The story in Sweet Revolution was an odd one (not to mention the title itself and what it has in any way to do with the story, but that’s BL for you), it felt like the second part was a completely different story than the first but with the same two main characters…in the middle it very quickly switches from a stereotypical school setting to a mysterious otherworldly realm (if you read/watch a lot of manga/anime, one simply comes to accept isekai in any situation), and after that leap they do not mix again. Still, the pacing was good and the story fun to follow, and it unfolded in a really intriguing way.
You aren’t given a whole lot of background into this story before being launched into it, but the jist is that this cute little uke named Ohta has a sketchy-ass friend named Tatsuki with whom he has an odd relationship – later we find out it involves Tatsuki basically using Ohta as a sexual succubus to regain his otherworldly powers. As one does. Eventually a representative from this world named Izuna – who can help purify my chi any day of the week – comes to fetch Tatsuki to let him know he has to hightail his rapey ass back to take care of some important business.
Let’s get to the really important part though: Tatsuki may be a hot brooding non-human of sorts, but there’s this hot ass character that shows up named Izuna and – oh baby! Why not more Izuna?!?! For the record I feel like the author shares this sentiment, considering the Afterword is literally just an entire page about the speculation on whether Izuna is the pitcher or the catcher (you never really find out, by the way, to the disappointment of probably every single person who has read this book). Like, why introduce a super sexy character who is actively paired with another character and NOT show them fucking?
It’s not like anyone will complain. Surely if you’re old enough to vote and die for your country and buy porn (but not drink a beer, apparently) you can handle an extra gay sex scene in a book featuring gay sex scenes without projectile-shitting a brick onto the roof of the bastion of morality control of your choice. I know, I know, it’s not really about that, not everything has to be smut. There’s doujinshi for that after all. But I digress.
The two main characters were interesting enough, Tatsuki was at least more than one-dimensional and got more complex as the story went on, even though his decision-making skills were questionable. Like, dude, you couldn’t even fucking pretend to be straight for a damn day to get fake-married to make your entire kingdom happy? Christ on a cracker, no uke’s asshole is that good
…while Ohta was very much a classic uke, and kind of also inadvertently annoying in both his helplessness and the issued he causes, even though he doesn’t mean to. This is very much in line with the kind of ukes Honami tends to draw.
The author is really good at building mystery and intrigue about what exactly their dysfunction is in the first part, which made for a real page-turner. Honami did a great job with using shading and subtle visual cues to create atmosphere (for example, the interior of Tatsuki’s apartment is always dark or dimly lit by a single light source, which heightens the ambiguity about what kind of freaky shit he is into up there). The second half of the story was a bit predictable at that point but Izuna was there, so whatever. Overall an interesting, and well laid out story with decent art.
TL;DR: Chi purification buttsecks. Need I say more?