It must just be luck of the draw, but the last three BL I’ve reviewed have all pretty much been scored somewhere in the 5-6 range out of 10. It almost makes me not want to give this manga that score just because of that, even though that is how I’d rate this one too. 5 is a “good” score to me, it’s like if it was just average but still had things to like about it. Some may say I am a hard rater, but if you’re a veteran manga reader too you’ve probably also come to realize over time just how good or how bad a manga can be. When I first started reading BL, everything got a good score, because I just didn’t have as much to compare it to – perhaps you were the same?
I guess the point of that was to explain that a 5-something or a 6-something isn’t a bad score; I’ve read some BL that is unfit for toilet paper as well as some that is so awesome it glows on my shelf as if it’s acquirable intel in a video game – but honestly most fall near the middle of the bell curve somewhere, and Lover’s Pledge is one of those.
After a night of drinking, young Kazuto discovers he accidentally ‘sold’ a month of his time to hot rich businessman Takasugi. But over the course of that time, he does normal dating-type things with Takasugi instead of anything physical, and ends up falling for him.
When the book’s summary talks about Kazuto selling himself, it obviously sounds like prostitution, but this story is actually pretty wholesome – Takasugi never took advantage of Kazuto when he was drunk on the night they met, and they don’t actually do anything sexual until Kazuto initiates it. So if you’re not into non-con or paid sex, there isn’t actually any here.
This story definitely could have used 2-3 extra spreads (!) of sex scenes. We sort of get teased the whole story but when we do finally get the goodies it’s pretty short and sweet. It turns out though that the book is pretty short on sex scenes in general – Maruya mentions in the back it was her first time drawing them and she clearly lacked confidence, and I guess her editor didn’t push her too hard. The fact that the MCs ended up in a more positive and healthy relationship than the summary makes it seem was a nice surprise, though.
The second story was a shounen-ai and my least favorite of the three, I thought it was really corny even by yaoi standards. It’s about two high schoolers who playfully kissed as children, one calling it the “magic charm” to make the other feel better, but now that they’re in high school one has grown more confident and masculine than the other yet still craves his friend’s magic charm which never becomes a metaphor for his dick in case you’re wondering.
I guess if you like really saccharine shounen-ai this could be your thing, but it was just too mawkish for me and the characters didn’t have much personality. The kissing was cute though.
The last story was also a shounen-ai but I liked it more than previous one, it’s about a high-schooler named Fumiya forced for move in with his older cousin Eiji after the death of his parents. Fumiya is struggling with his developing feelings for Eiji, and worries his cousin resents him for having to pretend to be his big brother and will never accept his feelings.
I liked these two characters and their conflict more, and the plot felt the most realistic out of any of the three. It was really short and felt pretty unfinished though, and felt like it needed a sex scene moreso than the one before it. If it was longer, it could have been the best one easily.
The highlight of this manga was definitely the art, which is lovely and holds up well despite its age – the same can’t be said for the stories though, which all end up being pretty forgettable and the lack of sex was annoying. It’s not that I dislike shounen-ai, but I dislike it when shounen-ai is rated M. It would have been better to just cut out the one small offending parts altogether and rate it 16+ instead of getting the reader’s hopes up.
Kae Maruya was not that prolific and only did a few series. She debuted with stronger art than a lot of her peers in the mid 00s, and must have been a promising newcomer at the time because the second story in this book won some award, but she wasn’t in the manga world for long. The rest of her work is unlicensed in English but nearly all of it is scanlated, if you want to check out more stuff by her. I’ve read her manga Onozomi no Mama ni which is a book of one-shots pretty similar to this, maybe with just marginally more sex. After Lover’s Pledge I got curious if her later work got better and read her last book from 2013, Renai Prism, and it was about the same level – great art but the story was very meh and had a very disappointing ending, so it seems she had early promise but then flatlined. I wonder what she is doing now though, hopefully she is still working as an artist in some capacity as she could draw pretty men really darn well.
TL;DR Surprisingly good art for the mid 00s, but the three stories in here all end up being lackluster for various reasons, and only one just barely warrants the M-rating. Not totally unenjoyable but it definitely would have been a better read when it came out with less BL to compare it to – the art has aged well, but the stories haven’t so much. It’s wholesome though and there’s no non-con, even though the summary makes it sound like there is.