All you need to know about this book is that Fumi Yoshinaga straight up wrote an android threesome scene, so if that is as wild to you as it is to me, put down your /// and get the fuck in here…
This is a slice of life one-shot compilation with a lot of variation, and not every story is even BL, but in true Yoshinaga fashion they’re all thought-provoking at the very least.
First up is the title story which is probably the most “normal” story in the bunch. Since college, Doctor Kouhei has known struggling lyricist Tadashi, who is who is so poor he has to regularly bring him food. Kouhei’s parents are pressuring him to get married but he is stubbornly and secretly in love with Tadashi, who in a twist turns out to have been wealthy and successful the whole time – he just wanted Kouhei to keep coming around.
In another writer’s hands this story would have been dumb as heck and I can’t stand the trope where the uke is too helpless and stupid to live – but Yoshinaga sells it with amusing character chemistry. They even have a pretty hot blowjob scene so, you know, I’ll accept that bribe.
The second story “My Eternal Sweetheart” was one of the most batshit insane short BL stories I think I’ve ever read, and in a Fumi Yoshinaga book no less. It’s about a young sick boy named Arthur with a genius scientist brother who makes him android dolls to take care of him in a huge mansion, since contact with the outside world would kill him. Arthur eventually asks for a sex android (‘sexaroid’), and his brother complies.
But Arthur (who’s 15 by the way) eventually starts asking for more and more sexaroids until he’s having android threesomes and foursomes.
….and then he goes crazy and kills them all over an existential crisis…
…but THEN some time passes and when he turns 18 he wants to fuck his own brother and he does, but it turns out the real Arthur….killed himself too when he went crazy and killed all his sexaroids? And the brother-fucker version was an android all along, a copy of the dead one?
Yoshinaga-sensei did you smoke a bag of moon rocks before you wrote this because damn, the hell did I just read?
So uh…definitely the wildest one of the bunch but it wasn’t just ‘shock value’ BS, in true Yoshinaga style even with the bizarre shit thrown it was actually a good story with interesting characters that made you think and you get drawn into it as it gets more and more weird, and her innocent-looking nostalgic art style makes it extra jarring. Man what a pro, she can do vanilla romance just as well as crazy android threesomes, talk about scope of subject matter.
The next story is called “Fairyland” and in any other Yoshinaga book this would be a weird one but because of the one that came before it, it hardly registers as strange. It’s about everyone in Tokyo (and possibly the world?) turning into sand except two guys who eventually run into each other.
They kiss, and then one of them also turns into sand. That’s the whole story!!
It was probably my least favorite in the book because it was short and weird but I’m sure it has some deep allegorical meaning that escaped me because my brain was still scrambled eggs.
The next story isnt a BL at all, but it’s very in line with the kind of josei stories this author writes – it would have been right at home in her compilation All My Darling Daughters for example. It’s about the odd marriage of a professor and his second wife, a waitress whose restaurant he frequents and one time while there eating he just randomly grabs her boob and then they get married, as one does.
It is also pretty short and ends up being sort of like a character study snapshot or something of these two people. Similar to the one before it, it has some deeper layers that could prompt discussion, and despite it not being BL it’s very Yoshinaga-esque in form.
The last story “The Pianist” goes from dark to darker – a middle-aged washed up gay musician gets by on royalties from an old pop hit he wrote when he was young, but now that his dream is dead and he’s forgotten about he has thoughts of suicide. He meets a young man from his neighborhood who he thinks might rescue him from his depressive state and maybe even find love with him, but fate has other plans. The pianist gives the guy all his money and tries to kill himself, but the guy is onto him and stops him at the last moment, and it turns out it’s because he reminded him of his suicidal father, and had no romantic interest in him at all. The pianist laughs and says ‘well maybe I’ll become a piano teacher,’ so I guess the assumption is that laughing over this shook him out of his suicidal mental state. It’s bizarre because the twist is even more depressing but ends up being funny, so not really a happy ending but a darkly humorous one.
Most of the stories have a twist of some sort but not a real resolution, which is typical of Yoshinaga’s slice of life style – and if they do have a resolution, it isn’t really a satisfying one, she likes to make you think. Of the Yoshinaga I’ve read (off the top of my head Garden of Dreams, All My Darling Daughters, Solfege) this collection is definitely the most bizarre by a mile. She always writes super interesting and mature stories with great characters but these are all so jarring when juxtaposed because of the huge emotional and thematic range. One shot compilations are often random sure and they’re all provocative stories in their own right but the whole experience just takes you through a loop. It might be a little too weird for general BL fans and isn’t a great first exposure to Yoshinaga, but I think josei lovers and existing fans of this mangaka would definitely would enjoy it.
TL;DR: Come for Yoshinaga’s thought-provoking josei-flavored slice of life stories, stay for the android threesome and murder-suicide incest
TheBL Rating: 5.75/10