Love Quest is the book that popped my Lily Hoshino virginity. I was starting to get self-conscious about it, so figured I better suck up the pain and get it over with. Despite countless ads in the back of June books touting her as the ‘queen of yaoi’ (a title which I can only assume was bestowed by someone who clearly has not read a lot of yaoi), her work does not generally appeal to me, because you honestly can’t tell who has a penis and who doesn’t in a lot of her stories. At least for one character in this one it turned out to be correct – though the two (three?) ukes all looked very, very feminine. Too feminine. I mean come on, that dude on the right looks like he’s about to shoot a Maybelline commercial.
This is a Yen Press book, a pub whose BL releases you can count on two hands, so the fact that it was an M rated one was a little surprising. Something unique about this story compared to other yaoi – which I also feel will be true in her other work – is her inclusion of main female characters. They are a notable absence in the yaoi world, and usually either only serve to support the main couple, or much less commonly have some sort of pseudo ‘villain’ role. As it turns out, one of her girl characters is the former and the other the latter, but the fact that they are there at all was nice.
For how silly and fantasy-based this story is (the jist is that two high school boys are transported to a fantasy realm where they must ‘swap fluids’ in order to help a magic fairy fight monsters. Really, that’s the plot), it was surpisingly easy to follow – Hoshino is an great storyteller. It’s not the kind of plot I’d normally choose but it was very easy to indulge because it was so utterly ridiculous, though it had some pacing issues (see my chart at the bottom for details).
The idea was charming and well-executed, and it was certainly a fun and fast read. Her art is pretty and every character is fairly gorgeous, gender-ambiguous a couple of them may be (truthfully, shojo is probably more her cup of tea). She draws confidently and seems to know herself as an artist and what kind of stories she likes to create, and she has definitely made her own niche within a niche with her character design. I can definitely appreciate and respect that, even if I’m not totally on board with the whole girls-with-penises thing. Or am I? I don’t think I know anymore.
Throughout the main story I swear I flipped to the back cover at least 4 times to make sure this was actually rated M, because for the first 85% of the story there is a lot of kissing but nothing remotely approaching even an OT rating. But a lot of times with yaoi, good things come to those who wait, and come they did (zing)! At the very end it switches to a new side story and these characters evidently got the memo that they had about 10 pages left to bang an M rating into this sucker, no pun intended. In the span of like two pages things go from 0 to 60, and suddenly we’re cooking with oil.
Personally I don’t like when yaoi books do this (by ‘this’ I mean have a fluffy main story that might even charm your Grandma, and then add a short and completely unrelated story at the end of two random guys fucking just to slap an M on the front), it feels like a cheap bait-and-switch. It is a cheap bait-and-switch, because obviously you want to see the couple that you just spent 100 pages reading about doing the crotch-locking, not some randos with a cheesy porn plot. Maybe Hoshino knows this, because to her credit she does deliver the goods at the end after the side story, and Akabane and Miyara finally bump uglies. It wasn’t as explicit as the one in the previous story – it wasn’t even rated M – but at least it was there. Beggars can’t be choosers I guess.
As I mentioned earlier, there was one character (‘its’ name is Earl) who I was genuinely unsure of whether it was supposed to be a boy or girl. It looks like a girl, like really like a girl, but why would they put a straight couple on the back of a yaoi book? They wouldn’t, of course.
But what am I saying, this is a Hoshino title, so I think we can confidently assume Earl is basically just a girl with a penis. It would have been nice to see more of Georg and Earl, or actually just Georg, because yowza, I’d sure like to go on a love quest with him!
Overall this was a fun, silly, fast read, in which you can get your fluff fix and your sex fix at the same time (or, if you just want the latter, just turn to the back until you see dick- I guess that’s one nice thing about having all the naughty bits in one place). Hoshino draws well, but I don’t really like her fem-ukes. I am sure this is a fairly polarizing feature of her work and am probably not the only one who feels this way, but I can still appreciate a mangaka who does her own thing, so there’s that. At some point I’ll get around to Mr. Flower Bride, her only other title I have, maybe in another 100 books or so – actually I have to get Mr. Flower Groom first, then maybe. Until then!
(TL;DR): See chart below
