Guys, get ready for a surprise – two obscure old June titles from the mid 00s that DON’T suck. I don’t say that lightly either, ya’ll know I’m a cynic. If you like serious stories and don’t mind some minimalistic art, these two books with linked stories are easy to find cheap copies of and nice little reads. There’s also slutty sex, in case you needed a little push.
So, these two books are part of a series of three books that have the same characters, but can all be read as standalone stories. Fake Fur is the middle story and Manic Love is the prequel, and the sequel to FF is called Three Quarters, which was actually done first but we don’t have it in English. This is unfortunate, but it’s out there scanlated online if you want to keep on following these same characters.
I read Fake Fur first and Manic Love second since that’s the order they were drawn in. However, I recommend you do the opposite and read Manic Love first, since the final ending of that story is in Fake Fur. This isn’t necessary but the ending has more weight if you read it after ML. The other story in FF is self-contained, although all the characters probably show up again in TQ.
So, the central character in Manic Love is high school student Machi, who apparently isn’t gay (could have fooled me) but sleeps around with other men because he likes sex, starting with his prep school teacher Haruji.
But Haruji also has history with one of Machi’s high school teachers, Mizuguchi. These two were lovers in the past and eventually find their way back together in the present. Machi then ends up living with a guy named Reni who is sort of a player type. The book is essentially just sex scenes with all of those characters, interspersed with Machi’s musings on what love and sex mean.
Fake Fur is a series of stories that start off by following a high school boy named Yamashita, who is questioning whether or not he is gay. The book follows his crushes and relationships including his first crush – his classmate Kubo – his college ‘gaymate’ Fukuzawa, and a sort of player type he gets mixed up with named – you guessed it – Reni, currently living with Machi. Thus the stories intersect. Yamashita’s story wraps and then Machi gets his ending, which carries more weight if you read Manic Love first as mentioned.
The art has a ‘purposefully minimalistic’ feel that you tend to see in more indie manga – either that or the artist did a great job concealing her drawing flaws by pretending it’s a stylistic touch. There’s no backgrounds and only the most basic shading, it almost looks like a doujin or a first draft in some parts. This would no doubt look crappy in a more upbeat or sexy manga, but it weirdly works for this story because it reflects the contemplative tone and both MC’s feelings about loneliness and longing.
Both books have good stories, and the characters are interwoven nicely. Unusual for manga, the words and dialogue are often more interesting than the art here, although there’s no good examples in the photos I chose. There’s both the right words and the right amount of them to hit the right notes and tell the story without getting too flowery or too wooden. But if you tend to skip over dialogue when you read yaoi, you might might find these books boring.
These stories’ tones and the nature of the art made a lot of the sex scenes sort of vague-looking and weakly delineated, and this tended to not make them super hot to look at. I’d still call them erotic though, it was like…artsy sex? There was a lot of positions but no dick was ever shown. There was some hot dialogue that helped then along though – these characters were certainly not shy talking about it throughout the book.
There’s a good amount of sex in both these books; Manic Love in particular is literally just half sex scenes. The author actually comments on this in the back, quote ‘it was just a challenge to see if I could write half if the books as nude scenes.‘ Well, you nailed that challenge, Yamagata. I also wholeheartedly commend such a challenge, you know, for uh…personal growth. I swear that wasn’t a euphemism for a boner but it sure sounds like it. Surprisingly, this story – spread out across the three books – is the only yaoi Yamagata ever did according to mangaupdates. She mentions in the afterword she has two young kids, so maybe they got old enough to where she didn’t want them seeing or knowing that mommy is drawing gay sex scenes.
TL;DR Fake Fur and Manic Love are two linked stories that are both emotional, mature yaoi with a quietly moving stories contemplating love, sex, and loneliness. They have an indie feel with thoughtful dialogue plus minimalistic art that isn’t really great, but works for these stories. I would have even been able to recommend to someone who doesnt like yaoi except for the fact that Manic Love goes pretty heavy on the sex.