So, I don’t mind student-pursuing-teacher storylines, and I don’t mind younger semes with older ukes, but if those two things overlap on some kind of yaoi venn diagram it’s not really my cup of tea. Maybe I just haven’t read one I really liked yet, but I think when it gets down to it – college students are one thing, but when I think about the guys I knew at 16, and then pretend they were gay, the idea that any of them would be able to top someone older and more experienced than them, much less satisfy them, much less seduce them, much less have the confidence to try in the first place, much less put another comma in this sentence, is kind of laughable. Granted, I went to Catholic school, so that probably means diddly squat. Maybe in some public schools out there people were so used to this that when Johnny bent Mr. Smith over in the janitor’s closet after Algebra 2, they didn’t even have to shut the door – and that’s still *if* doing questionable things with the mop handle wasn’t completely off the table. You know those kids that were duller than a tan crayon yet somehow always got good test scores? You gotta wonder…
I know, I know, we’re talking about made-up fantasy buttsecks comics here, but still. Maybe I just have a shitty imagination. Some people out there must be into this besides Sakazaki (who confesses it’s her favorite couple model in the afterword) because these get published after all.
The first story of the five in this book was one such story, and I am puzzled that they led with it because I thought it was definitely the worst one in the book, though not necessarily for that reason – it was just lame, shallow, and had a very weak sex scene (hey, I’m all for superficial stories when the mood strikes, but unless there’s hot sex what’s the point?). A student named Akagi falls for and aggressively pursues his teacher Mr. Shirai, eventually quitting school to circumvent any questionable ethical issues so that he can stick his weiner in his teacher’s butt (this is how you know he doesn’t read yaoi, because when did trivial things like ethics ever stop that from happening?)
If you read enough of these types of mini-stories books you probably know how hit or miss they can be, and that was definitely the case here. All the stories featured a couple with an age gap, but the others were handled much better – there was even a much better teacher uke one – and all had surprising depth.
The second story was about two friends, Tetsu and Some Blonde Uke With No Name (really, I read this story like twice and he doesn’t have a name), who grew apart and then spontaneously reconnected. Tetsu came out as gay in college and SBUwNN never really thought much about it, but realized he missed his friend and potentially had feelings for him, or at the very least was open to the idea. Going by the yardstick for these kinds of stories it wasn’t awful, and it had a sort of ok kiss in it I guess. I’m really scraping the barrel here…
The third story, ‘A Broken Piece of You,’ was my favorite. It was a teacher uke (Tachibana) and student seme (Daiki), but they were in college so it was much more realistic to me. It’s a good example of a short story done right, it didn’t try to cram too much in and didn’t leave so much out that you couldn’t get drawn in – it was just well-balanced and felt realistic. The premise was simple, basically about Daiki finding a token of Tachibana’s ex-lover and confronting him about it, but I liked it and I think it’s likely pretty relatable for anyone who has kept a reminder of a past relationship.
The fourth story was called ‘My Uncle and Me,’ which would probably be a bad name for a porno but somehow not a yaoi story. It’s about a boy named Kiyomi and his uncle Tohma, and how they supported each other growing up and eventually became a couple. The story was cute and it had a surprisingly somewhat-ok sex scene, which was unfortunately mostly negated by the quality of the art.
The fifth one, ‘Name in the Sky,’ was about two cousin-in-laws (is that a thing?) who became fuck buddies, grow apart, see each other again after a while and realize they miss each other, so they fuck again (see a pattern here?) and move to Tokyo together. At least that’s what I gathered from it. It was probably the second weakest but it has this great panel:
The last story, ‘Don’t Love Me Tender,’ was probably the second best – it had length on its side. It’s about a college-age singer and bartender named Harada falling for a fellow classmate and notorious bar slut named Tomo. Tomo will hook up with anything with a dick apparently, but Harada makes him wait until he falls in love with him. It features some Gollum-approved dialogue (Harada calls Tomo ‘my precious’) and ass-eating, which is always nice. It’s been a while since I saw an ass-eating scene, the last one I remember was in the 801 Media title Affair because it was one of the first scenes in the whole book and I remember thinking, ‘Huh! He’s eating his ass. How ‘bout that.’ Which I guess was my same reaction here. I mean, idk, how do people usually react to ass-eating?
This book could have rated higher for me if the art wasn’t so rough in general, because the stories were mostly ok and surprisingly got better after the first one. Sakazaki struggled with making characters consistently look the same throughout a story (that’s if she managed to make them discernible from ones in other stories, which wasn’t usually the case), and that was probably my main gripe – but there was also some proportion issues, blah expressions or ones that didn’t match the dialogue, and the motions being much too stiff (har), making the overall effect pretty flat and unstimulating. Like, Tomo was the best drawn character in my opinion because his features were the most unique, but they were inconsistent from panel to panel.
…which pretty much goes for every character, honestly. The best example of this is Akagi from the first story. Like somehow this is the same character.
He can evidently change his hair color faster than Rosie O’ Donnell can chase an ice cream truck.
TL;DR: A lackluster manga of somewhat-ok short stories with rough-looking art, mainly to do with characters drawn inconsistently and stiff motions. The first story was my least favorite but the others were surprisingly better, though still pretty forgettable. Oh, there’s also step-incest and ass-eating. Do with that information what you will.