Yaoi manga reviews and fujoshi ramblings
In which Taishi Zaou, who often finds drawing sex scenes to be a hassle, has found a new way to take a shortcut – just have one guy dry hump the other and cum in his pants! Genius!
Continue reading “LIVING FOR TOMORROW (Taishi Zaou)”
Do you like 12 year olds topping their high school stepbrothers? No? Well too bad, says Taishi Zaou, you thought you were just getting a story about a guy with sexy hands but then ZAP, surprise shota semes. Thankfully everyone having sex is here is past puberty, if that makes you feel better.
Continue reading “ELECTRIC HANDS (Taishi Zaou)”
You may have noticed I’ve been reviewing a lot of Yamada titles lately, in fact I think I’ve pretty much reviewed all her stuff we have in English at this point except for Close the Last Door. The second volume of that is sort of valuable so I’m saving it for last, because that means it might actually be good. Not that the rest of her stuff I’ve read is awful, it’s turned out to be a pretty mixed bag – generally she has good characters and thoughtful stories, but not super appealing art (It is worth mentioning again though that her more recent work is decidedly better-looking, although we don’t have any in English).
Continue reading “GLASS SKY (Yugi Yamada)”
This manga is from 2007, but it seriously feels like Kuwabara leapt forward in time and prompted ChatGPT to ‘write me a three-part BL story about high school boys that’s wholesome and cute’ and this is what it generated.
Continue reading “BLUE SKY (Yuko Kuwabara)”
It must just be luck of the draw, but the last three BL I’ve reviewed have all pretty much been scored somewhere in the 5-6 range out of 10. It almost makes me not want to give this manga that score just because of that, even though that is how I’d rate this one too. 5 is a “good” score to me, it’s like if it was just average but still had things to like about it. Some may say I am a hard rater, but if you’re a veteran manga reader too you’ve probably also come to realize over time just how good or how bad a manga can be. When I first started reading BL, everything got a good score, because I just didn’t have as much to compare it to – perhaps you were the same?
Continue reading “LOVER’S PLEDGE (Kae Maruya)”
Kaori Monchi notes in the beginning of this manga that her little brother pasted the screentones. I’m not sure how old this kid is but I wonder if his friends at school know that he helps his older sister out with her gay porn stories?
Continue reading “WAGAMAMA KITCHEN (Kaori Monchi)”
Tfw you were raised as an only child by your grandfather because you dont have any other family and he dies but turns out he was actually lying to you about not having family it’s just that your parents were pieces of shit who left your six younger brothers to raise themselves in poverty in a hovel somewhere and you finally go to meet and live with them but they all hate you and one of them always has to suck the neighbor’s dick for money.
It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed a Naduki Koujima title, the last one was Naughty but Nice which was another of her early works like this one. Our Kingdom is one of her most well-known manga despite being sort of incomplete, and it embodies all the things you can usually find in her work – school settings, rapey semes, cute little big-eyed ukes, and uncomfortable power-imbalanced relationships between them. Oh yeah, and crotch grabbing and forceful handjobs. She really, really loves crotch grabbing and forceful handjobs…
Continue reading “OUR KINGDOM (Naduki Koujima)”
This is a very early June title, among the first releases on the imprint in the early 00s after they smelled the success of Tokyopop’s gamble on Gravitation and decided they wanted a hot slice. Similar to their other multi-volume early titles like Il Gatto sul G, Our Kingdom, and Gorgeous Carat, they weren’t really ready to license anything all that raunchy yet – at least until Tokyopop put out Junjo Romantica on their BLU imprint and all bets were off. And, at 7 volumes, La Esperanca tied with Our Kingdom as the longest series on the June imprint for about a decade – until they did Ayano Yamane’s Finder and The Tyrant Falls in Love much later on, unfortunately for both series (Finder was license-rescued by Sublime and no one really knows what the fuck is going on with Tyrant yet).
Why the dearth of long series between this time? The first reason is obvious, they present more upfront commitment and expense than one-shots, and the 2008 economic downturn didn’t help things. The manga industry in general also came to realize that the sales of manga series, especially longer ones, largely ride off the back of an anime, and the BL category has scant entries in that regard – so, one-shots and the shorter series (under 10-12 volumes) are definitely safer bets. This is starting to change and there are exceptions, but by and large, BL series in the west are ‘short and sweet’ and longer ones are not gambled on unless they have an anime to help sales. Back in the early 00s though, the Western market was horny for any BL and DMP wanted to filled that hole (!). How has this series aged and is it still worth reading so many years later? Let’s find out!
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Boy I sure do love when a book leads up to an ending that would tie everything together but instead they go ‘sike, you thought this was going to have the ending the reader wants? Girl do you even read bad yaoi?’ Well golly gee, guess I have egg on my face for being hopeful…
Continue reading “SEVEN (Momoko Tenzen)”