Yugi Yamada usually has decent stories, but they tend to be very slow slice-of-lifes. This, however, was a book of one-shots, so it forced her to speed things up. I think her story ideas and characters are her strong suit, so having more of that helped overcome the things she doesn’t do well, namely…drawing. It’s no secret I’m not a big fan of Yamada’s art, but this mainly applies to her earlier work like this – her art definitely gets more polished later on while still bearing her stylistic signature, although we don’t really have her most recent stuff in English.
The “main” story was probably my least favorite, it has the feel of a slice-of-life josei with gay main characters, a bit in the vein of Fumi Yoshinaga’s BL stories. It’s a slow burn slice-of-life starring college students Noda and Koreeda, who are sort of sex friends that start dating. The characters were interesting and surprisingly one of the characters’ ex-girlfriends gets an abortion, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a BL before. Well there’s gay sex though, so that’s cool I guess.
The second one is a shounen-ai about teenager Katusmi and an older guy named Kashioka who runs a mahjong parlor – Katsumi comes around to get his dad there late at night, and K and K end up gaining a physical interest in each other. I was sort of thankful there was no sex in here because of the huge age gap as Kashioka is probably Katsumi’s dad’s age. It’s an unglamorous portrayal of a first crush that we see from Katsumi’s perspective, and quite a sleazy one at that.
Next up is more sex though, with two teen characters named Oikawa and Hashimoto. Yamada mentions that these characters are from an “upcoming” series, but Picnic came out in 2004 and the “follow-up,” Boku ni Datte Iibun ga Aru, came out in 1999, so this must have been done before then. They have some hot chemistry but – more importantly? – some hot sex, so there’s that. There was also a part where it seemed one of them was about to get a blumpkin. Not sure if I’ve ever seen a blumpkin in any yaoi story yet, doujin or otherwise, but I’m sure I just haven’t dug deep enough.
The last story was a salaryman romance between a boss who gets a transfer and his coworker who doesn’t want to let him go, and although it wasn’t really smutty, I liked the characters (because I tend to like salarymen yaoi, probably) and it was one of my two favorites, maybe tied with the one before it.
If nothing else, there’s a lot of variety in here, and because it’s a one-shot compilation there is more sex in general than the other Yamada titles I’ve read so far which all are drawn-out single stories (Dost Thou Know, Don’t Blame Me, Laugh Under the Sun). Honestly though the sex isn’t exactly all that explicit as you can see and I don’t find her early art very attractive as mentioned, so it’s not like this really mattered to me. I liked more of the characters than not, although none really get too developed here because of length. Still, she does short stories ok, which is not something than can be said for every BL mangaka, especially ones who typically do long slow-burn longer stories like her.
TL;DR If I consider my non-preference for Yamada’s art just a personal opinion, objectively it’s average yet decent for a 90s-00s BL one-shots book, especially if you like stories that are more josei and less shojo. Her manga is usually pretty slow, so the fact that these were all short one-shots forced her to move things along too. There’s variety, interesting characters, and sexy bits, but her art style isn’t for everyone (me included), especially her more unpolished earlier stuff like this.