After the death of their parents, Kohei became an overprotective brother to his younger sister Chieko. But when she got married against his will and brought her husband Shingo to live with them, Kohei had trouble letting his sister go and mostly avoided the newlyweds. Then tragedy struck – Chieko was suddenly killed in a traffic accident and now Kohei is stuck sharing both his personal tragedy and his living space with Shingo, the brother-in-law he hates.
This is a really, really good BL story idea, no? With such a great concept, what could possibly go wrong?
With this plot, I was looking forward to an emotional, slow-burn romance between two men drawn together by tragic family circumstances – Kohei the standoffish, devastated brother with his only family gone, and Shingo the kindhearted grieving widower. Would they use each other as a stand-in for the woman they both lost? How would their thorny circumstances turn to love?
Sadly, anything interesting this story could have done is basically ignored. What actually happens is that early in the manga, Shingo basically just tries to rape Kohei in his sleep and then says, out of nowhere, that he has feelings for him. When these feelings developed and why, Shingo never says. Not even easy plays like “you just reminded me so much of Chieko” or “I can’t ever date another woman because I loved Chieko so much, so I’m gay now” or some BS like that. I was actually hoping this whole sudden non-con sequence was a dream because why? Why was non-con necessary in this story?! Why did it have to go this route?!
I should mentioned that I’m not totally opposed to non-con in BL the way that some people are, especially younger modern readers who seem to be offended by everything in fiction nowdays. If it is going to factor into the story or a character’s development or personality – or it’s just a shameless smut BL – I’m generally fine with non-con as long as there isn’t a big age gap with a very young uke. But this story really had no business adding non-con in here. Shingo is presented as a kind person who promised Kohei he would take care of Chieko and never make her cry, and the fact that he would randomly just come onto Kohei in his sleep out of nowhere didn’t fit his character at all.
With that being how their relationship basically starts, any chance for developing the tension is pretty much thrown out the window, and the story continues to slide on a downward trajectory. They end up together, and sleeping together, and the story doesn’t want you to care about the shortcuts its taking to get there. Kohei basically just decides to return Shingo’s feelings, despite…hating him? If either of them have complex emotions about the whole thing and about each other, it’s not really shown. Any touching moments they have together feel unearned. Shingo also tries to rape him again later on, as if one out-of-character non-con scene wasn’t enough.
Juji Fusa seems like she wanted to make sure the book has enough sex, whether it fits the story or not. And, it does I guess (no dick though) but at the expense of developing the character’s relationship in the way the concept deserved. Her art isn’t bad but it’s sort of lazy sometimes, she only really focuses on their faces and a lot of other things look sort of unfinished. This story was done only for a tankobon and not a magazine, so I’m not sure if that meant the deadline was more or less rigid or it affected how it was drawn.
So yeah – this one was really disappointing, because it could have been a lot better. It seems like it would have been easy enough to draw a halfway decent yaoi off such a great concept even if it was some paint-by-numbers crap, as plenty of yaoi have ascended to higher heights with ideas that are much more trite. Fusa seems to really like to do smut and josei according to her mangaupdates entry, so maybe the real issue is that she landed on an idea that was far too interesting for the story she wanted to draw.
TL;DR: How to take a great BL concept and fuck it up 101. A stellar story idea about a standoffish brother being forced to share both a personal tragedy and a living space with a well-meaning brother-in-law he never liked following his beloved sister’s tragic death, which was marred by non-con that did not match the characters or story in the least – plus all-around clumsy and lazy execution. A good idea with wasted potential and a weird mismatch between the characters’ personalities and their actions, with an ending that is unearned and a relationship that is not nearly as explored as the concept called for.