…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.
It was my favorite of her books so far, slightly edging out Rin!, which is a pretty good shounen-ai. But for my pervy junk drawer of a brain, good sex scenes are usually a trump card – and this book has them in spades. The writing was excellent – the story really packed an emotional punch, and it was notably explicit in the sexual talk, which was delicious. I feel In Japanese social exchanges the key is often what goes unsaid, which reflects in characters’ behavior in manga, but even yaoi mangakas sometimes seem shy about any sex talk more explicit than “yes! yes!” and some moaning.
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 the uke 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 if he says it wasn’t rape even though it clearly was, than what else is one supposed to go by I guess…? :/
The plot heats up when love rival Kashiwazaki enters the picture, who I think was my favorite character. It will probably kind of piss you off when Toru goes along with pretending to be his boyfriend like a total cocktease and then is totally shocked when he tried to kiss him and then rejects him like a total lim lob, K is cute as hell and I really think they’d be an ideal couple. But no, of course Toru would rather go after the guy that ‘rapes’ him and 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 internal dialogue and it’s no colored ball pit; 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 – the positives just far outweighed any negatives for me. Overall I thought it was a decent yaoi manga with a good story, and if you love angst and don’t mind explicit non-con, you’ll definitely want to check this one out.
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.