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)”
Invisible love more like invisible weiners badum tischhh
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)”
Oh, oh! Finally, a good one! I feel like a dude who’s been fishing the whole day and the only thing that’s been biting is tiny lightsaber-dick-largemouth-bass and man-rape-mackerel, or a strange deformed mystery fish like Tomcats that looked like it swam out of the number four reactor at Chernobyl. But I suddenly I finally reeled in a decent fish – it’s no lunker but I’ll eat tonight at least. Perhaps next time I should move to a lake that’s actually been stocked with fish past 2008…
Continue reading “SIGHING KISS (Riyu Yamakami)”
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.
I literally reviewed about 20 old forgotten June titles in a row in the past couple months, so it’s time to read some other imprints for a change (June just happens to have the largest back catalog of yaoi published in English by miles, which is why I always seem to be reading their stuff). Let’s pick one from the vault of the current top dog in BL publishing – SuBLime!
Shockingly, this is the very first SuBLime title I’ve talked about on this blog, (mainly because I usually talk about older or sucky titles and they have neither), so I thought I should start with one of their first ones, Honey Darling from 2012. This is a fan favorite with enduring popularity, in fact just yesterday I let a fujo I was selling some stuff to online pick a free BL from my box of 20 or so doubles and she immediately and enthusiastically chose Honey Darling (over much newer titles like Twilight out of Focus and even Dick Fight Island, mind you).
Continue reading “HONEY DARLING (Norikazu Akira)”
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)”
‘Can you still call someone ‘just a friend’ after kissing?’ this book asks. Why yes, you can do exactly that – surely they know what friends with benefits are? Or, you can kiss someone and decide ‘yeah, no,’ which was the experience of my first kiss. I was 14 and he was 16 which I remember mattering (oh, he’s a ‘junior and you’re a freshman!’ my friends cooed). He invited me to the movies after class and we went to see the terrible sequel of an already-terrible romcom and then we sat there watching the credits roll kind of waiting in anticipation to see if the other was interested in this mouth touching thing people seemed to like. We were both shy naturally but finally the whole theater was empty so we went for it. I don’t think he knew it was my first kiss and for that I am very grateful. I remember hating it – eww, boy tongue – and watching a guy who worked there sweeping popcorn out of the corner of my eye and I felt weirded out that he was smiling at us and then it occurred to me that maybe I was supposed to close my eyes anyway. Don’t worry, the kissing in here is much hotter than that…
Continue reading “KISSING (Sasaki/Takaku)”