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MYSTERIOUS LOVE (Taishi Zaou)

Masafumi Tamura has had premonition dreams all his life that can predict illnesses, accidents, and deaths, but the strongest and most distatateful of these dreams that plagued him during middle school is one in which another boy lovingly fucks his asshole for hours on end. His first day of high school, the exact boy from his dream appears in one of his classes, setting Tamura off into an anxious spiral about his sexuality.

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A PLACE IN THE SUN (Lala Takemiya)

The most interesting thing about this manga is that one character’s love interest is a garbage man and you learn interesting tidbits about how dangerous of a job it is. I’m not sure what that says about the actual romances that that’s what I found most interesting, but hey, always wrap chopsticks in paper when you throw them away or else they could break and turn into little mini daggers and kill someone.

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HONEY DARLING (Norikazu Akira)

I literally reviewed about 20 old forgotten June titles in a row in the past couple months, so it’s time to read some other imprints for a change (June just happens to have the largest back catalog of yaoi published in English by miles, which is why I always seem to be reading their stuff). Let’s pick one from the vault of the current top dog in BL publishing – SuBLime!

Shockingly, this is the very first SuBLime title I’ve talked about on this blog, (mainly because I usually talk about older or sucky titles and they have neither), so I thought I should start with one of their first ones, Honey Darling from 2012. This is a fan favorite with enduring popularity, in fact just yesterday I let a fujo I was selling some stuff to online pick a free BL from my box of 20 or so doubles and she immediately and enthusiastically chose Honey Darling (over much newer titles like Twilight out of Focus and even Dick Fight Island, mind you).

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GLASS SKY (Yugi Yamada)

You may have noticed I’ve been reviewing a lot of Yamada titles lately, in fact I think I’ve pretty much reviewed all her stuff we have in English at this point except for Close the Last Door. The second volume of that is sort of valuable so I’m saving it for last, because that means it might actually be good. Not that the rest of her stuff I’ve read is awful, it’s turned out to be a pretty mixed bag – generally she has good characters and thoughtful stories, but not super appealing art (It is worth mentioning again though that her more recent work is decidedly better-looking, although we don’t have any in English).

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PICNIC (Yugi Yamada)

Yugi Yamada usually has decent stories, but they tend to be very slow slice-of-lifes. This, however, was a book of one-shots, so it forced her to speed things up. I think her story ideas and characters are her strong suit, so having more of that helped overcome the things she doesn’t do well, namely…drawing. It’s no secret I’m not a big fan of Yamada’s art, but this mainly applies to her earlier work like this – her art definitely gets more polished later on while still bearing her stylistic signature, although we don’t really have her most recent stuff in English.

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LOVER’S PLEDGE (Kae Maruya)

It must just be luck of the draw, but the last three BL I’ve reviewed have all pretty much been scored somewhere in the 5-6 range out of 10. It almost makes me not want to give this manga that score just because of that, even though that is how I’d rate this one too. 5 is a “good” score to me, it’s like if it was just average but still had things to like about it. Some may say I am a hard rater, but if you’re a veteran manga reader too you’ve probably also come to realize over time just how good or how bad a manga can be. When I first started reading BL, everything got a good score, because I just didn’t have as much to compare it to – perhaps you were the same?

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