‘I really like you more than a friend.’
‘Oh? I’m shocked. I had no idea.’
‘How did you have no idea when I sucked your dick every morning for four years?’
Kids these days…
Ugh, this one was a bit of a mess. It was Kusaka’s debut published work, but she wasn’t a newbie mangaka at the time so I won’t give that too much leeway here. Feverish has two stories that kind of overlap a bit in the end; one is slightly better than the other, but both aren’t that great all things considered.
The first is about Chihiro and Kensai, two guys who live in the same building and have a friends-with-benefits thing in which Chihiro sneaks into Kensai’s apartment every morning and sucks him off. Chihiro really likes Kensai and wants to date him, but for some reason waits four years to tell him this while still waxing his pole every morning. Ok then!
The dialogue jumps around a lot and is hard to follow, making it difficult to tell what’s going on half the time. The story is bland with flat characters and though the art is good, it doesn’t really improve things here.
The second story is slightly better, if only because it’s longer and builds better – though I thought the pacing was kind of awkward. It’s about a model (of course) named Yoh who is determined to win the heart of a mysterious, talented chain-cigar-smoking silversmith named Ari, mostly by showing up at the cafe he owns every morning and being a huge pest. Yoh does this for a month without realizing that Ari is actually a guy (didn’t think that was a spoiler in a yaoi book, especially since they’re both on the cover). Ari continually rejects him until he doesn’t, and that’s basically the jist of it. There’s some other interesting/funny story elements that I won’t spoil, but overall it was just average BL fare.
Neither of these stories should have been rated M. The sex scenes were some of the weakest in recent memory, they were extremely short and highly censored and I would probably have rated this title higher if it was OT instead. Really the only good thing about it was the art, and I liked the long hair on Ari.
Also, if you get to the back of the book and think, ‘gee, the only thing it was missing was a condensed Cigar 101,’ you’re in luck! Yaoi: always unexpectedly informative.
The fact that this is one of four images from this whole book that I’m putting in the review should tell you about how interesting I found the rest of it.
(TL;DR) Pretty below average BL fare here. The second story of the two was halfway decent, but plot and dialogue were overall fairly weak and predictable compounded by some of the most disappointing sex scenes in recent memory – this title should not have been rated M. The art is good and personally I like long-haired characters, which was really the only saving grace. Also, you randomly learn stuff about cigars.