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).
This title is really similar to Picnic, it’s a one-shot compilation with good variety and more mature, josei-flavored stories in the vein of Fumi Yoshinaga. The back of the book said there were 10 stories in here and I was like ‘zamn, 10 different pairings? M rating; potentially 10 sex scenes at minimum? Is is goon o’clock?’ (Can girls goon?) But, that was a little optimistic on my part – there’s only 6 pairings I think, and each has two chapters, so it’s like…6 sex scenes at minimum I guess. Well also one is violent hate rap – err, let’s keep that particular window shut for now, we’ll open it later.
The first story is about two high school coworkers at a convenience store, and the one keeps sucking the others dick in the back room. Some drama ensues because the one doing the sucking has a girlfriend and he can’t get it up for her. I also like workplace sex scenes so this was one of the more memorable stories for me.
Oh, I would also like to mention that this is the *second* Yamada title I’ve read where it seemed like someone was about to get a blow job while taking a shit, or possibly did, and I’m not sure what to do with that information. Do I need to make a category tag for “ambiguous blumpkin” now?
I didn’t love this next one but it had good characters – Yamada seems to be good at doing memorable characters for short stories. It was a high school romance between a boy struggling with self-doubt and his more confident partner. It was sweet, but a very ordinary sort of BL story.
I liked this next one just because it had DILFs in it – I know, I’m easily swayed. Two 36-year olds meet up at their high school reunion, and find out they both divorced. There was clearly something between them in high school, and we get a flashback to how they both enjoyed playing Go together and starred in the school play and then had hot sweaty sex. We unfortunately don’t get to see them really pick up where they left off in the present day, but they have a sort of ossan sleepover and it’s really cute. I totally rooted for them.
The next one was a pairing between a high school teacher and his construction worker boyfriend, who gets jealous that his partner cares about his students more than him, so he dresses up like a high schooler and sneaks into his class. I didn’t like the characters as much but it was cute.
I definitely remember the fifth one though, which was a comedy about a guy whose friend is so cute he thinks there is no way he can be a guy and is convinced he’s a girl.
I’ve never seen Yamada do comedy really, but the way her stories and characters have such sincerity makes it extra ridiculous, and it had more than a few laughs. The guy in question obviously looks like a guy, so it’s hard to tell if the other guy is joking or simply trying to get in his friend’s pants in a really roundabout way.
Finally we get to the “main” title story last, and it takes a surprisingly dark turn. It had a great character, Naoki, a high schooler bullied for being gay. He usually just accepts the abuse but one day he calls out one of his bullies, Yada, for being gay too because he got hard while punching Naoki, and Yada responds by rage-raping him. This scene really surprised me because the rest of the stories in the book all sort of had a happier or hopeful tone, and so this really came out of left field. I do think Yamada handles the subject well though, and doesn’t pretend like it’s ok or justified or they fall in love or some other mental gymnastics you see in BL around this topic. In the end, there is a several year timeskip and Naoki meets up with some people he knew in school as a clearly more confident gay man, and one of his bullies apologized to him. It’s revealed that Yada died in a car accident, but the former bully says, “I think he would be sorry too.” It’s an emotional ending, and a great story.
I mentioned this in my Picnic review too but Yamada really can do short stories well, and that one and this one are my two I’ve liked the most of what I’ve read of hers so far. Her others aren’t awful, but they’re extremely slow, while with her short stories you don’t get the long drawn-out slice-of-life parts that just seem to drag forever in her other work. She also has great ideas and memorable characters, so shorter one-shots put more of what she does best on display – and it’s even more impressive that she can can do them well given her roomy paneling and preference to only use the necessary amount of text, a lot of mangakas either try to cram in too much or run out of pages too fast when they attempt a book like this. Yamada’s older art is not my thing and it hasn’t really grown on me, but it is what it is. Interestingly, the “look” of her more recent work is pretty much the same, but it’s definitely more polished, and more attractive.
Welp, it’s literally like 4:30am and I couldn’t sleep, so this is the result of that. Also I’m having a salad. Nothing like writing thoughtful book reviews featuring men piledriving each other while eating rabbit food.
TL;DR: One-shot compilation really similar to her other work ‘Picnic’ and the same comments mostly apply – good characters and great josei-flavored stories, but her artstyle hasn’t grown on me. I think Yamada’s short one-shots are decidedly better than her single-story books – which typically feel like slow, overly extended short stories anyway that she filled in with slice-of-life bits – since her characters and ideas are probably what she does best and one-shot compilations have much more of those, and she’s surprisingly just as good at condensing them into memorable short stories. I’d recommend it for those who like more Yoshinaga-esque BL and don’t mind the look of older-looking art.