearly enough to make up for the lack of depth throughout. Perhaps in a longer series, these characters could have been more fully realized, but as it is, Love/Knot fails to provide any real insight into the human heart.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at PopCultureShock.

By Yukari Hashida
Digital Manga Publishing, 200 pp.
Rating: M (18+)

Eugene Ratcliff is a smart, introverted university student, diligently working to maintain his scholarship status. After falling victim to a prank in which he is dolled-up as a girl, he unexpectedly catches the eye of a much sought-after fellow student–the dashing and impulsive Prince Willis. Unfortunately for Eugene, the discovery of his true gender only excites deeper interest from the prince, pulling him into an endless game of cat and mouse from which he is powerless to extricate himself. Willis pursues Eugene relentlessly, following him home for summer vacation, rescuing him from a lecherous professor, even arranging to have his dorm room burglarized. Yet despite the near-constant humiliation Willis’ attentions cause for him, Eugene eventually begins to return his feelings.

Tricky Prince strives to poke fun at the traditional seme/uke dynamic, but it isn’t nearly smart enough to pull it off. Instead, the story becomes just another example of what it attempts to mock. Though it does manage a few genuine laughs (thanks mainly to Eugene’s hostile wit), most of its other humor falls flat as well, mired in cliché it isn’t clever enough to transcend.

Unfortunately, the story’s tender moments are no stronger. Since neither of the two main characters are developed fully enough to truly be interesting, it is difficult to invest in their relationship with each other, a matter made worse by Hashida’s emotionally empty artwork. Though generally attractive, most of the story’s characters remain uniformly expressionless regardless of what’s going on, and Eugene’s apparently intentional resemblance to boy wizard Harry Potter is actually mildly disturbing.

Though Tricky Prince clearly aims to be a sly, sexy, hilarious romp, it unfortunately falls short on all counts, providing neither substance nor fun.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at PopCultureShock.