Now here’s something interesting: a kendo BL. Want to see two guys working out their relationship issues through crossing long hard swords which is not a euphemism for anything? I am pretty gutted about this one being a shounen-ai though, ngl I wanted to see some hot kendo dojo sex just for fun.
So before I talk about this manga I have to really quick talk about this mangaka. Satoru Ishihara debuted in the early 90s with a military-themed short BL story and developed a bit of cult following for people who like manly guys doing manly things in yaoi. Her characters are usually involved in sports, gangs, fights, crime, drugs, etc. and there is usually more focus on the plot rather than romance, relationship development, or sex – most of her work is shounen-ai.
However, she’s been done dirty as far as English releases go. We’ve got three total: two are print ones and one of those is the second part of a long story that we don’t have the first part of in English so it makes zero sense and is just barely BL (God of Dogs), and the other is this one, which unlike most of her work, *does* focus on the romance over the plot, so it’s a sort of outlier in her body of work. The third one is a digital license that June’s DMG put out that is available on Renta, Teppen Kaketaka (Betting My Life with You), and this is really the only one that is a good example of the kind of work she usually does – however, it’s 3 volumes long and only 1 was released, the rest was never translated. Sigh. So as you can see, she never really had much of a chance to reach English readers. While I do think she has better work out there than Dost Thou Know, it’s at least a complete story, so we have to take what we can get from DMP here. Double sigh.
There’s two sets of brothers in this story, the Hanamoris and the Yaegashis, and they all practice kendo. I don’t really know much about kendo besides what I’ve gleaned from when it comes up in manga, but it doesn’t really matter too much for the story. It’s like..Japanese fencing sort of. Sorry if you’re into kendo and that’s a bad comparison, I’m an American who doesn’t even know the rules of football if that makes it better (I also think it’s super weird that we measure things in football fields, for what it’s worth).
Katsuomi and Tsurugi are really the only couple in this manga, and they have sexual tension from the very start. Like most Ishihara work, there is no figuring out feelings or any real relationship development here – all of her manga characters, at least from the ones I’ve read, have an attraction to each other right off the bat and the fact that it’s another man is never an issue. This is exemplified in an early panel in which Katsuomi remembers his lips being close to Tsurugi’s while talking to him and he wanted him badly then, and it shows a flashback that the reader never saw to begin with. The younger brothers don’t do much and mainly serve to create situations where the older brothers interact or show different sides of their character.
K and T are members of different kendo dojos and compete against each other, and they fight out their relationship dominance issues through this, with Tsurugi refusing to “submit” and Katsuomi intent on making him. I liked this aspect of the story and I honestly wish the kendo scenes were longer (she draws good action for a BL mangaka) and that there was more kendo in general, it’s sort of just a background theme the relationship is set against – Ishihara usually prioritizes plot over relationship as mentioned, but here, it’s a bit reversed.
Ishihara’s art style has changed over time, but this one was done in 2000 and the art is still pretty 90s. Because her characters are always masculine manly-men though, the chiseled or harsh facial features that sort of define this style don’t look as ridiculous on them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not particularly a fan of this art, but I try to take into account a manga’s age when reading it, but I don’t think anyone really reads Ishihara for the art anyway. If you like plot over penis and are a sucker for bad boys or ‘tough guy’ BL, Ishihara has better stories in her body of work – of the ones I’ve read, my favorite was a two-volume one called Yarouze! about two moto racers that I thought was good; the mangaka is into motorcycles IRL so the bikes and racing bits feel real. Another one I’ve read was called Shounen wa Asu no Korosu (The Boys with Tomorrow to Conquer) and it’s a softer one about a high school delinquent falling for a model student classmate. Both are shounen-ai and are completely scanlated online. However, many of her most interesting-looking works are not, including one called Kaitai (Dismantlement) which is a weird looking sci-fi BL that was only partially scanlated, and Cell Number 8, which is about two teenage prison escapees. Oh, she also has a BL about two Catholic priests, but I can’t remember the name (wonder why June didn’t license that one?)
If I had to guess why they picked this one though it’s maybe because it’s pretty wholesome, a lot of her other work has or has references to drugs, prostitution, abuse/torture/violence, child rape, and those sorts of themes. The BL imprints that were fine with that stuff generally did not want shounen-ai, that was largely June’s domain, and Tokyopop’s to a lesser extent – so her work falls into a bit of a weird niche where it has more objectionable themes but not enough sex. Still, I wish she had gotten more licensed in English, maybe there’s still hope for a digital release of some of her earlier work. Even though her brand of storytelling is more common now in BL, she still appears to have fans out there who haven’t forgotten about her.
TL;DR Satoru Ishihara had a niche following in the 90s-00s for doing plot-focused non-romantic ‘bad boy’ or ‘tough guy’ shounen-ai. She has gotten shafted (!) in terms of English releases though – two of the three licenses we have from her were dropped or incomplete, leaving only this one complete-able story which is also an outlier in her body of work because it focuses on the relationship over the plot. It’s kendo-themed and it’s kind of fun to see the couple working out their relationship dominance issues over kendo, but most readers will probably be turned off by the dated art. All in all it isn’t bad but it’s eclipsed by Ishihara’s other work – if you’re curious and you can deal with the 90s art and more understated BL bits I’d suggest checking out Yarouze! to get a sense of the sort of work that gained her a niche back in the day. It’s a two-volume moto racing BL that’s been scanlated; she’s really into motorcycles IRL and her passion peaks through in a convincing and fast-paced story with that theme.