Even if you’re not a fan of Shiuko Kano’s work, it’s hard not to acknowledge her vast contributions to this wild and wonderful niche of ours – she debuted in the mid-90s and has been steadily churning out work ever since then, which surely merits some kind of lifetime achievement prize (a crystal penis statue?). Perhaps she will even join the likes of Ayano Yamane and Hinako Takanaga in the pantheon of BL goddesses one day for dedication to the art of porncraft, on a pedestal where dick-shaped vines gleefully snake up your winged sandals and a statue of a golden ass (!) stands at your side. If nothing else she’s staked her claim in the genre by sheer willpower and steady output of work, since she never really had a blockbuster series in English (Punch Up is stellar, but not on the level of, say, the Finder series). She is also fearless in what she commits to paper, for better or for worse, with a unique style that she has managed to tweak through the years to keep fresh. That’s the top cushion of the sandwich for what I’m about to say, which is that sometimes her stories are so trashy or ridiculous or her characters so unattractive with their weird short haircuts and prominent noses that I just can’t get into it (like Affair for example). BUT, here’s the bottom cushion – with a body of work as large as hers, there’s bound to be some duds mixed in, right? Thankfully, this isn’t one of them.
Her second major work after Yakuza in Love, Kiss All the Boys is an impressive 3-part series with a complex story and – in my humble opinion anyway – some of her best art, despite its age. It centers around Tetsuo, a single father living alone who suddenly has to watch over his bratty gay teenage son Haruka as well as trying to deal with impotence, mostly caused by the fact that he draws porn manga for a living.
This leads him to a situation in which he ‘accidentally’ jerks off a copier salesman named Momoyama in a nudie-show movie theater, curing his impotence for the first time in ages and leading him spiraling down a path in which father and son navigate their budding homosexuality in a parallel fashion (parallel was the key word there, btw, there’s surprisingly no incest here). I think we can all relate.
The story is equal parts hot and hilarious, and I choked on my drink several times from laughing while reading it. Who but Shiuko Kano could write such a tale? If there was some kind of yaoi Adult Swim channel out there, they could mine her body of work for a month’s worth of episodes. There are certainly other mangakas that blend yaoi, various sex acts, trash, comedy, and ‘mature themes,’ such as incest, violence, and pairings of questionable legality, but I’ve always thought Kano is queen of that court. Nothing is too ridiculous, too off-limits, too shameful, or too taboo – and she presents it all without the slightest hint of insincerity. This book doesn’t push the thematic envelope much, but it certainly bears her marks.
There is a lot I want to say about this title but unfortunately cannot because this is a series with a lot of spoilers, so this will be a pretty short review. It’s not every day you get a good unpredictable yaoi plot with lots of surprises, and when one comes along, far be it from me to ruin it for anyone. I can say that you will most likely raise an eyebrow at how the pairings end up. I’m sure this will rub some people the wrong way for a few reasons, but more on that at the end. Anyway, let’s get to the meat of this thing (!)…holy Santa Claus shit are these three books hot. Like, the other titles of hers I’ve read so far I wasn’t too wild about, but she has always been a hit-or-miss kind of mangaka for me – this one catapulted a damn boulder on me though. I was hooked from page 1 and chained it like Netflix on a Sunday afternoon. The story was hilarious without being silly and kept you guessing until the end, the art was great (this was one of her early works to boot), and the characters were dynamic and interesting. The main five are Tetsuo, his son Haruka, Haruka’s uncle/Tetsuo’s friend and editor Michiro, Momoyama (or ‘Homoyama’ as he comes to be known), and Haruka’s friend and love interest Tamaki. And boy, Charlotte, this is quite the web we weave here.
Later we get introduced to Kippei, a weirdo with a school uniform shota complex of which Haruka bears the receiving end. Kippei actually ended up being one of my favorite characters and looks hot af with his glasses off, and also had a steamy sex scene that I feel a picture of might be a partial spoiler of sorts so you’ll have to use your imagination.
Concerning the art – if you want nothing but the most delicate bishounen served on your yaoi platter, you’ll have to go to a different chef: Shiuko Kano draws men that look like men. Her style is very distinct, and took me a while to get used to when I first started reading her work. For me, the sweet spot is when her ukes still qualify as cute and her semes are handsome and manly without edging into bara territory – and I think this book is one of her finest examples of successfully striking that balance. (Punch Up is another of those).
From a technical standpoint, I love her attention to detail, anatomy/proportions, and bold line quality – sometimes her work looks like it has more in common with the animated series Archer than, say, Shungiku Nakamura. And did I mention she can draw some damn hot sex? The censoring barely even rains on the parade too.
The other thing about her work is that it’s fairly unromantic – her characters have sex for virtually any reason other than love, whether it’s for the purpose of experimenting, a tool to get something they want, desperation, depravity, or just to get their rocks off. So if transactional or loveless sex isn’t your thing, Shiuko Kano is definitely not your mangaka (for that matter, neither is Takashi Kanzaki, another artist whose work I’ve reviewed lately). For the rest of us depraved perverts, her work is an all-u-can-eat buffet. The good kind, not the Golden Corral kind.
For such a complex plot with a lot of emotion and complicated relationships flying around, most of the ends tie up beautifully, but there’s one little detail that is going to wrankle some noses. Actually it’s kind of a big detail. Actually it’s, like, the most important detail of the story. If you’ve read this series you know exactly what I’m going to say, which I will redact like it was Cold War nuke plans to avoid spoilers: Ok fucking seriously, real talk, after three volumes, how the fuck does Tetsuo end up with HIS SON’S 15 YEAR OLD FRIEND?!? Not only that, one with a stupid emotionless face crowned with some dick-sucking lips that would put a seasoned prostitute clone of Steven Tyler to shame. But more importantly, he is more than TWICE THAT KID’S AGE. He is old enough to be that kid’s DAD. OH WAIT, HE IS A DAD, WITH A KID THAT SAME AGE, WHO ALSO HAPPENED TO ALSO HAVE A CRUSH ON THAT SAME KID. WHAT KIND OF DAD COCKBLOCKS THEIR SON AND STEALS THEIR BOYFRIEND?!?
*takes deep breath* Sorry, just had to get that out. Like word diarrhea, you know? But really, what a fucking ridiculous pairing. It’s not even that they fuck, I can get on board with just about anyone fucking anyone with enough glasses of wine, it’s that they fall in love. Like really? What the hell is a 15-year-old and a 32-year-old going to talk about? What does a teenage kid who is only 3 years past age 12 have in common with an impotent single father who draws hentai for a living? There are at least two very willing candidates in this story who are far better for Tetsuo, but even more importantly they’re actual consenting adults – why does he have to resort to being a goddamn sexual predator? Bruh, you couldn’t get your dick up for two fucking years but suddenly your junior-high-school-age-son’s best friend, who was in diapers when you were filling out college applications, is the only one who does it for you? HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT? All right, sorry, I’m done with the all caps now. But because he’s not forcing Tamaki into anything I guess it ends up being pretty tame as far as yaoi goes but JESUS, WTF DUDE, you turned down your best friend WHO LOVED YOU FOR 15 YEARS only to fall in love with a kid WHO IS THAT MANY YEARS OLD, FUCK – sorry, I mean it now. /endrant
So uh…yeah. That’s pretty much all I have to say about that.
TL:DR: Impressive 3-part series that blends a complex story, memorable characters, laugh-out-loud adult humor, hot af sex scenes, plot twists you really didn’t see coming, and the upper end of Kano’s art. Though it’s one of her early works, it remains a real standout in her body of work for me and is highly recommended if you prefer a more mature brand of BL – with a caveat that many will be thrown off by one really bad end pairing. Also, if you’re looking for romance and bishies, your princess is in another castle.