Yaoi manga reviews and fujoshi ramblings
Yoshiyuki is a middle-school art teacher who visits the hospital often to see his dying mother. Also there is furniture designer Kaoru, there to visit his dying grandmother, and when he runs into Yoshiyuki he is instantly captivated.
“So how did you guys meet?”
“Well it was thanks to our relatives dying…”
Continue reading “SHY INTENTIONS (Syouko Takaku)”
This was an early title in my collection and I read like part of it or something and remember liking it ok. Reading it again I’m not sure it’s so good that I have to hold onto it still but it’s a cute one-shot compilation for 2008. I guess nowdays we’re just spoiled with such super good BL that this older ‘ok’ BL just pales in comparison.
Continue reading “BAREFOOT WALTZ (Romuco Miike)”
The author calls the main couples in this story a ‘yuri-ple’ and I’d never heard that term in my life so I’m glad she explained it – my idea of yuri is lesbian manga but apparently she means it to be ‘the pairing of two uke-like characters.’ Ah, so that’s why they both act so dumb! It’s like a wall meeting a wall despite them dating on page 1, neither will take the lead and their relationship just sort of stagnates until one of them finally grows a pair out of sheer horniness and tries to get things moving. Hey guys, I know you want to jerk off alone and wax poetic about your inner feelings but we’ve got a page limit so piss or get off the pot…
Continue reading “AFTER I WIN (Kaname Itsuki)”
My expectations of anything by Momoko Tenzen are now so low that all she has to do is draw something marginally ok at this point for me to think positively of it. This is her 8th title, and it seems she finally figured out how not to suck by now.
Continue reading “LA SATANICA (Momoko Tenzen)”
You may have heard the dilemma of when to listen to sad music – if you listen to it when you’re happy, you’ll be sad, but if you listen to it when you’re sad, you’ll get sadder. Is sad manga the same? Hmm. Well, this one isn’t that sad, but even Yumeka’s happy stories seem twinged with melancholy because of her unique way of telling them.
Continue reading “SAME CELL ORGANISM (Sumomo Yumeka)”
This was one of the first BL titles I ever read, and I remember really liking it. I even replaced my crappy used faded copy that looked like a dog had chewed on the dust cover with a nicer one. However, now that I have hundreds of BL under my belt and I just read another title by this mangaka, I decided to see if it still held up.
Continue reading “LOVING GAZE (Akira Kanbe)”
…in which two teachers hook up in an empty kindergarten classroom. Do you think that’s a themed room option at love hotels?
Continue reading “EVERLASTING LOVE (Ryoko Chiba)”
The back of this book actually says, ‘Cute Beast is sure to please the most jaded of yaoi fans.’
Ohhh boy, I can’t wait to put *that* statement to the test. Feels like a challenge! I’d put on some brass knuckles except that would make it hard to type…
Continue reading “CUTE BEAST (Amayo Tsuge)”
Hinako Takanaga is one of the most well-known BL mangaka in North America, thanks to the huge success of the The Tyrant Falls in Love in the 2010s, as well as the more recent Finder series – whether you got into BL then or more recently, she’s probably one of the first artists whose work gets in your radar since it’s so widely recommended. She had a strong debut in 1996 with the four-part series Challengers, which the long-defunct publisher DramaQueen released here. Her super talent for great characters and stories gave her a rather fast rise within the fandom, of which she is still a fixture today. Sadly the Tyrant series, probably her best work, is stuck with DMP here in North America, the ultimate tax writeoff zombie of BL pubs that keeps coming back to life no matter how dead it is.
This story takes place in a reality in which there are humanoid robot ukes that look like cute little “teenagers.” I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a brilliant idea coming on, which is: we can give them to pedophiles to keep them from hurting real kids! Just let them diddle androids all day! Unfortunately our real world technology hasn’t reached the level of this manga but I believe in the future, guys. A future of sex androids for pedophiles. Well, and the rest of us too, obviously. Because I want a Giyu Tomioka android who will fuck my brains out and I don’t care what strangers on the internet know it (mom? you haven’t found my blog yet, right?). Seriously, why is Elon Musk screwing around with social media and electric cars and rockets when he could be making sex androids? Talk about wasting your time…
Continue reading “LOVE MACHINE (Amayo Tsuge)”