An entire 170 page drama that could have been avoided with the simple question, “hey, did you get my letter?”
This is your standard high school love triangle shounen-ai that will probably either bore you or piss you off, or both. Short and cute Satoru from the photography club crushes on his childhood friend/neighbor and track star, Shirou – but Shirou is cold towards him and rejects his confessions. Satoru thinks that Shirou likes Seiichi, the sexy head of the journalism club – but turns out Seiichi really likes Satoru, and tries to date him.
One day Satoru comes home to find a letter in the mail that was postmarked three years ago – it’s a passionate love confession from Shirou. Satoru realizes that Shirou never realized the letter was lost, and must have thought Satoru was just ignoring his confession and mocking him by confessing on his own later on.
Can these two ‘time-lagged’ lovers sync up, or will Seiichi swoop in and steal Satoru first? Well, he will certainly try…
First of all…Shirou and Satoru are adjacent neighbors. They live literally right next to each other. Why the hell would Shirou go out of his way to send a love confession through the mail when he could just hand it to him or drop it in his mailbox? Also, how could a letter realistically arrive three years late? Idk I know Japan is big on returning lost items to people and all but logistically where would it be hiding for three years? And why didn’t Shirou just fucking ask Satoru, ‘hey, did you get my letter?’ Whole issue coulda been solved with one question, bing bang boom. So the whole entire story hinging on something so stupid felt pretty dumb.
It’s hard to brush that really asinine detail aside but if you can, I guess it’s…not the absolute worst love triangle shounen-ai in the world? That’s maybe the nicest thing I can say. Oh, also, there’s no rape, so that’s something. It’s cute but definitely below average…and also based off a novel, which I am sure is better. This is for those girls who were like 14 and had never read a BL so don’t have any tolerance built up…it’s like a Mike’s Hard Lemonade or something, an easy and sugary gateway into drinking fujo brews. My DARE officer never warned me about this particular addiction, so I guess smoking is a lot worse than being a gay Japanese porn addict. By the way, Officer Dan, I’m still waiting for people to pop out from street corners and give me free drugs.
Shinobu Gotoh is probably best known for writing the four-part series Passion (also licensed by June, along with a novel), and Tokyopop’s BLU also licensed her three-part Takumi-kun series. Hotaru Odagiri is probably best known for illustrating the early 00s BL staple Only the Ring Finger Knows novels and manga as well as a 2-part series called The Invisible Boy, also licensed by June. Passion and Ring Finger are both better, so I’d just check those out and let this one fade into the hazy abyss of mediocre June titles.
TL;DR: Like Mike’s Hard Lemonade for teenagers trying alcohol for the first time, this is a sugary gateway into BL that is probably most enjoyable to those have nothing to compare it to. It’s a very below average love triangle shounen-ai that’s admittedly cute, but there’s a million other cute shounen-ais out there that are better in every way.