When I first got into the world of bishounen buttsecks comics, I was looking around on online for recommendations and distinctly remember Kirepapa being on several people’s lists and referred to as some kind of scandalous age gap romance. It was already older by that time, having been done around 2003, but it got an OVA in 2008 and thus Deux Press licensed the manga. Whether it’s actually the manga or just the OVA they remember, the crowd who came of age with Junjo Romantica seemed to remember it fondly. I would have been the right age to be included in this group, but I didn’t really get into yaoi until later than most people. Before that I only watched anime or played video games and mostly imagined Fire Emblem characters hot anime guys naked but not with each other. The angel of yaoi hadn’t come to me and pointed me down the path of light yet. Wow, it’s so bright! Look at all the trees and clouds shaped like dicks! And all the unrealistically beautiful 2D men having hardcore sex! Waaaaaiiit a minute…are you really an angel?
Kirepapa does indeed have a rather extreme age gap, which helped it stick out from the sea of BL back when it came out. It stars Chisato, a 36-year old divorced author with a 16-year old son, Riju, who he is extremely overprotective of (I know what you’re thinking because I thought the same thing but don’t worry, it doesn’t go in that direction). He’s convinced all Riju’s friends are trying to bone him and devises clever ways to chase them out of his house when they come over, like lacing their snacks with laxatives.
But one of Riju’s friends, 18-year-old Shunsuke, is very persistent in hanging around – although it soon becomes clear that the object of his affection is Chisato himself, not Riju.
Chisato is shocked when he finds out Shunsuke and his favorite bestselling mystery author who goes by the pen name ‘Saki Shunka’ are the same person, and the older man slowly caves to the teen’s advances. Things heat up when Riju gets a boyfriend of his own named Kakeru, who is the actor starring in Shunsuke’s series TV show. To add to the drama, Shunsuke’s dad either raped or tried to rape Chisato back in the day or something, so Chisato is even more hesitant to get involved with his uh, his rapist’s son?
Later on all the characters end up at Chisato’s family’s inn, and we meet his brothers and his dad Chihiro, who hilariously is 50-something yet looks like this:
This helps illustrate the two tricks most BL large-age-gap-romances follow. I’ll define ‘large’ as 15+ years:
- The younger character is the pursuer seme to balance the power dynamic, because a much older seme and much younger uke would be too predatory.
- The older character looks much younger than they are and the younger character either looks older or is exceptionally mature, to help minimize the age difference.
Yes, age is truly just a number here. Chisato looks like a 20-something despite pushing 40 and his dad looks a 30-something despite pushing 60. Eww, men looking their age, gross! I get it, fujos reading BL rags don’t want to fantasize over men their dad’s age and their idea of attractive older men is that one hot teacher at their school or college who is probably like 29, so they have to just be openly and hilariously ageist about this I guess.
Kirepapa follows both these rules, which soften the blow of a teenager boning someone old enough to be his dad, but this kind of pairing still turns heads – not so much anymore, but in 2003 it certainly did. Ironically I just read one with this same age gap and relationship dynamics (Spring Fever by Yugi Yamada), although that story is more on the mature and serious side.
Kirepapa had some other things that helped it stand out among early 00s BL besides just the edgy pairing. The story is funny without being too silly (except for the fact that Shunsuke would be an 18 year old bestselling author, which is just dumb af) and a good mix of lighthearted and serious, and while I wouldn’t call it aggressively sexual, it’s definitely not subtle. There’s not much time wasted on build up, sorting out feelings, unspoken gestures, etc – the story moves fast and while the sex isn’t really explicit there’s a decent amount of it.
There is romance too though, and it’s particularly good at blending it with the sexy parts. This was no doubt a breath of fresh air to horny teenage fujos used to reading the sort of ‘will they won’t they’ BL without much physical going on. The art isn’t amazing and some facial angles look awkward, but it’s decent for 2003 and people who haven’t read a lot of other yaoi would probably consider it good. The relationships are all wholesome despite being eyebrow-raising, and there’s no rape or noncon or weird shit like Chisato trying to screw his son – a path which I suspected it might go down, but thankfully did not.
Kirepapa got a 2-episode OVA about five years after the manga released. It was after this that Deux licensed the manga, no doubt to try to cash in on it, but sadly Deux became a victim of the ’08 recession and released only 1 of the 4 volumes before folding- probably the pub’s biggest missed opportunity through no fault of their own.
There’s scans of volumes 2 and most of 3 out there, which I also read, but the story gets a bit too convoluted after the setting moves to Chisato’s family’s inn where the TV drama based off Shunsuke’s novels is being filmed, and it stays there the rest of the story. There is some funny drama with Chisato’s family having trouble accepting that both Chisato and Riju are gay but all three of his older family members become hard to tell apart and just look like identical DILFs with vampire genes. Riju’s relationship definitely gets sidestaged by his dad’s, and we don’t see too many love scenes with him. His boyfriend Kakeru is never really developed as a character either, he’s mainly just a convenient way to give Riju something to do during the story.
There’s also a side romance between one of the brothers and the director of the TV series that takes up most of volume 3, which felt too long and the story begins to seriously stall by then. We don’t have vol 4 scanned in English so I’m not sure how the series ends but I can only guess it’s a happy ending for all three couples and Chisato’s dad probably wondering how two of his three sons plus his grandson ended up gay. Honestly it should have been 2-3 volumes, which would have been the perfect length for it.
It’s rare for BL to get OVAs, and even rarer for them to actually be good – and this one was! It looked like it had a decent budget – the characters are sexy, the animation is good, the VAs sound convincing, the music and backgrounds are all nice. Nothing looks cheap or cut-cornered. Some scenes are much more climactic than they are in the manga too thanks to dramatic lighting and setting. Overall it’s a great OVA and has aged pretty well too, bringing Kirepapa to a much wider audience than the manga alone would have reached and turning it into probably the most well-known age gap BL in English.
The first half follows the manga pretty well (there’s even some sex!), covering at least the whole first volume, and the second half takes places at the inn. It cut a lot of vol. 3 out and presumably vol. 4, and ends with Chisato and Riju happily leaving the inn with their significant others and Chihiro being sort of reluctantly accepting. It had this silly gag that I don’t remember from the manga in which Chihiro dresses up as Chisato to try to fool Shunsuke which like…ok we get it, Chihiro looks comically young, but even if he could pass for his son I doubt he could fool his son’s lover of all people.
Overall, vol. 1 of the manga is probably the best, but since it’s not completely scanlated and the story starts to seriously drag in later volumes I’d recommend just watching the OVA. It’s a rare decent-budget BL OVA and elevates all the good parts of the manga.
TL;DR: Kirepapa is an 00’s BL age gap romance with a decent and fondly-remembered OVA, in which an attractive 36-year-old divorced dad gets pursued by one of his son’s 18-year-old friends. The art may show its age but the characters sure don’t (the older one looks younger and vice versa), which softens the gap. It manages to sell its weird pairing by being a lighthearted and wholesome read with a good balance between silly and serious, as well as romance and sex. Sadly we only have 1 of 4 volumes of the manga in English with 2 and 3 being partially scanlated, but the story begins to seriously stall by then. The series had the rare honor amongst BL of getting an actually good OVA which I’d recommend it over the manga as despite less sex scenes it’s well done, follows the manga pretty well, and elevates the good moments while trimming the fat in the later volumes.