I have a whole lot of June books, and I’m trying to weed some of the crap out of my collection. But the last three I’ve picked have just made the cut to stay out of the sell pile just by a hair, mainly because they have passable art and a decent amount of sex. Really, that’s all it takes, I’m an easy customer!
Dawn of Love is a smutty comedy starring college student Masahiro who has the hots for his blonde classmate Takane, and the two quickly hook-up as casual sex friends by page 7. Masahiro adores Takane and wants to be exclusive, but Takane doesn’t see him as anything more than one of his many sex friends.
What follows is a porny dramedy about the two characters navigating sex vs love together, complicated by Takane’s many FwBs who don’t want to let him go. At least a good half of this book is just sex scenes – the mangaka mentions she had the Japanese kama sutra (the Shi Juhatte) as reference material plus a photo book of love hotels around Japan, and she puts them to good use.
Although our MCs are naked and porking more often than not, the sex is not especially explicit – there’s no dick really, although honestly it’s whatever because the dick would be censored anyway. Modern-day BL smut is often a lot more explicit than this though, so if you’re used to more recent titles this would probably bore you. Masahiro was my favorite thing about it, he had a funny personality that kept the story from getting dragged down in serious philosophical musings about love and sex.
I liked that both main characters seemed like real gay people. My friend Shinami who also read this thought it ‘seemed pretty accurate to how young gay guys in a city actually operate, and it’s not at all like most yaoi manga, which are all cock dramas for women.’ Couldn’t have said it better myself.
At the end there is a second short shounen-ai story about designer Kensho and his assistant Nanao. They both have unspoken feelings for each other but Nanao was hurt in a previous relationship and doesn’t want to be vulnerable. It was a completely different kind of story than the first one, but the characters were super cute, and I wished that it was longer.
Overall, if you like smut or the idea of sex friends and you don’t mind the lack of delineated penis, you might like Dawn of Love as it’s easy to find for cheap. The sex is more sleazy than not but there’s no non-con and it has a cute ending, and the art is serviceable.
TL;DR Smutty comedy in which the mangaka mentions her main reference materials were the kama sutra and a photo book of love hotels, both of which are very apparent – I think the characters fucking in love hotels is a good 50% of the story and sex noises are a good 50% of the dialogue. The sex isn’t all that explicit, but it’s fun manga thanks mainly to the seme’s lively personality adding some comic relief.