I never thought I’d say that masturbation scenes in a yaoi book is what would bump up the rating for me, yet here I am.
The Art of Loving “Part 1” (we’ll see part two when Satan wears a parka), starts off promising, if you don’t mind cliche yaoi school stories – I mean, I don’t, especially if the bishies are cute, and Yutaka is one chiquita banana – I actually bought this one just because of the cover. And it takes an interesting turn once you find out that the hero is, well, the villain. But once I started getting to the end and realized that it’s going to end on a permanent cliffhanger, I quickly got annoyed. It’s hard to pick apart the story when you don’t get to see the real ending, because it may have explained away some inconsistencies (for example, how did Maki go from being an art student to a successful businessman?), but it’s irritating that it didn’t have a satisfying, well, *anything* at the end. There was barely anything in the story to warrant an M rating which was also disappointing, unless you count masturbation scenes, which oddly I found to be fairly titillating. Or maybe it’s just hands covered in semen, I don’t know. I need Jesus.
I do like Eiki’s art, and she draws cute guys. Yutaka is an interesting and complex character, and the story had a lot of potential if it had been finished. She tends to have trouble writing endings though, or gets bored with her own work and moves on. Another work of hers like this is Train*Train, a four-volume BL fanservice comedy series on the June DokiDoki imprint which basically just ends in the middle of nowhere, but it isn’t as annoying there since it’s more of a gag manga. I guess I can forgive her though because she did do the story for Love Stage, so I know she’s got it in her.
TL;DR: Well, there’s hot men and hot semen hands, but no actual part 2 – it’s hard to judge it because of that, since some unexplained or unfinished story elements in this volume may have been planned for the second part. EikiEiki in general seems to have some trouble writing endings.