Ellie Mamahara is a fairly prolific mangaka but I think has only three English-licensed titles – unfortunately none of which are Funky City Bad Time, the clear winner of Yaoi Title Most Likely to Be Shared With an Asian Rap Album Name Translated by Siri
The other two are Double Cast and Baseball Heaven, the latter of which shares this book’s peculiar feature of having the mangaka’s name displayed more prominently on the spine than the title itself, separated by a colon. There’s maybe about five mangakas I can think of whose names might draw more attention than a book’s title and would justify this odd choice, and Ellie Mamahara is nowhere near the top of that list, so your guess is as good as mine.
Alley is an OT-rated Blu title (yet my copy has a parental advisory sticker on the front for some reason) with a puzzling title, since there is not a single scene in an alleyway or any significance of one to the two main characters (sometimes this stuff gets lost in translation I guess, but then again lots of yaoi titles don’t really make much sense), unless I just really wasn’t paying attention. Atsushi (light hair) and Shusuke (dark hair) are two childhood best friends who grow apart when the latter studies abroad in England, leaving the former resentful over the abruptness of his departure and bitter with unresolved feelings. When Shusuke suddenly returns six years later, Atsushi struggles to reconnect with him amidst the realization that he still loves him.
Childhood friends/crushes reconnecting as adults must be the premise of like a fifth of all yaoi books, so this is well-trampled ground, but at least that makes it hard to fuck it up. I’m not a cynic when it comes to yaoi tropes (we all know how much I love school stories and those are probably the worst when it comes to those), but Alley doesn’t really have much that elevates it past formulaic BL fare. The story is predictable even by trope standards and the art is unexciting and sub-par, with consistent anatomy issues and lips that look like they belong on a botox-addicted aging porn star. The mangaka seemed to enjoy drawing Atsushi’s girl nephews more than the main characters, as they seemed much more lively and detailed. Despite all this, the story is heartwarming and sweet and managed to be an enjoyable read, so I’m a bit conflicted over it.
When I think about it as just a shounen-ai instead of yaoi (it’s an OT after all), it raises my opinion of it, because its strong suits are all elements that make a good shounen-ai. I mean, it wasn’t bad, it was just..dull. Like, I don’t even have any labels to tag it with besides “yaoi hands,” it’s that boring. The back summary promises a “kinky match-up party” which was akin to your friend telling you about a wild shindig he’s throwing at his house with hookers and blackjack but when you get there it’s just five dudes from his work sitting around drinking Miller Lite – the kinkiest thing that happens is Atsushi shows up in a panda costume from a festival he was working and promptly leaves with Shusuke, and then they proceed to have a long conversation in public while he’s still wearing it which somewhat seems like a cop-out to avoid drawing one less face. Drawing quality is one of those things that probably won’t affect a rating much if it’s good to above-average (in that range, it’s usually more a personal stylistic preference thing), but it can be really detrimental if it’s noticeably bad. There are many yaoi books with blah stories that are made enjoyable by good art, but the other way around is trickier – especially if the characters don’t have attractive faces. Not that this one falls into the latter category, I’m mainly just generalizing here. Manga is a visual medium after all, and if you didn’t care about the art you’d probably just be reading novels or smutty parody AO3 stories.
Mamahara’s way of drawing faces is a bit hit or miss. Sometimes they look fine but other times they look too plain, too expressionless, or have too much lip. Sometimes this works ok:
…and sometimes they look like the younger Japanese male equivalents of Joan Rivers and Lisa Rinna.
Still, ordinary though the plot was and aformentioned predictability aside, it was charming, easy to follow, and the characters looked different enough to easily tell apart – although for a while I was confused about the relationships of some of the secondary characters to the main ones. There was some jumpy parts in the plot but it mostly flowed well. I also have to give Mamahara props for not relying on cliches – both characters stood as equals physically and emotionally and if not for Shusuke narrating (thus you know his personality right off the bat), you might not guess who has which role right away. And, she does give extra attention to the ‘love’ scene (not plural) in terms of shading and composition.
So I mean, there’s certainly worse BL out there, but there’s definitely better. This one falls squarely in the middle of the pack somewhere. It may be worth noting that this title has a good MAL score, almost an 8 actually, so plenty of people out there did like it more than me. If you like your romance served with a helping of the casual authenticity of slice-of-life stories but aren’t too bothered by some pretty questionable anatomy, this cute tale should give you your romance fix.
(TL;DR) On the one hand it’s a fairly forgettable one-shot that is made worse by dull art, but on the other the story is sweet and well-executed with characters that at least mostly avoid seme/uke cliches, and manages to be an enjoyable read in the end despite its issues. Every element of this book has been done better elsewhere, but if you like this brand of idyllic shounen-ai it’s a charming read – just be ready for some yaoi hands (and even yaoi feet).