It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed a Naduki Koujima title, the last one was Naughty but Nice which was another of her early works like this one. Our Kingdom is one of her most well-known manga despite being sort of incomplete, and it embodies all the things you can usually find in her work – school settings, rapey semes, cute little big-eyed ukes, and uncomfortable power-imbalanced relationships between them. Oh yeah, and crotch grabbing and forceful handjobs. She really, really loves crotch grabbing and forceful handjobs…
Our Kingdom was one of June’s early licenses in 2000, back when they were ok with licensing longer stuff. Vols. 1-4 and Arabian Nights (a spin-off side story) are rated OT while volumes 5 and 6 are rated M, making it one of their first M releases. The central characters in here are high-school aged Akira and his half-American cousin Rei, who get called to their estranged grandmother’s mansion and join her household in order to “compete” to take over her business empire and substantial wealth that comes with it. Other members of the family and their entourage join the story and each get paired off together, making it a cast chock full of rich gay men.
Rei is quick to crush on Akira and quickly pushes his feelings on him, oblivious to how Akira feels about this. Even when Akira finally acquiesces and starts to feel the same about Rei, Rei is extremely pushy and controlling and their relationship was yucky-feeling. This was pretty much the exact same relationship dynamics as Naughty but Nice (except that one had a big age gap which made it more yucky) and judging by the summaries of some of her other works it’s more the norm than the exception in what she writes – she really loves rapey semes.
Their physical intimacy develops along the same lines as every couple in this manga – forceful crotch-grabbing and then a forceful handjob – but following typical yaoi logic in relationship development, by the time they actually have sex they both really want it, if that helps you feel less gross about.
The secondary couple in here is the house steward Okumiya who takes a liking to Rei’s bodyguard Shigure and comes onto him in the same forceful way that Rei comes onto Akira. I liked this couple a little bit more than Rei and Akira, simply because I like the way she draws adult characters better than teenage ones (ie without insanely exaggerated eyes).
The other people that end up getting paired up in here are not as important to the core story, but suffice it to say no male character is wasted in here on heterosexuality. The plot is quite silly and it mostly just serves to create scenarios in which the characters can either kiss or get mad at each other or both. The main settings are the mansion Rei and Akira live in plus their school, with a few side-settings thrown in that simply feel like an excuse for a change of scenery. There are long stretches of pages or scenarios with just frivolous side stories or arguments, and I found myself saying “where’s the BL?” a lot – sometimes all you get for a while is just their faces really close together, and when someone does get kissed it’s usually someone trying to force themselves on Akira.
Vol. 5 jumps from an OT to an M rating so I went into this one expecting some chitty chitty bang bang and I was not disappointed – I think every single pairing consummates their relationship in vol. 5, and after four volumes of getting only small sips to quench the fujo thirst it felt like finding an oasis in a desert. Unfortunately Koujima’s sex scenes are short and she draws them all almost exactly the same with no dick to boot, so there isn’t much variety or anything to really get all that excited about – but she does give the ukes a variety of good “ah I’m getting fucked!” facial expressions which I liked.
The main plot basically ends at vol. 5, although “ends” is maybe a strong word because there isn’t much of an ending, the story just sort of trails off and the Rei-vs-Akira heir situation is never resolved. I don’t think it was planned this way judging from her afterwards, but we do get ‘happy endings’ in the form of characters pairing up and having sex, which is how Koujima writes conclusions in this series. Vol. 6 is basically a side-story of two classmates from Rei and Akira’s school named Takami and Hiyori, who we briefly meet during the main story, and we get to see their conflict introduced and ‘resolved’ on high speed. Although this volume was rated M, there was like one single sex scene that shows nothing so it didn’t feel like this rating was deserved – perhaps in the early 00s, June was still not sure what warrants an M rating and what doesn’t, because I’ve definitely read OT-rated titles from them that showed more sex than what we get here – including this series’ spin-off that I’m just about to talk about actually.
Seven years after she finished the main story, Koujima did a spin-off side story called Our Kingdom: Arabian Nights, and the original series must have done well because June licensed that too. It’s a side story about a character we see in the main story named Raoul (Rei’s nephew through one of his parents’ second marriage) and an Arabian prince named Ashif, and can be read as a standalone. As for why she decided to do this seven years later without even technically giving the main story a real ending, who knows, maybe she watched a scimitar-and-sandal movie and got inspired. Either way, Arabian Nights is a great read that I actually loved more than the main series. Part of this was because it was a self-contained story that didn’t drag out over several volumes so it moved at a nice clip, and another part of it was because Ashif was a more outgoing character with a mischievous personality that most of her ukes don’t have – because of this, the relationship between Raoul and Ashif was more dynamic and came off more balanced than the kind she usually prefers to write. In particular, I loved the interplay of the outspoken and controlling Ashif slowly submitting to his desire for the gently pressuring and teasing Raoul. I don’t think I’d call it a truly healthy relationship (maybe it’s the Koujima version of one), but on the Yaoi Sliding Scale it falls closer to wholesome than it does to violent noncon, so that’s something I guess.
Naduki Koujima is a “BL lifer” – she’s been active since the 90s and is still churning out new yaoi – and has pretty much only worked exclusively in the genre. This is something I can appreciate, even if I’m not the biggest fan of most of her work. Although she has modernized her art style in recent years, and pretty much all of her work that I’ve encountered has her very signature classic art style that you can see here in Our Kingdom. It’s most obvious in her ukes – they all look nearly identical across her body of work, with similar facial expressions and giant dinnerplate eyes. It’s not that I don’t like her art style – it’s attractive and charming despite its age – but in general I’m not a super fan of the cute widdle biddy innocent child uke thing, especially when they are paired with a pervy seme who probably shouldn’t be allowed within 100 feet of a school, as Koujima loves to do.
Despite this, Our Kingdom wasn’t awful. It was slow, it was rapey, and it was boring at times, but it had attractive characters and some highlights. It didn’t really have enough BL bits for its length though, and the uncomfortable relationship dynamics will turn people off. Still, there is a lot of variety here and every male character gets paired up with someone, so if Rei and Akira don’t suit your palate you have plenty of other side dishes to choose from. Koujima is at least competent as a writer and mangaka, which is more than I can say for Keiko Kinoshita some other yaoi artists that we have in English.
TL;DR An early 6-volume June series from Naduki Koujima, whose favorite BL pairing to draw is uncomfortable relationships between demanding, rapey semes and cute little feisty giant-eyed ukes who resist until they fall in love. It didn’t really have enough BL bits for its length, preferring silly episodic side stories in its already silly plot – and and when it did give up the goodies, crotch grabbing and forceful handjobs are the most you get until volume 5. All the other characters that show up in the main story – most of whom are wealthy and handsome – get paired with someone though, so there’s variety in case you get bored with the main couple and no male character was wasted on heterosexuality. She evidently counts “happy endings” as real endings though and the main conflict never actually gets a conclusion. The much later-drawn side story Arabian Nights is a great little one-shot with both characters and a relationship dynamic that I enjoyed more, and is worth reading as a standalone.