I can sum this one up in 7 words: ‘Better than I thought it would be.’ But, I’ll add a further few 20 words: ‘not in the least because a super hot gay pirate captain gets his yogurt cannon waxed at the end.’ (I don’t count sex in a yaoi book as a spoiler, sorry).
Granted, I had low expectations – the summary made it seem like one of those titles June publishes that they call yaoi but isn’t really a boy’s love story at all. So, I was skeptical. And it was pretty light on the shounen-ai elements to be fair, but it was just such a cute story that it won me over. It was one of those titles like that I didn’t necessarily like because of the boys’ love storyline – it was just a nicely-drawn, charming story and the BL bits were just a bonus (I like manga that isn’t gay too, as hard as that may be to believe).
Plot: Mizuki is just a normal dude with serious daddy issues minding his own business who leaves his window open one night, which allows a flying magic adolescent of ambiguous age named Air and a fairy named Reux to knock him unconscious and drag him through the window to Neverland, so that Mizuki can be the ‘father’ of the ‘lost boys,’ who are children without parents that live there for some unexplained reason. It also features hot gay pirates and at one point a gay Indian (really), and even crossdressing. Well, if that isn’t a weird premise for a yaoi book. It’s basically shounen-ai Peter Pan, I guess. Still, it’s a surprisingly enjoyable fantasy shounen-ai with not a single character who isn’t adorable or unlikable, as long as you don’t have too high of expectations for the BL parts.
Itsuki draws eyes with a hatching technique that makes them feel deep and emotive. I liked her expressions too.
Her pen work in general was just precise and beautiful, and the fantasy elements of the story as well as the fact that Air was mostly flying in every scene allowed her a lot of room to play with unique angles and compositions in the panels. I thought she took great advantage of this and her proportions were pretty spot-on as well.
I actually thought the shounen-ai/yaoi elements felt forced throughout the story, and my opinion was confirmed in the mangaka’s afterword in which she said the editors were putting pressure on her to focus more on the BL parts of the storyline – evidently that was the reason for the “adults” of the story taking one for the team. Which I think everyone can agree was the best possible ending. Also I have a thing for guys in period costume so I was practically foaming at the mouth.
One thing that bugged me about the main pairing in this story is that Air is a kid, or at the very least portrayed in a very childish way. Because of this I find it hard to think of his and Mizuki’s ‘relationship’ (loosely used term here) as the romantic kind. If a super young couple are both around the same age (both in school, for example) this doesn’t bother me, but Mizuki seems quite a bit older – he had a full-time job and appeared to live by himself before getting whisked away to Neverland – hopefully not the Michael Jackson version, but it’s also full of children so hard to say – but not in the least because they called him ‘father’ like 90 times. I don’t know, Air just seemed like an actual kid (not just young-looking), and Mizuki like an actual adult (even if he was supposed to be school-aged or something). I only like shota when it’s based solely on physical characteristics and not actual children involved, so it was hard for me to be into their ‘romance’ or think of them as a couple. But we’re talking about a story with fairies, gay pirates, and flying semi-children, so the rules can bend with some amount of leeway – but I think for me it’s mostly a mental thing.
When I got to the end of the main story I already had a rating in mind, and I was thinking in my head it would have been much better if the hot gay pirates would get it on at the end. And what do you know! Ask and you shall receive! The gay sex gods answered my prayers! And there’s even more than I’d hoped for in a YA rating in the form of kinda-sorta delineated dick! Itsuki, you she-devil you. Honami could have taken a leaf from your book for Sweet Revolution, because introducing a hot character you announce is gay and is also paired with another character and then for some reason not drawing them tossing logs in a yaoi book which is even rated M should be a misdemeanor. There’s probably way more examples of that in more recent titles but I happened to read that one fairly recently and it just came to mind.
(TL:DR): Hot gay pirate blow job fuck yes. Also features a gay Indian, a fairy, a flying semi-child, and crossdressing. Adorable and well-drawn fantasy shounen-ai, even if it’s barely a shounen-ai at all really – but it’s a cute, charming story with pretty art
P.S. Itsuki also drew a story called Interval (currently only available digitally), which is one of my all-time favorites – it was long after she did this one and I didn’t recognize the art as looking very similar, but it’s fantastic and I’d highly recommend checking it out