Tag: good for beginners

Posted on

LOVE ROUND!! (Hinako Takanaga)

Hinako Takanaga is one of the most well-known BL mangaka in North America, thanks to the huge success of 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 Falls in Love, 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.

Continue reading “LOVE ROUND!! (Hinako Takanaga)”
Posted on

HONEY DARLING (Norikazu Akira)

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)”
Posted on

KISSING (Sasaki/Takaku)

‘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)”
Posted on

BEYOND MY TOUCH (Tomo Maeda)


I have a tag on this blog for books that are “good for beginners,” and this is one of those that’s ideal for the innocent BL virgins among us looking to dip their toes into the genre. Although it’s an older title, the stories are cute and the art doesn’t feel too dated; I think even a Catholic priest would have a hard time being offended by a shounen-ai this wholesome. They may even ask to borrow it and leave it around for the altar boys to find…you know, to get a second opinion.

Continue reading “BEYOND MY TOUCH (Tomo Maeda)”
Posted on

SOLFEGE (Fumi Yoshinaga)

Surprisingly, this is my first Fumi Yoshinaga title. I never actively sought out Antique Bakery although I somehow still own it, and it’s among her most well-known works (you know you’ve written a hit when it gets made into a Korean live-action movie). Though not yaoi itself, she made a lengthy catalog of yaoi doujinshi to go with it that I am going to go out on a limb and guess is probably a bit different from Maki Murakami’s Gravitation dj, but one can dream.

Continue reading “SOLFEGE (Fumi Yoshinaga)”
Posted on

RED (Sanae Rokuya)

I think I speak for everyone when I say that the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of feudal Japan is homoerotic tension. No? Ok, samurai first, but homoerotic tension is definitely second. Still no? Ugh, fine, samurai then Scientologist robot dinosaurs, jeez, making me say the obvious one. But thankfully we have unsung heroes like Rokuya here who take a period of history and add a dash of spice from their magic man love pouch to make a whole different recipe. Who can say for certain it didn’t originally taste this way, anyway? Ain’t historical fantasy great?

Continue reading “RED (Sanae Rokuya)”
Posted on

DOUBLE CAST (Mamahara/Mizuhashi)

Rival actor co-stars getting it on is up there on my list of favorite yaoi plots, shortly behind high schoolers getting it on, hi FBI nothing to see here, guys in period costume getting it on, business/work rivals getting it on, and powerful fantasy kings or demons getting it on. You can’t say I don’t have diverse tastes, I guess.

As far as the rival-actors-turned-costars theme, Double Cast doesn’t quite do this as well as Hero Heel or Embracing Love, but it’s still a solid entry in this category. The story is a good mix of salacious and sincere, such that it satisfied my inner trashy gossip mag fantasies without reading like one.

Continue reading “DOUBLE CAST (Mamahara/Mizuhashi)”
Posted on

L’ETOILE SOLITAIRE (Yuno Ogami)

Library sales are pretty unexpected places to find M-rated yaoi. If they have a manga section at all, much less one that has anything other than dog-eared copies of Naruto and Dragonball Z, they’d probably never (knowingly) put BL in it, because the last thing any parent wants is their 9-year-old finding a volume of Level C while were just innocently ogling the covers of Love Hina and running up to them loudly asking what a creampie is or why a man would want to stick his pee-pee in your butt. But lo and behold, I unearthed this puppy at a library sale one time, the only yaoi book I have found at one to date. It even still had the bonus postcard intact which was pretty cool. Made me wonder how it ended up there and who it used to belong to. I’ll bet it was a member of Congress. I like to think my state representative is secretly a fudanshi, it’s about time someone stood up for the most important issues of our time, like needless censoring.


L’Etoile Solitaire is the debut story of Yuno Ogami, and possibly her only published work unless she has a pseudonym – she’s somewhat of a ghost, and seems to have all but disappeared from the manga world. Her website/blog is still up but hasn’t been updated in years, and interestingly still has a post up from this book’s launch where she did a custom illustration of the main characters for her readers. This story was a ‘Japanese Original English Language’ manga, a term which makes zero sense to me but apparently just means it was commissioned. Since we now know it was the only real story she ever did, we have nothing to really compare it to nor could witness an evolution in her style, sadly. I wish she hadn’t dropped off the map after this because I think she was would have become a really great mangaka.

Continue reading “L’ETOILE SOLITAIRE (Yuno Ogami)”