Shotacon and non-con are like cheese and chocolate. Some people think they shouldn’t be mixed at all, because it tastes gross and makes you feel gross. Some are warmer to it but definitely think there’s a real art to accomplishing it in a way that makes it tolerable much less enjoyable. The third group is spraying Cheez Wiz on Hershey bars as we speak while calling groups 1 and 2 politically-correct pussies in between chews.
The first group probably shouldn’t bother with this series, but it might as well be a Sunday School book to the third group, who think ‘Boku no Pico’ is shit because it’s mainstream shota. That leaves the second group, who will be largely divided because for many palates, the mess of cheese and chocolate mix in here is not always the tasty kind.
Before anyone gets their knickers in a kink, I am well aware both ‘shotacon’ and ‘non-con’ are loaded words – some may say neither apply to this book, because it’s one of those scenarios where the uke ends up liking it and/or that they have to be younger than high school for it to count as shota or some other made-up rule, blah blah, etc. – trust me, I know this stuff is a grey area. I think for many, drawing a hard age line for shota is difficult because manga characters are stylized cartoons that often defy human age markers with child-like features. ‘Shota-esque’ is perhaps a better term for the teens who look like children that often fall in the latter category, like our uke Kakeru here (as far as the delicate semantics of non-con, I touched on that in a previous review).
But as far as both those terms go, there’s certainly more extreme examples out there, even by this same mangaka. Some will find parts of the story uncomfortable, but I doubt the virtuous PC snowflake otaku out there are reading many Deux Press titles, especially if they ever previously came across Kirepapa.
Naduki (or Nazuki) Koujima is a prolific mangaka with several English-licensed titles, but is most well-known for the series Our Kingdom – which if you haven’t read you have probably heard of if you have more than a passing interest in BL. She also joined forces with CJ Michalski and Souya Himawuri to create the doujinshi circle M2 Company, which pumps out original shota-esque doujinshi as well as yaoi parodies of everything from One Piece to Hoshin Engi to….Case Closed? Hey, why not.
Naughty But Nice (and the sequel, Spicy But Sweet) each have two stories, the main of which is a teacher x student relationship that would definitely be a scandalous court case if it happened in the real world. High schooler Kakeru accidentally causes his homeroom teacher Mr. Wakasa to be involved in a minor bar fight and get pushed into a river (if you’re hoping the story clarifies how it escalated to that point, well, I re-read that part and still didn’t get it), and feeling responsible, takes him home to his parents to help nurse him back to health for the night. Wakasa doesn’t remember much and his personality does a complete 180, from the kind teacher Kakeru barely knows to a rapey, pervy predator that begins to use Kakeru as his sexual plaything during school and beyond in the following weeks.
If that summary sounds the least bit amorous to anyone I’d be slightly concerned – ‘provocative’ is perhaps the most neutral adjective I have for it. It’s not one of those fictional teacher relationships where it’s like, ‘aww they’re a great couple and in love, let’s just pretend like the age difference doesn’t exist for the sake of romance,’ no, what’s going on here is definitely abusive. That made the first volume in particular a bit hard to enjoy.
Wakasa is an unlikable character despite the inclusion of the sympathetic angle in the form of a close personal tragedy. The really messed up part is that he frequently lords the opening fight incident over Kakeru’s head to make him feel guilty and get him to do what he wants. It was manipulative and made me feel gross reading it.
Each volume had a side story, and in Naughty I actually liked it more than the main story. ‘Bouquet of Love’ is the name of that one, and follows a cute little uke named Kazuki working at his family’s flower shop when he meets the kind Mr. Eto, who frequently returns to buy flowers even though he is allergic. They grow closer when Kazuki’s mom ends up in the hospital and Mr. Eto befriends him, often asking him to help care for his grandma’s flowers. It’s a sweet, romantic story that was the perfect palate cleanser after the cheese-and-chocolate flavor of the first one.
The age difference of the pairing was roughly the same, but it was handled much differently. Here there is no twisted mind games or questions of consent, and it’s clear K and Mr. E truly care for one another. It’s actually an interesting contrast to the first story in that sense – two pairings that are similar in age, yet one is unhealthy, controlling, abusive, and suffers from an exploitative power imbalance, while the other is loving, consensual, and based on mutual respect. It makes a huge different in how they are both perceived even if you factor out Kazuki seeming more mature.
Koujima has a recognizable style marked by the distinctive Powerpuff Girl-like eyes of her ukes. Her panel composition is light and lively, and her drawing is confident and beautiful. Anything by Koujima will get the hot uke award from me. There aren’t really any explicit sex scenes except one in Spicy‘s side story so don’t get too excited about the M rating (especially in Naughty, which probably could have gotten by with a 16+) and the intimate scenes that are there are mostly uncomfortable as hell to look at for aformentioned reasons.
It does get better as the story goes on because the non-con turns into dub-con and finally tepid consent by the end of Spicy, but does the end justify the means? I guess that’s up to the reader. The reasons for Wakasa’s shitty behavior do unfold as well, but he doesn’t manage to come off as anything but an insufferable perv.
Spicy also introduces another student named Ayukawa who chases after Kakeru, and instead of using physical force he gets a leg up on Wakasa and resorts to blackmail. If Kakeru manages not to be scarred as an adult I’ll be amazed. They do have a super hot pool scene though, so do with that information what you will. I mean, at least it’s someone his own age though.
Spicy’s side story is called ‘Look What the Cat Dragged In,’ and instead of turning down the rape dial like the first side-story did, this one pretty much sprays WD-40 on it before cranking that shit – there’s more rape crammed in these final 20 or so pages than Bill Cosby ever had in his basement. The jist is that this painter blackmails his neighbor into posing nude for him which somehow ends with him forcing his dick up his ass. But of course the neighbor likes it in the end so that makes it ok, right? (#yaoilogic) By the way – I flipped through this story like four times to confirm this – neither of them actually have names. I mean, why would they, right? Superfluous at this point. Also, WTF is up with this censoring?
And, It’s not like it even matters because they have this on the facing page:
So clearly the world’s gone crazy. I suggest you write to your Congressperson immediately to inform them of this puzzling issue before it gets out of hand.
Anyway, the big frustration with this series is that Deux Press folded before the third and final volume, Kinky but Kind, could be published – so you don’t really get much of a satisfying resolution. If the story follows the pattern so far, that volume is most likely the best one and probably also earns its M rating, which makes it doubly disappointing. if you feel the same, feel free to join my guerilla campaign of hitting up license-rescue publishers on Twitter, which involves typing “KINKY BUT KIND!!” in all caps and triple-checking to make sure I am in fact tweeting and not updating my dating profile.
TL;DR: The main story follows a bizarre teacher-student relationship that’s part love and part obvious sexual abuse, with Koujima’s trademark child-looking ukes dialing up the shota factor by several notches. Surprisingly, it gets better as it goes, since the relationship becomes less coerced as the two gain real feelings for one another (still, the first volume was a bit hard to stomach). It’s a shame DP folded before the last volume Kinky but Kind was published, because things were finally about to get hotter and less rapey – two adjectives which are not usually mutually exclusive at least to me, but in this case they certainly are.