In terms of BL comedies we have in English, there are precious few laugh-out-loud gems. This one might have flown under the radar (!) a bit as it aged because the art is kind of bad, but the rest is so great that it honestly doesn’t matter – particularly if you, like me, never grew out of dick and butt jokes being riotously funny. So buckle your seatbelts, put your phones on airplane mode, and let’s jam this cockpit wide open because this is an A.N.A.L. hijacking. Aw wait, shit, should have remembered the warning:
This book is a series of little one-chapter skits about “All Nippon Air Lines,” also known as ANAL or A.N.A.L., staffed completely by gorgeous men who are also all gay. It seems about half the people who fly on ANAL are people who crush on the employees and the other half ended up there because they had no other choice, but everyone seems to leave with an unforgettable experience either way – sometimes with a sore asshole. One look at the table of contents lets you know exactly what kind of weather we’re heading into.
Already this premise is a win, and the jokes basically write themselves. I mean, literally anytime they say the name of the airline is a punch line.
There are a few recurring characters in the skits, like the “four kings of ANAL” who are four gorgeous guys in leadership positions. I also really liked one of the flight attendants who had a bald fetish, and always stood at the back of the plane on flights because it was the easiest way to look at shiny bald heads.
What a nice flight we’re having. Oh, here comes our hot male flight attendant with custom-made milky white calpis!
What else do you get with your milky white calpis, personally made by a gorgeous male flight attendant? Why, ANAL curry, of course!
A.N.A.L. also has special “fetish flights” including a macho fetish one, where all the flight attendants dress like beefcakes. One can only hope they also followed in the footsteps of the 2003 Naked-Air flight and do a clothing-optional one google this at your own risk
What does it take to be a flight attendant on this most prestigious airline, you ask? Why, getting drilled hard by one of the four A.N.A.L. kings at the A.N.A.L. training center, of course…
Naturally, A.N.A.L. also has its own medical office near its home base, with beautiful male doctors who will cure your every ailment with a prostate exams or an “injection”…
If this was the USA, no doubt they’d also have their own personal TSA team to do “body checks.”
This book was written in 2002 but wasn’t licensed until 2008, and the reason for this five year gap could have been because airplane jokes – especially the hijacking joke – wouldn’t have landed well the year after 9/11. In fact, they might not even have landed at all. They might even have… crashed and burned badum tisch
The book also has a short color comic underneath the dust cover which is a nice touch. The artist is a decent colorist too:
As you can see, the art is mostly kind of bad on the inside, but the jokes and skits really had me cackling and totally made up for it. I guess you need a little bit of an immature sense of humor to really enjoy it and also not expect there to be any sort of actual story or plot (spoiler: because there isn’t one). Too bad there isn’t a vol 2 about the gorgeous gay crew of the Amazing Shinkansen Service (ASS).
TL;DR: A great BL comedy of short skits about the hijinks of the all-gay-male-staff of All Nippon Airline (‘ANAL’) that is very funny, provided you don’t expect an actual story, and, like me, never grew out of dick and butt jokes. The art isn’t very good, but I was laughing too hard to care at all really.