It’s not often that I get my hands on a truly obscure English BL – as in, something so obscure it doesn’t even have an ISBN. My friend Shinami let me borrow this one; it was an exclusive release as part of a BL-subscription box called Yaoi Crate that was around in the early 2020s. Despite its obscurity it’s probably not all that rare yet since it hasn’t been too long since it came out, but no doubt it will be one day. Shall we…start with pudding? *badum tisch*
I love both reading really obscure releases like this as well as documenting them for that one person, somewhere, someday, who is looking for information about it. Assuming this blog will still be around that long, who knows…as I have nothing better to do with $60 a year than for the hosting and domain name.
This manga was released as part of a short-lived BL-subscription box called Yaoi Crate. This endeavor started in summer of 2020 and lasted a little over a year, until fall 2021, when the founders sold the company to The Otaku Box – they’re a bigger company with various otaku subscription boxes, and they wanted to start their own yaoi-themed one so probably wanted to either kill competition or get their subscriber list or both. The Otaku Box is focused around yaoi figures of existing fan-favorite IPs like Yuri On Ice and Ten Count, but though the products look nice online they’re all counterfeit and bootleg (I’ve even read reports that their boxes ship directly from China; they’re not even trying to hide this) – so most people in the community say to avoid them, and they have some pretty damning reviews about pretty much every aspect of their business on Reddit. Yaoi Crate mostly featured fairly unknown artists, but at least they had some integrity.
I followed Yaoi Crate’s rise and fall with some interest, although I never subscribed myself. It typically came with a staple-bound English doujin or two and some small matching merch like pins, keychains, or small acrylic stands. They usually partnered with small creators or publishers like one called Rotten Blossoms (who published Pudding), but one month they were able to do a box with Tokyopop that featured one or two of their recent BL mangas which was cool – I think one was Star Collector iirc. The box was expensive at $50 per month, which is a lot for a subscription box that only ever included unknown artists and IPs. “You pay for the surprise” is what the supporters say, but I’d just as well buy magic mushrooms from a random guy at a concert again if I want a $50 surprise that will likely disappoint me. I’m also not interested in random yaoi merch from random series, I buy lots of random manga but I only buy merch of my top three or four husbandos. There were a few people in the Discord manga collecting community I frequent that did have a Yaoi Crate subscription though, and it seems the consensus was that they mainly subscribed to support small BL creators. They didn’t seem to really like what they got in the boxes most of the time, and one of them sold me some stuff from their boxes for cheap, which includes the most amazing postcard I’ve ever seen (just a heads up (!) for when you scroll down, giant uncensored dicks incoming).
Although Yaoi Crate didn’t last long, its social pages are still up which document its journey (screenshot below in case that link 404s), including the announcement for Let’s Start with Pudding. This manga was given an exclusive print version for the May 2021 box, and it was one of the only full-length mangas ever included in a Yaoi Crate.
Although publisher Rotten Blossoms is still around, Pudding disappeared from their website at some point. My friend Shinami did some digging in order to create an entry for this manga on Anilist and it looks like it went from being a doujin to being published in a BL magazine in Japan at some point after RB got it, so maybe the license expired or something. I know nothing about the mangaka, Yosono Yosomi, who only has two works listed on her mangaupdates page. Her pixiv has a third newer work, but overall she’s not exceptionally prolific or active.
Alrighty then, now that we’ve done the full postmortem of Yaoi Crate that no one asked for, time to actually talk about what happens in this manga. The feedback I got from my friend was that, the art is weak, but the story was pretty good…and that pretty much nails it honestly. I’d add though that there was a pretty wide gap between those two things – the art was almost surprisingly bad at some parts for it being a recent manga, but the story was actually really, really good. And really wholesome!
Yusuke and Aida are salarymen coworkers who aren’t too well acquainted, until Kazumi accidentally discovers Yusuke’s “secret” and the reason he mostly keeps to himself – he has “deipnophobia,” which is the “fear of eating in front of people.” He left his last job after he had a panic attack at an office party, and shame has hung over him since then. But once Kazumi knows what is troubling Yusuke, he becomes an accepting and supportive ally and helps him to get over his phobia by having Yusuke practice eating in front of him.
Eventually a romance begins to blossom between them, and it’s almost impossible not to root for this couple – Kazumi is so supportive to Yusuke and devoted to helping him be able to eat in front of people again. He’s there for him when he backslides a couple times after making good progress and is all-around gentle and nonjudgmental during the process, and it’s so heartwarming and sweet. Yusuke also has a sweet dog named Lily who I forgot to take a picture of, but yay cute pets. It has a wonderful happy ending too.
Plus, they also have sex! And a decent amount too! Yeah, yeah, don’t worry, I know why you’re really here:
So yeah, great story all in all. I can’t say the same for the art though. As you can see above, it’s hit or miss – at its very best its mediocre. Definitely the sort of art you’d see more in doujinshi and less in published manga, although this may have originally been a doujin so perhaps it’s par for the course. The paneling and compositions are ok and the pacing is good too so this helps mitigate the badness of the actual drawing, but she definitely needs some more practice with characters and faces. In particular she has trouble with 3/4 view and…necks.
However, this is one of those times I was able to look past the weaknesses in the art because the story was so good. This isn’t usually the case for me and it takes a pretty good story to make me overlook art like this in a manga from 2020, but this is one of those stories. It’s great that she challenged herself to make a full-length story despite probably knowing her art skills weren’t quite there yet, she clearly put in the effort and also didn’t shy away from sex scenes out of fear which a lot of new and inexperienced BL mangaka tend to do. I definitely commend her for all that because doing something when you know you suck and pushing through that self-consciousness to improve is hard, and takes time. Happily, on this mangaka’s pixiv you can see that her drawing skills have already gotten better (her pixiv ID is on the credits page above if you’re curious), so I’m glad for her and I’ll definitely keep an eye on her future work.
Another reason I liked this book is that I can related to having a weird food-related phobia. Once upon a time in middle school I had emetophobia (fear of vomiting – both of me doing it and other people doing it) which made me a weird eater. I remember it started because I read in a book about someone who died by choking on their own vomit. This is really only something you have to worry about if you’re very drunk but that part didn’t really register, and for some reason the fear of dying by choking on your own puke just seized me in a way no other fear has before or since. In a very short amount of time my whole life revolved around panicking over what and how much to eat, being sent into panic attack when someone in school coughed, and fearing vomit as if it was lurking around every corner. In reality I hadn’t puked since I was very young and the last time I’d seen anyone else puke was in a movie, but phobia brain is not logic brain. I stopped reading books and watching movies for fear of a character vomiting, didn’t want to hang out with my friends anymore or go in public “just in case” someone puked. Eventually I started having physical symptoms and painful stomaches from what was probably something like an anxiety-induced ulcer whether I ate or not, which significantly exacerbated the phobia. My mom very much had a “just get over it” attitude towards the whole thing, and I really felt like I had no one to turn to and didn’t know what to do – it really and seriously sucked and my heart goes out with empathy to anyone struggling with a phobia. Thankfully, mine gradually subsided after about two years and I was all better by the time I was in high school and can now laugh at myself and how weird it was with strangers on the internet, but I definitely relate to Yusuke’s struggles in this manga, particularly having to explain your odd phobia to people and them not really understanding how something fairly innocuous could affect you so greatly. I never really had a person who supported me like Yusuke did and I think most single adults who have a phobia irl wouldn’t have someone be this supportive who isn’t a therapist being paid to, but that makes it all the more heartwarming to read.
I definitely recommend this one if you ever come across it, don’t be put off by the art – it makes up for it with a super cute story that is really worth the time!
TL;DR: One of the only exclusive and full-length manga that came in the short-lived Yaoi Crate BL subscription box. A very wholesome read about two coworkers who slowly fall in love while one helps the other to overcome a phobia. The art feels doujin-quality and it flits between bad and mediocre, but the paneling the compositions are ok and the story is really really super good and so I think it was able to overcome that. Really heartwarming read and a couple that is so easy to love with a happy ending (also actual sex scenes, yay!)
TheBL Rating: 6/10