ROMANTIC ILLUSIONS (Reiichi Hiiro)

Yu is a boy who shares a body with two extra personalities, a high-powered defense lawyer named Kaname and a slutty playboy named Ryo, that his mind invented to love him when his mother abandoned him. They swap turns taking control of Yu’s body, but can still communicate inside his head. Even though Yu created them to love him, they still want love lives of their own. Hijinks ensue!

Multiple personality disorder is usually nothing in fiction like it is IRL, and even moreso in this manga, but it’s a cute dramedy with decent art and a unique idea so that’s something at least

Yu and his two bonus personalities, Ryo and Kaname. They never really say how come switching personalities also seems to switch their hair color…

Yu works part-time at a flower shop and starts dating a man named Sugo, who – get this – sought out Yu because he’s a psychiatrist at a hospital Yu’s aunt works at, and found out about him that way. Yeahhhh no ethical implications of that at all, right?

I can’t see an ice cream scene in a manga without thinking of Boku no Pico, I’ve been cursed…
“I may have had sex with 100 people but my HEART’S a virgin!” Do you think that excuse would ever fly IRL?
Ok but this is a pretty hot masturbation scene

But Kaname and Ryo fight to both jealously keep Yu all to themselves, even as they separately start to fall in love with other people. So uh, lot of conflict here as you can see.

Kaname eventually starts dating a prosecutor on a case he’s working on (since we already threw ethical implications out the window here, why not) and ends up experimenting with S&M. I was hoping some sort of MPD courtroom drama would come out of this but it never does.

“This is not at all a complete conflict of interests for the clients of the case we’re working on!”

Ryo, on the other hand, ends up dating another man named Dionysus with multiple personalities. This relationship in particular had a lot of potential for comedy moments that were largely wasted (just think, what if they both swapped personalities during sex? Never happens), and instead it slowly started to become a strange psychiatric medical drama presided over by Sugo and took over the second half of the story.

Ryo’s relationship with another man with MPD was overly serious and dramatic for a self-described comedy manga when it could have been really funny

This was a weird choice, because even if you know nothing about MPD you still probably know that this is not at all what a real person with MPD would be like, so Sugo’s serious psychiatric involvement seems a little dumb. The story could definitely have used more comedy in general and just needed to be sillier, not even the dialogue was that funny – it took a fun and nonrealistic premise a bit too seriously. It really just needed to go dick-out balls-out wild in the comedy direction, there was gag potential in almost every scene and tons of stuff that could have been done with the characters to make it funnier but as it went on it leaned more towards drama – it’s like she was afraid to make it too crazy and kept hanging onto traditional BL tropes as a safe zone. It definitely needed to be more like Incredible Kintaro and less like a normal BL story around the theme of MPD.

It was surprisingly easy to follow for so much going on, but almost nothing that happens really makes that much sense if you think about it logically so you’d have to put critical thinking aside to be able to enjoy it. The art is cute and pretty polished-looking for 2006, which is nice, I’m not familiar with this mangaka but I would definitely read more of her work if I came across it. Despite the good parts, it just felt like a wasted opportunity because it had the potential to be so much better.

TL;DR Comedy with cute art about the dating life of a guy with multiple personalities. It felt like it could have done more with the idea than it did, and it definitely could have been funnier and sillier. There was a part where he ended up dating another guy with multiple personalities for example, which could have been really hilarious but instead it turned more into a medical drama. It did have some funny parts and was a unique idea for a BL, but it felt like a missed opportunity.

TheBL Rating: 4.5/10