‘Hey X, when are you going to review another Yaoi Press title?’ said no one ever, especially since that requires actual readers of this blog. Unlike the group that create these terrible books, I am under no delusion that people want to read by self-indulgent BS, much less even think of charging anyone for it. But funny you ask, imaginary reader, because I have here five or so of these titles that I got ages ago in some mixed yaoi lot on eBay (the only way Kosen titles ever find their way to me…). Before mixing them among the hymnals in the pews of my local church, I thought it would be fun to review them. Unfortunately to review them, this means I have to read them. The fact that I’m only just getting around to this about a year into a pandemic lockdown should tell you how much I wanted to do this. But if I can save even one person from paying $12.95 for this one in particular, it will have been worth it. Not all heroes wear capes!
I talked about Studio Kosen (they also go by Kosaru) in my review of Zesty. If you’re not familiar with them, they are a small group of Spanish fujoshis that publish amateur BL comics – like a doujin circle if you will. They seemed to have partnered almost exclusively with OEL (original English language, i.e, not from Japan) BL publisher Yaoi Press in the US, founded by Yamila Abraham (her name along with Yaoi Press and Studio Kosen are seemingly used interchangeably on their books because they collaborate a lot, but they are indeed separate entities). All of them really want to be perceived as not only as ‘real’ BL creators, but a Japanese one as well. Yaoi Press work features various artists, mainly in their anthologies, but the one whose work you will see most is Yamila Abraham herself (I think mostly as writer) and Studio Kosen. The amazing thing about S.K. is their lack of self-awareness in the quality of the work they make – this is someone’s high school OCs and crying-anime-eye doodles in book form, copying pretty much everything from real manga but convinced they’re original and unique. If BL is a refrigerator, Studio Kosen is the constant drip of a mysterious liquid congealing underneath. What is it and where is it coming from? Really, the only explanation I can think of for this being published is that the pickings were realllyyyy slim back in the mid 00s in terms of OEL work, as social media had yet to take off and the digital art community was still finding its audience. But even so, Yaoi Press has released around 50 titles as of 2020 – many of them from Studio Kosen – which is more than smaller imprints like Drama Queen or DokiDoki ever did. Honestly, the whole endeavor seems like a tax write off or the result of one or all of these three having ended up with money and deciding to blow it on their fantasy of being Japanese manga artists/publishers, and no one willing to give them a reality check. But hey, they’re basically doing this through naught but sheer willpower, passion, and possibly some rich husband or dead relative’s savings, so more power to them (hell I’d probably do the same, but on the sliding scale of quantity<->quality I think I’d opt to stay much further to the right than they have).
So here we are. First up in this shit pile is ‘Kingdom of Selfish Love,’ which is an Arabian-themed story that I basically just skimmed through if I’m being honest, because it reeks of the fart-smelling you see in amateur fantasy stories that are oblivious to the fact that they spend twice the amount of time flexing intricate details of their made-up world than they do on the important parts of the story (in this case, pretty much the only important part of the story is M-rated gay sex, so you wonder how they could have fucked that up). The sole interesting thing about this book to me – besides why it exists – oh, and also that one page has a corrected page glued over it, guess that was a cheaper fix for whatever error it was than reprinting – is that one of the characters is pretty dark-skinned as you can see on the cover, which you might think is refreshingly progressive until you find out that this character is also a slave. Nice one guys.
The jist is that a prince named Rhane who, after getting covered in aphrodisiac lotion and giving his fat uncle a blow job, goes on his way to reclaim his kingdom from his brother Duran and gets a slave along the way named Nandi, who he starts fucking.
Like many of Y.A’s stories, the concept isn’t necessarily bad, but a 2-liter of Drakkar Noir couldn’t overpower the smell of execution this poor. I’m not sure if that’s really her fault since only did the writing, but a decent script with awful acting still makes a bad movie. The better poses or expressions look traced/copied from either manga or some JRPG artbook, with the rest filled in by a 14 yr old weeb. While effort was clearly made with the whole thing, shading and backgrounds and all, S.K. needs to work on basic drawing fundamentals. Most artists are self-aware enough to not spend time building a full fledged project on such a weak foundation, but there is a whole mess of self-awareness issues with Studio Kosaru so I guess this isn’t surprising.
If you thought the cover might suggest a threesome, you’ll be doubly disappointed to learn that there’s no peen and no butthole in these parts, cowboy, not even a peek (but it does show boobs at the end? K lol), despite the Not For Children notice on the back. Free from the censorship laws that bind Japan, western BL has the long, hard, juicy perk of free-range peen, and to not take advantage of it is such a waste that you wonder why they even bothered.
Oh, there’s also a side story about a guy who turns into a girl because of a magic genie, gets married, and then turns back into a dude. The ol’ genitalia switcheroo.
This story was either done by a guy or a girl with the name Stephen, and I guess is there to help justify the $12.95 cover price of this book. You shouldn’t have! No really, you shouldn’t have:
I don’t want to write off Studio Kosen / Yamila Abraham entirely just yet as this was an earlier release of theirs, and perhaps they have improved since then. They’re pretty prolific after all, so have had lots of practice. Saihoshi wasn’t terrible and Zesty was kinda funny, I think silly comedy is this group’s strong suit tbh – otherwise they just come off as try-hards.
TL;DR: A particularly painful entry in Studio Kosen’s portfolio of glorified deviantart. The better facial expressions and proportions look like they were traced from manga, and the rest filled in by high school weebs. And ffs, if you’re going to draw western BL comics, show some goddamn peen or gtfo.