kissing/10 – The BLacklist: Yaoi Reviews

January 26, 2023July 4, 2024

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…

August 7, 2022October 30, 2023

DUETTO (Aoi Kujyou)

Sometimes reading these random older yaoi titles feels like a whats-behind-the-door game in terms of what you may get. Sometime you get eyeball licking. Sometimes Osama bin Laden appears. Sometimes a guy’s asshole gets used as a flowerpot. And let’s definitely not forget that sometimes you get a story where a guy pleasures himself with a corncob and suddenly it turns into a man that he has a magic orgy with in the clouds along with a goat boy who sticks a harp up his ass, followed by tentacle monster kemonomimi rape.

I guess every now and then you get like, a normal school romance or something. Or, if you’re reading Duetto, you get…biological son x father noncon. Yup. I mentioned all that other stuff to soften the blow.

July 23, 2022April 25, 2024

LOVE SHARE (Aoi Kujyou)

Aoi Kujyou is something of an uncommon anomaly in the yaoi world – a male. You would never know this, as his art style and stories are very much the same as his female counterparts, but it’s interesting when a male artist chooses to make BL for a female audience. I think it’s safe to say his work is a collective ace in the pocket for wooing girls *or* gay guys, so this dude is really straddling the strait here and his friends are probably all jealous at the power he wields. He’s still an active mangaka now and has quite the back catalog too. As far as this early work of his goes though, it was a bit of a dud for me overall due to some missing context and no clear plot development. There’s some prrrrrretty dang hot kissing though. Gay kissing. Shh don’t tell my mom.