Yaoi dialogue of the day: ‘I want you so much that I could jack off to you.’
Close second: ‘My dream is to start a porn convention featuring huge breasts, and here I am, going out with you, a guy.’
This was another one of those books I got in a mixed lot that I probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. By reading the back I thought it was going to be one of those titles that says it’s yaoi but is really just like shojo harem fanservice or something, but thankfully this wasn’t the case. Actually, it turned out to be a very unique entry in the BL genre for a few reasons and it really surprised me, and even though I really liked it, I could have liked it more – a lot of things about it that were super frustrating.
What things, you ask? For me it was: 1) The dialogue (or maybe just the translation) was pretty crappy and super confusing, which sometimes made it hard to enjoy the story. 2) One of the main characters looks like a completely different person throughout most of his own story, but identical to another character in an unrelated side story (more on this conundrum below). 3) The supporting character cast was fantastic, and largely squandered.
I didn’t even list ‘no explicit sex’ in there, aren’t you proud of me? (I don’t know how much M-rated stuff Net Comics does). The thing is, even if it did have an explicit scene or two, it probably would not be very erotic if it was in line with the mood of this book, unless it was like hardcore hate-fucking.
Dining Bar Akira follows the odd, adversarial relationship between two restaurant workers, the younger Torihara who has a crush on his older manager, Akira. Right off the bat, the mood in this book isn’t like your typical yaoi – T and A like each other but are weirdly ambivalent about it at the same time, and do more fighting than anything else. It’s like the yaoi equivalent of the moody hipster sitting at a quiet, hole-in-the-wall bar reading Edgar Allen Poe on his lunch break and unwillingly engaging in terse conversation with co-workers, getting defensive if anyone challenges the integrity of his vinyl collection as a means of hiding his own insecurities.
The story reads like an indie slice-of-life comic, and though it will be a let-down for anyone expecting masturbatory material it will be breath of fresh air for anyone tired of fluffy happy-ever-after yaoi plots – it has a certain indifference in both style and story that is strangely magnetic. I tend to like stories that show the stark realism of a relationship without the window trimmings; Say Please is another one of these that comes to mind – there’s fucking and fighting and a mixture of the two, and if you’re an adult with any kind of relationship experience, the messiness and utter un-perfection of it all will probably be pretty relatable. The art style is highly complimentary to this general attitude, but it’s weirdly inconsistent. Torihara suddenly just looks like a *completely* different character in the second chapter, which really confused me. Certainly though, men look like men here – but they’re of the lanky variety, not the bara kind.
…and then later on he got a haircut and looked like a completely different character again. He actually looked pretty much exactly like a character in one of the side stories, which was even more confusing. I was actually like, uh, is this some future story where he becomes a teacher?
So I guess Torihara is evidently a human chameleon. He even looks too much like Akira, and Akira even has stubble – but mysteriously it was still hard to tell them apart sometimes. If they weren’t wearing nametags in one early scene I doubt I would have known who was who in half the panels. They were a strange couple but so deliciously angsty and no-BS, and I liked that they reversed later in the story; I thought Akira had the personality to be good in either role. The main plot wanders pretty ridiculously (in my mind the only point of the baseball scenes was so that later in the story they could use the line, “wanna switch up batting positions?”) but has a very solid set of characters both main and supporting, and feels frustratingly unfinished with missed potential. To my knowledge there is no sequel, at least in book form, unless it kept being serialized and continued that way. It’s for this reason that it’s better to go into it thinking of it as a slice of life story, so that you don’t get too flustered when a clear plot bell curve fails to materialize – the storytelling (or lack thereof) is kind of abstract, and you just have to kind of go with it without any expectations.
After the main story are two side stories. The first one, ‘Foggy Scene,’ is a teacher x student school story which was just delicious, with a super spicy uke named Toru. I loved it and wished it wasn’t so short. It was similar in many ways to the main story – almost a microcosm of it, actually – and heartbreaking in its realistic depiction of a person in the throes of one-sided love. I just adored it, and the diversity of Yamashita’s drawing style shined here. The second one, ‘Riverside Moonlight,’ was kind of weird and and felt a bit pointless, but I think it just needed to be developed more. I think I just wish they were all longer.
The main story doesn’t return at the end, but there is a couple pages called ‘Diary of a Manager’ to remind you of the great set of characters they made and did pretty much nothing with; this is probably my main gripe. I just don’t understand why the existing restaurant cast wasn’t used for at least *one* side story, there were more than enough for another subplot, and they were well-created and interesting. It’s odd that they’d go through all the trouble since they were largely wasted, which made me think the series was continued in some way, or was planned to – however, cursory internet searching didn’t turn anything up and I’m too lazy to dig too deeply. I do really love this mangaka though, and I’ll be looking up more of her work.
This book seems to maintain high ratings so evidently the things that bothered me about it did not bother other people, or at least not to the extent that it subtracted from others’ enjoyment from it – and honestly, the negatives aren’t all that detrimental to how I’d rate it overall, I just like to bitch. I’d definitely recommend it but alongside the caveats I mentioned – it’s a very unique book in the BL genre in both style and mood, and the relative rarity of a yaoi title like this getting licensed in English makes it special despite its flaws. Just board this particular train with no destination in mind, and you’ll get the most out of the trip.
(TL;DR): A unique BL story that highlights the messy, unglamorous side of relationships – there’s way more fighting than fucking in here, but if angst is your cup of tea, this is a type of bold and flavorful indie blend that you won’t usually find in the yaoi aisle. It did have some missed potential; both the main and side stories were all pretty solid and all kind of left you hanging; the art was good but inconsistent and the translation was awkward. Great supporting characters that should definitely have had a subplot. A bit frustrating because it had all the elements to be a real knockout, curious if it continued to be serialized. Fujoshi looking for something out of the norm who can go with the flow of abstract slice-of-life storytelling will not want to pass this one up.