I once came across this title when I first started collecting. Back in the day when naught but a few Makoto Tateno titles and random volumes of Junjou Romantica graced a single shelf above my bed, I flipped through it a used bookstore and didn’t see anything that grabbed me. I passed on it then, but this was before I developed a thing for handsome salarymen fantasizing about freeing each other from their expensive suits and ties and semblances of self-control to fucking each other in the learn-by-example way that working for The Man has taught them. With this new insight ripened and in season, I came across this title again, a year later – and now here we are. Harvest we shall.
My thing for salarymen has more to do with my fetishistic view of control, and the idea of flittering between total self-control and complete lack thereof until the latter option is the only choice drives me absolutely wild. Here’s my theory: a uniform (or a suit) signifies order and organization, and identification with an entity larger than yourself – if aligning with this entity means you must dress and behave a certain way, it thus it has some measure of control over you. Uniforms and suits are the best visual metaphor of this idea, at least in my opinion, and two guys tearing them off each other symbolizes their loss of self-control in a way that’s so – oh god, it’s just so hot. Mop my forehead and bring me a glass of sweet tea, Scarlett, I do believe I have the vapors.
The first/main story follows businessman Tsuzuki, who fantasizes about a fellow ‘stony-faced salaryman’ who waits at the same bus stop every morning. He eventually works up the courage to talk to the mystery man, whose name turns out to be Fujisaki. The best part of this story was Tsuzuki’s fantasies, which range from tearing Fujisaki’s clothes off right there and ride an entirely different kind of bus to imagining him being forced on his knees and not for church in some kind of criminal x detective roleplay.
In their relationship I honestly didn’t know who would be the stapler and who would be the…uh….thick stack of paper begging to be penetrated with hard metal? yes that’s a terrible metaphor but I invoke Rule 34 and it’s office-themed, get it?
Anyway, this story was easily the best of the bunch and definitely my favorite, even though it didn’t get all that explicit. It was charming, fluffy, and had good buildup – and Tsuzuki and Fujisaki were the only couple in this book whose connection felt genuine.
The second story ‘Blame it on Love’ I got kind of lost in, the dialogue was jumpy and I wasn’t sure what they were talking about some of the time. It’s about an office worker named Kirishima whose high school crush Orihara comes to work for the same company. His feelings went unrequited back then (maybe because he was caught kissing Orihara’s desk in school, which is almost saving-their-used-tissues level of creepy), but Orihara seems to have changes his mind once he saw Kirishima again. I felt this story was the weakest; the art and expressions were mostly bland and neither character was that likable – Orihara seemed like he was just toying with Kirishima the whole time, and Kirishima was hooking up with another coworker named Nakajima who he promptly started treating like crap once Orihara came in the picture.
The third story, ‘All My Flowers For You,’ was the most confusing – it was about a flower shop owner named Hayama and his sometimes-assistant Tohyama who’s a middle school teacher. I actually didn’t know which one was the teacher or even that Hayama was the owner until the end. They should have explained that better upfront, for a short one-shot. Also, no sex scene which makes me a sad panda.
The fourth story (‘First Kiss’) had a simple but winning premise – the idea of a hot drunk male coworker (Kusaka) making out with another hot male coworker (Kouda) at an office party on a whim, which is super duper hot. I mean, I can only dream of the kind of office party where something akin to all-male spin the bottle might not be outside the realm of possibility, instead of awkwardly standing around the snack trays with a lukewarm domestic beer in hand trying to think of something to talk about with Sam from accounting other than work (‘so you, uh, do math?’).
Their ‘relationship’ had a weird vibe to it though, with Kusaka saying something like, ‘your kiss turned me on, so now you have to take responsibility for it,’ and then basically making Kouda fuck him. Kouda, for his part, doesn’t seem to mind, but their connection seemed devoid of romance. I still liked the drunken-office-party-kiss thing though.
At last we – I think we did anyway? – return to our original couple for the last story, ‘Passion Bus Stop.’ Usually when books do this it means they’re finally going to give up the long-awaited naughty bits, but the ending here disappointed in a few ways. First, I mean, no sex, so there was that. But more importantly I’m not even positive it was the original couple because they had different names, but looked just like the title story characters, and the title would suggest it was a continuation of that story. I was really confused.
Natsumizu ended the book with a short and amusing little ode to her love of fantasies and fantasizing, in which she states that reading product catalogs aimed at men is enough to get her imagination hot and bothered.
I think I speak for everyone when I say that Ralph Lauren catalogs are the first thing that pops in my mind as a clear and equal alternative to Playgirl. It’s like having the porn equivalent of the Marauder’s Map – only you can see it!
TL;DR: A nice little book of salaryman-related one-shots. The best one by far is the title story, the rest were mostly confusing and had characters that were good-looking but not all that likable due to their motives or perhaps just shaky dialogue translation. Natsumizu’s art is ok, though she tended to shy away from intimate scenes. All in all would have been better had the first story simply been extended.