LOVE POTION (Sakuya Fujii)

…Featuring a story in which the uke ponders whether getting his ass fingered on the school roof by some upperclassmen he just met that morning who later turns out to be his stepbrother is ‘good luck’ or ‘bad luck.’ Only in yaoi, folks!

Love Potion features a three-chapter main story and three shorter side stories. The title story is about a high school teacher named Hanamura who has a pheromone called ‘cho-koh’ that makes guys attracted to him (except for otaku because ‘they only love two-dimensional cartoon girls.’) This means he is constantly getting ‘molested by perverts’ and having random guys confess their love to him. One of his students, a tall/strong/handsome baseball player named Hasegawa, is madly in love with Hanamura and is determined to marry him when he turns 18.

Hasegawa is also useful at protecting Hanamura from perverts (a label that mysteriously doesn’t apply to himself), while also getting a little help from Hanamura’s roommate, an otaku named Mizuki who is constantly trying to make strange concoctions to block Hanamura’s pheromone power. But then eventually Hanamura begins to wonder if maybe he loves Hasegawa too (not really a spoiler alert: he does, of course).

I should probably state up front that I’m not really a fan of high school student semes with teacher ukes; call me a close-minded prude but I think it’s kind of ludicrous for a 15-year-old to be ass-fucking his late-twenty-something teacher. That scenario is just ridiculous to me and I don’t buy it. Still, I try not to rate stories purely on the nature of the coupling and try to ask myself, ‘if I was into high school freshman fucking their teachers, how would I feel about this book?’ *pushes monocle up, sips sherry*

Turns out that either way, I still didn’t think it was that great. It had an obviously humorous premise and did have some funny parts, and though I chuckled a few times I thought the humor fell flat more often than not – the story took itself too seriously overall which made it ineffective. I didn’t think the two main characters had any real chemistry, their facial expressions were dull and their pheromone-induced romance felt awkward and forced most of the time – not to mention the substantial age gap and pretty unrealistic relationship dynamics.

One thing it did have was a hot flasher, so there’s that. I think I laughed out loud when Fujii says in the afterword that it was her favorite character in the whole book – he had like two panels.

The second story, ‘The Power of Willful Love,’ was about a spoiled annoying rich boy named Chikara who was an only child but wanted an older brother, so his dad ‘found’ him one – named Chiharu – using the always-foolproof method of indentured servitude. After Chikara’s dad dies, some jackass shows up claiming to be Chikara’s actual and illegitimate brother that their father never acknowledged, and tries to inherit the family company through – no joke – attempting to make a video of he and his friends gang-raping his younger brother and using it to blackmail them (yes, really). But Chiharu saves Chikara in the end and they fuck, of course, which isn’t at all weird for two people pretending to be brothers for five years.

The story was kind of ridiculous but Chiharu and Chikara (which sound like Pokemon names) were a cute couple, odd though their relationship was. It was actually probably the least-ridiculous one of the three, if that says anything.

The third story, ‘Fortune Trap,’ is about a chronically unlucky boy named Shino who meets a hot upperclassman named Kai on the way to school. About three pages later, Kai fingers Shino’s butthole on the school roof and tells him he loves him, and then Kai tells Shino he’s his stepbrother. God I love yaoi.

Thus we get this gem of a dialogue bubble:

I have to admit, as hilariously fucked up as the premise was, the ‘sex’ scene was kind of hot in a weird, smutty way – though I think I just liked the idea of it more than anything. It was unexpected and I think I laughed when it appeared suddenly, but it was weirdly hot. I have a thing for clothed sexual scenes so that was probably why.

In case stepbrother sex isn’t your thing but 15-year-olds piledriving their teachers is, you’re in luck! Hanamura and Hasegawa return at the very end for a token sex scene. It isn’t terrible but isn’t great, imho – if you liked the story you’ll probably enjoy it, but if you didn’t really get into it your opinion probably won’t change.

The art was overall ok…it was good enough, and perfectly fine for yaoi. The main things that bothered me were the odd way she depicts mouths, and also the overall dull expressions. One high praise I can give Fujii is that she’s good at making characters look different. No two characters look too much alike across all the stories, and this is not as common a thing as it should be.

Overall, I felt this was a pretty lackluster book that I just couldn’t really get into. I think if it wasn’t for the dynamics/age gap of the main pairing I’d like it a lot more, that just kind of spoiled it for me. It’s also strange that the main story is silly and cheesy while the two side stories are serious. It has its moments though and if the pairing dynamics don’t bother you, it’s certainly worth a look.

TL;DR: I wasn’t wild about this title. It suffered from corny story and dialogue, dull expressions, weirdly-drawn mouths, and humor that fell flat more often than not – not to mention the main pairing was a 15-year-old seme and his late-twenty-something teacher uke. The two side stories both feature stepbrothers sex and don’t align with the silliness of the main story at all, which will probably turn some people off.

Rating: 4/10