…In which my high school fantasy that my cute male classmates jerked each other off out of curisoity was totally confirmed as fact, you guys! A random dude in a manga said it so it must be true!
So yeah, when I was in high school, I thought male masturbation was a group activity. I thought that after school they went to either the house of the friend either whose mom didn’t know how to check browser history or the one whose dad had the most poorly hidden porn collection, pull up some bootleg Casting Couch or some weird parody porn with a title like Shaving Ryan’s Privates (a gay one, of course), sit in a circle, and jerk off together. Speaking of which: recently on a long car trip with some guy friends we had a lively discussion over whether jerking yourself off in a room full of guys is gay, if you only touch yourself. The jury is still out, though it seemed to hinge on whether or not other guys being around was arousing to you or not. Yet, none of them were willing to engage in said experience and report back where on the sliding scale of gay this fell long, so I’m seeking further opinions. Discuss amongst yourselves, class.
So, this is the third Honami book I’ve read, and so I feel like I can now confidently confirm my suspicion that every uke she draws looks exactly the same:
High schooler Toru has always had a crush on his friend Ryoji, and Toru’s dreams seem to come true when Ryoji wants to sexually experiment with Toru. But Toru soon comes to believe that Ryoji is just playing around with him to get his rocks off and doesn’t really love him, turning his hopes into despair. Still, he loves Ryoji so much he just can’t quit him, like a bad habit.
I think I liked it slightly more than Rin!, which is a pretty good shounen-ai – and more wholesome than this one. But the story really packed an emotional punch in terms of Toru’s roiling dilemma, and was an engrossing read.
Perhaps the elephant in the room in Desire that the sex in this story tiptoes along a line between dub-con and non-con thinner than an Amish phone book. It was almost uncomfortable to read in some parts; I legitimately thought the first two sex scenes were rape and my reaction when Toru explicitly stated later in the story that it wasn’t rape was along the lines of, “…well, huh. Sure as fuck seemed like it when you said, ‘no! stop!’ about 90 times.” I don’t really trust his judgment since he’s dealing with a whole lot of issues, but like…there was one part where Ryoji threatened to bite his dick when Toru told him to stop and he didn’t want to.
The plot heats up when love rival Kashiwazaki enters the picture, who I think was my favorite character. He wants Toru to pretend to be his boyfriend to make Ryoji jealous – or something? – and then is totally shocked when K tries to kiss him and then rejects him like a total lim lob. This was kind of annoying because K is sweet and considerate and he and Toru would have made a good couple. But no, of course Toru would rather go after the guy that keeps using him for sex, makes total sense. Actually, Kashiwazaki probably deserves better since that’s the case. You’d probably be sticking your spoon in crazy sauce, bud.
The story is well-paced and has more angst inside than your local Hot Topic, and I surprisingly started to get attached to Toru as it went on – most of the time you are seeing his conflicted internal dialogue and I think I just like angsty troubled characters in general. The story has a great ending that’s hard not to like, especially after the emotional wringer our little sad-eyed uke gets put through. The art is a little bit subpar and the translation/dialogue awkward in places, but not to the point that it subtracted from my enjoyment of it. Overall I thought it was decent with a good story, especially if you love angst and don’t mind some dub-con/non-con.
TL;DR: Angst level = Squidward listening to Linkin Park, also rape that apparently isn’t rape. Ok story with a good ending, if you can stomach some awkward non-con.