In which the book’s one and only sex scene takes place with the ghosts of the uke’s ancestors all watching. Phantovoyeurism?
High schooler Fumiya lives next door to a cemetery and has the ability to see ghosts, a frightening occurrence that he has had to learn to live with. His childhood friend and neighbor Shogo, who lives at the Shinto temple next door, can’t see these spirits but he helps Fumiya put them to rest. They both get roped into joining the Occult Club at school where their fellow members do things like seek cursed objects and restless spirits like all normal kids do in high school, giving both Fumiya and Shogo their share of ghostly hijinks. They also slowly fall in love, of course. How did you guess?
The layout of this book is absolutely obnoxious in parts…the panels have no room to breathe and there’s an unnecessary amount of text bubbles scattered everywhere. Everything feels crammed too much together and it makes for an annoying read.
Fumiya is an annoying damsel in distress who mainly just sits around looking cute and crying over ghosts until his white knight Shogo comes to save him. Both characters have the personality of a wet blanket, and their relationship takes a back seat to the story, which isn’t the worst thing in the world, but annoying paneling and annoying characters don’t really help it.
I’ve only read one other Nase Yamato title, Pet on Duty, but a lot of the same comments apply to this one. She has great art and draws really pretty bishounen, the main highlight of her work, and lavishes particular attention on drawing doll-like shota ukes (she also draws real shota btw, which we of course don’t have in English). This manga has a bit more story than that one, but the same sort of flat characters. Both titles also share the disappointing feature of one single tiny ass weak sex scene that she saves for the very back and takes up no more than like 1/5th of the page. In this one though, the ghosts of all of Fumiya’s ancestors watch because they’re “in town” for the Obon festival. I mean…I guess ghosts could be watching us have sex all the time. Do ghosts get horny? Is everyone’s great great great great grandpa watching them screw and jerking it in the corner of the ceiling? Next time you have sex, run that by your partner. I’m sure that will really get them going.
Anyway…if this uber-bishounen and cutesy uke thing is your jam, you’d probably really like Nase Yamato. If there’s one thing she really does well, it’s definitely that, but in this book it comes at the expense of nearly everything else. This book does have some plot and I like supernatural elements in yaoi stories (she calls it a “horror story” in the back but it’s…not), although at the end of the day it’s nothing more than your typical whatever sort of yaoi plot and the crowded paneling and text bubbles make it anxiety-inducing to read anyway. At least there’s a lot of pretty men to look at.
TL;DR: High school romance between a kid who can see ghosts and his best friend who can banish them. The crowded paneling and excessive amount of word bubbles on some panels make it an annoying read. Nase Yamato draws very pretty boys that look like dolls, but unfortunately they also have the personalities of one. It takes until the end of the book for actual BL to happen and to top it off there is a single weak sex scene that is seemingly drawn as small as possible (oh, but all the ghosts of the uke’s dead ancestors watch them fuck, so that’s worth mentioning). Similar to another title of hers I’ve read called “Pet on Duty,” the art is pretty great but everything else is pretty meh