So quick reader poll, when going down on a guy for the first time, what’s the first thing you should do?
A) Lick their balls
B) Eat their ass
C) Bite their frenulum
D) Give them a Lion King (Flip them over, fuck them from behind, and pull out and come on your hand – when they turn around to see what you’re doing, dip your thumb in your semen and rub it across their forehead while whispering, ‘Simba.’)
Guess which one our uke Mizuki here chooses? Not D, unfortunately, but that’s my favorite thing I’ve ever read on Urban Dictionary.
He actually picks C. Guess it doesn’t seem all that weird now compared to the last choice…
Boysenberry was the short-lived BL imprint of Broccoli books, and released all of two titles before the publisher folded in 2008 due to the economic downturn. It’s a shame really, because they had a hot looking title called “Sex Friend” they were about to release, and of which they actually had a translated preview at the end of this book that never saw the light of day. The real economic casualties…
Pet on Duty was the second of their two titles, the first being Delivery Cupid by CJ Michalski (Note: SuBLime rescued both of these licenses and they are available digitally through them now). Both of these kind of skew shota – by character design, not actual age – but had Boysenberry stuck around and unraveled that yarn a little more, who knows, perhaps today we’d have an English-licensed manga adaptation of, say, Boku no Pico. Hey, if someone was going to do it, it would be a publisher like this, who’s small and nimble enough to want to trade the notoriety for guaranteed sales from the kind of people who can’t go within 100 yards of a playground. Kidding fam, we’d probably need Jared Fogle* in the White House before someone has the balls to publish that in the West.
*For when this reference gets outdated, he’s the ‘I lost tons of weight just eating Subway!’ guy who turned out to be into pedo porn or something. Not actually this guy, but maybe in spirit:
This is an interesting title, it’s kind of like a sanitized version of Incredible Kintaro if it had a non-fantasy plot and less dick flopping around (so like only 30% similar, really. Actually it’s not similar at all, it just has a similar-looking drawing style) – the art is dripping with beautiful bishounen on every page, and the ‘story’ is very fast-paced but pretty easy to follow. Yeah, if you’re looking for meaningful plot, probably look elsewhere – the jist is that that adorable uke on the cover, Mizuki, goes to live with his brother in his men’s only work dormitory, but visitors aren’t actually allowed so he hides most of the day, coming and going through the window and pretending to be their ‘pet’ and doing chores to earn his keep (speaking of which, it’s about damn time my cats cooked and cleaned). There’s more eye candy here than you can shake a dick at but most of it is left on the shelf story-wise, though the cover may lead you to believe there’s a gang-bang in here or something (sadly, no). There’s really not even a romantic fight for him, actually, so you couldn’t even really say the one he ends up with, Kudou-san, is the ‘winner’ here – he’s basically just the only one who showed up.
There really is nothing that sticks out about Kudou amongst all the yummy-looking men here – they are all some of the flattest characters in recent memory, and I am truly puzzled why they had a character chart at the beginning. For a smutty manga I can get on board with zero character development, but there’s only 1.5 sex scenes in here – and for Yamato taking her sweet time getting to the one that equals the whole integer, it sure wraps up fast. Basically there was no real payoff, which was extra disappointing here because 1) M-rating, people. Do M-ratings mean nothing anymore?! And 2) the art is…preeeetttttty fucking nice. It’s detailed and rich down to nearly every square inch of space; every panel has a background or texture that complements the foreground really well and the characters are skillfully drawn in a very appealing style. It’s almost a crime to be able to draw bishounen this well and not have them fucking in general, much less not have them fucking more than 2% of the time in an M-rated yaoi title.
So back to the story – Mizuki is the only character with any real depth, if more by default than anything because he’s the only character you really actually see at all. I thought it was actually kind of alarming how accepting and subservient he is right off the bat, dutifully accepting his ‘pet’ role. He’s really more of a slave, but I guess being cute is what makes a slave a pet? Or maybe ‘Slave on Duty’ was an awkward title? Who knows.
So really, Yamato’s lovely talent for drawing gorgeous guys is the only thing this title really has going for it. It’s like the yaoi equivalent of a Lean Cuisine with really nice photography on the front showing a nice pasta primavera but when you take it out of the microwave it’s like two tortellinis and a slice of carrot.
Of course that’s a personal anecdote, do you even have to ask? I live with two cats and 500+ yaoi books, you bet your lady balls I eat frozen dinners for one.
TL;DR: Pretty damn nice art here, detailed and attractive, which serves as very nice wrapping on a mostly empty package in Boysenberry’s second of two titles they ever released before folding. There’s tons of background man candy that remains two-dimensional, and the sex scene was disappointingly short and unrevealing (if you were wondering. Which you were). If you like plot and character development, you’ll get more of that staring into a box of Oreos. The art carries the rating here.