I really want to like June as a publishing company more than I do, considering the amount of money I give them. They have an enormous library of some really great titles (well, they did anyway, before they lost their contract with Libre). However, they 1) Can’t keep most of them in print without asking for money on Kickstarter, and 2) Do shit like only license/publish the third book of a series. What kind of shiitake are they smoking over there where they think this a good idea?
Which is exactly what they did here. Not only is there an earlier ‘Millenium Darling,’ there’s even a friggin sequel. But they only licensed the third volume! Wtf, June? *facepalm.* Now granted, this title was published a while ago, but all of their aformentioned questionable decision-making is present-day. Yet, 75% of my entire yaoi collection is June-published, so I don’t exactly speak with my wallet here. I might as well be one of those people that wrote a 20-page rant about Disney owning Star Wars but goes to see all the new movies anyway.
When I first got into yaoi (actually manga in general), I snagged a bunch of books from my sister, who has a small collection from high school still at our parents’ house. She wasn’t really into yaoi, but somehow ended up with some 16+ June titles here and there – this was one of them. I didn’t know anything about yaoi at the time so I wanted to read everything I could get my hands on (which to some extent continues to this day if even only to review it here – only now I just tend to know what I like). I had it in my collection for a while before getting around to reading it, because I saw on the back that the characters are from an OVA called Seikimatsu Darling, so I figured I’d better watch that before reading this, otherwise I wouldn’t understand it (turns out that wouldn’t have mattered dick). So I finally got around to slogging through the OVA, which I thought was extremely average, even painfully so. Two couples go to a hot springs together, one in a committed relationship and the other wanting to be. They have the most bara-esque ping pong match I’ve ever seen. Most disappointingly, there is no sex, implied or otherwise. The end.
This unfortunately didn’t give me high hopes for the manga, but I flipped through it and the art wasn’t a dumpster fire, so I gave it a chance. I also noticed his book was actually published in 2008, and so why they kept the year on the title I have no idea.
She reminds me a bit of how Isaku Natsume draws boys – they’re a good in-between spot between girlish and manly, which I feel like is hard to achieve, and they’re cheeky and fun. That’s really the sole thing carrying the rating for me and makes the plot (if you could call it that) issue even more of a shame.
Normally when I go into things with low expectations they end up being better, but this book pretty much met them – it was just as ridiculous as I thought it would be, completely due to the fact that you were, oh, dropped into a random-ass spot in the middle of the story. They could have saved some money in translating it, because it will make about as much sense to you as if it was still in Japanese. If you’ve seen the OVA, you will simply have seen four of these characters before – the stories are totally separate and you will have no further insight into what is going on than someone who hasn’t seen it.
If you even feel like you need a character flow chart in general (a quarter of the way through the book, by the way) to explain who is who in a one-shot yaoi book – sorry, is this fucking Game of Thrones? – you should maybe rethink some things. You may also be wondering why there are so many kids – apparently almost every couple has them and you’re supposed to know this. This is apparently set in some version of Japan where 50% of men are openly gay and have children and everyone is butterflies and tutus about it (I know, not every gay manga deals with the real-world implications of being gay, though I really like the ones that do – this one is just completely over the top though). One of the short stories centers around the only adult couple who doesn’t have any kids – no way in hell am I remembering their names – and they discuss ‘having one’ as if it’s a new kitchen appliance. This follows with a conversation on who would give birth to it, and no joke I really could not tell if they were being serious or not because they argue about it so sincerely (it could also just be the translation), and I know from stumbling onto the wrong corner of fanfiction sites at 4am that somewhere out there, there is mpreg in the omegaverse (if you’re getting ready to fire off an email to me to tell me all about how amazing mpreg is with a bunch of educational links, please direct it to your member of congress instead, where it will no doubt be much more appreciated), and so that could totally be the reality here and I’d have no idea – especially given the amount of other built-in assumptions in this manga.
It’s a shame, really, because Maki Naruto is a talented mangaka and draws some really hot bishies. I like how she doesn’t draw pairings stereotypically, in fact you mostly can’t tell who’d be pitching and who’d be catching by looks alone, which is nice for a change. The art is superb in this one as already stated, even though there is fuck-all in it to warrant a mere 16+ rating. Perhaps a decade ago people felt you had to be over 16 to see two guys kissing, who knows. And the one kiss in here is decent. I’m reaching now, I know. The mangaka apparently draws a lot of doujinshi of these characters though. This is about as close as I’ve ever come to seeking out original dj of an English-licensed title – which, to be fair, isn’t very close, but I’m at least curious.
(TL;DR): In line with their standard of decision-making, June only published the middle volume of the story, so you will have no idea wtf is going on, even if you’ve seen the OVA – seriously might as well just read the Japanese version. The art is decently cute though. Also it may possibly be set in the omegaverse, you can be the judge on if they’re joking about being dudes being able to give birth.