This was one of the first BL I ever had in my collection and at the time it was kind of rare. It’s still not all that common but when collecting old BL the general rule of thumb is that the ‘rare stuff is usually good stuff.’
Let me just say that this rule does NOT apply here…
This story is about a detective named Kiryuuin and his younger partner and roommate Yocchin. Neither of them really do much detective work and instead mostly end up bathing cats (I think this was supposed to be a funny) and are constantly broke.
Yocchin was adopted as a baby by a well-off family and feels indebted to them. When his adoptive parents suggest a marriage interview and coming back to live with them and work for his dad, he feels like he can’t say no. But when he tells Kiryuuin he’ll be both moving out and quitting, shit hits the fan and Kiryuuin does what any sane person would do: brutally rapes him!
Yocchin is understandably upset over this, but even after he moves out he misses his old partner. If you think that brutal rape can’t lead to love, you just haven’t read enough BL.
Most of the comedy attempts fell flat but I couple succeeded out of sheer silliness like this one: Yocchin was abandoned in a coin locker in Shinjuku as a baby, and when Kiryuuin asks to meet Yocchin’s parents, Yocchin takes him to that same coin locker and Kiryuuin bows to it and says ‘please let me take care of your son!’ Like so dumb it was funny. Yocchin seems really insecure about being abandoned and then adopted and feels like he belongs with Kiryuuin more than his family, but honestly his family is nothing but loving and kind towards him whereas Kiryuuin literally ass-raped him out of anger…? Bruh…
So yeah, the story is absolutely ridiculous but combined with the art it’s like, comedy graveyard tier. In my last review I poked fun at Romuco Miike for drawing short upturned noses in Barefoot Waltz and it was like Jun Mayama said ‘hold my beer.’
She also draws some of the weirdest anatomy I’ve seen in recent memory – her characters’ torsos in their sex scenes look as if she’d never seen one before but heard a description of what one was shaped like through a game of telephone.
I don’t know, it’s obviously bad but almost funny-bad? Like I can’t recommend spending money on it but if you happen to come across it one day or find scans, look through it for some laughs.
TL;DR The story and art are pretty bad but it almost reaches ‘so bad it’s funny’ territory so it’s possibly a good hate-read. Highlights include the mangaka drawing torsos like trapezoids and noses using only isoceles triangles, with the falling-in-love-with-your-rapist trope as the icing on the cake.