Wow a BL with racism and child abuse but no penis in sight, we’re really getting into June’s benchwarmers here…
This is a one-shot compilation that features five stories, the first of which is the title story. It features high schooler Keshiki and his cousin and classmate Izuru, who haven’t talked for ten years over Keshiki’s dad’s death (because…Izuru kissed him when they were kids and Kekishi ran out into the street from – shock? – and his dad chased him and got hit by a car and died?). Keshiki also ‘doesnt like dark things,’ and this includes Izuru because he has dark skin…uhhhhhh….
The reason for this is apparently that…Keshiki’s dad’s bones were white so he only likes white things? I don’t know but it was super weird and even though Izuru is polite about it and tries to be understanding the story just has awkward racist vibes. Keshiki seems to get over whatever issue he has extremely quickly though because I guess he really wants some of chocolate popsicle.
After this I was like “well ok at least I got the awkward story out of the way” but turns out oddball themes seem to be Nitta’s favorite kind. The next story is about an American named Keith living with a lacquer painting master in Japan to learn the craft, but faces discrimination because he isn’t Japanese. The master’s son Takeshi doesn’t seem to feel this way though, fawning over Keith’s his blonde hair and blue eyes and wanting to fug him.
It has a weird “white worship” kind of thing going on that made me a bit uncomfortable and I started to wonder if every story was going to be about race when I saw what the word “White” in the title of the book was really referring to
Thankfully the next story doesn’t prominently feature ethnicity or skin color but don’t worry guys, we’ve moved onto something much more palatable in the third story – child abuse!
This is also a weird one about three actors living together, the main one is Tomomi, and the other two are gay. Tomomi “borrows” his sister’s baby to try to better understand a role he is playing and ends up sorta kinda abusing the kid. There is a little bit of BL with his two roommates but it’s mostly a story about Tomomi and this kid, who…comes to love his uncle anyway despite some highly questionable treatment. Sounds like this kid might read BL…
We finally get a sort of normal story, the only one in the book, and it’s a rich guy x poor guy story that…well, at least we finally have two dudes in bed together, so that’s a start.
This story shoehorns in some kind of wild murder subplot at the end, and combined with two pretty annoying main characters, just doesn’t end up being very good.
What could finish off this delightful tome of great stories for Christian summer camp? If you guessed “One about a guy with a height fetish” you’re right!
Sir Bowl Cut on the right here actually is straight, but he has run out of tall women to date, so naturally when he sees his tale male model neighbor he makes a move.
The model guy really doesn’t have much of a personality at all and seems to sleep with this dude just because he asks. Maybe he has a bowl cut fetish?
So…I think Youka Nitta is a good mangaka and has a decent amount of stuff in English, (including no less than three series on Viz’s SuBLime imprint), but I think she is not very good at short stories. The pacing was very off and any conflict that was set up was like immediately resolved with character decisions that seemed to come out of nowhere, not to mention some awkward themes that would be hard to make work in a long story much less a short one. She has a refined sort of ‘neo 90s’ looking art style with clean and confident lines that is at tight and slick as a uke’s b-hole, and probably the best part of this book – the characters are attractive at least. Sadly there wasn’t much action though, it was a pretty wasted M rating.
This was Nitta’s first compilation of this sort and perhaps her only one, and that was…probably for the best. I’d check out her SuBLime books (Spiritual Police, Starting with a Kiss, and Embracing Love) which are all full-length stories with actual sex.
TL;DR: Boy I sure do love when an M-rated BL doesnt have any weiners but has…racism and child abuse. Questionable themes aside I disliked all five stories in here, they had awkward pacing, and bizarre character decisions that made any conflict seem trivial – Nitta is a good mangaka with a clean neo-90s art style but I think she just isn’t great at short stories, her other work is for sure better