Yaoi manga reviews and fujoshi ramblings
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)”
It’s not often that I get my hands on a truly obscure English BL – as in, something so obscure it doesn’t even have an ISBN. My friend Shinami let me borrow this one; it was an exclusive release as part of a BL-subscription box called Yaoi Crate that was around in the early 2020s. Despite its obscurity it’s probably not all that rare yet since it hasn’t been too long since it came out, but no doubt it will be one day. Shall we…start with pudding? *badum tisch*
Continue reading “LET’S START WITH PUDDING (Yosono Yosomi)”
If you love nothing more than the idea of hot salarymen smoking cigarettes plus smoking each other’s poles, Deux Press has a manga for you. Maybe the only manga for you, at least in English. Cigarette Kisses may *seem* like bad BL trash, but let me subvert your expectations: it’s good BL trash. Totally different thing! It’s not really that trashy though, it’s actually a serious drama, with gay sex. Let’s go with that.
Continue reading “CIGARETTE KISSES (Nase Yamato)”
Yugi Yamada usually has decent stories, but they tend to be very slow slice-of-lifes. This, however, was a book of one-shots, so it forced her to speed things up. I think her story ideas and characters are her strong suit, so having more of that helped overcome the things she doesn’t do well, namely…drawing. It’s no secret I’m not a big fan of Yamada’s art, but this mainly applies to her earlier work like this – her art definitely gets more polished later on while still bearing her stylistic signature, although we don’t really have her most recent stuff in English.
Continue reading “PICNIC (Yugi Yamada)”
I picked this one off my shelf because it was raining. I guess there’s no better time to read it?
I was fooled by the cover and title of this one. I thought there would be sweetness and romance, but instead there was…rape and murder. Close enough?
Continue reading “ENDLESS RAIN (Yuuya)”
Is your new year’s resolution to read more bad yaoi hanging around in your collection that you can get rid of, or is that just me? Honestly, making a half-hearted attempt at getting in shape like normal people would probably be easier than that. I have read yaoi at the gym before though, so perhaps I can combine the two – I used to bring a volume with a discreet cover to read while I was on the elliptical or bike. Nothing like burning through gay porn while burning calories! The Yaoi Bike 801, now with a detachable dildo on the seat, for only the classiest ladies obviously.
Continue reading “THE FIRST STAGE OF LOVE (Kazuhiko Mishima)”
Even if you’re not a fan of Shiuko Kano’s work, it’s hard not to acknowledge her vast contributions to this wild and wonderful niche of ours – she debuted in the mid-90s and has been steadily churning out work ever since then, which surely merits some kind of lifetime achievement prize (a crystal penis statue?). Perhaps she will even join the likes of Ayano Yamane and Hinako Takanaga in the pantheon of BL goddesses one day for dedication to the art of porncraft, on a pedestal where dick-shaped vines gleefully snake up your winged sandals and a statue of a golden ass (!) stands at your side. If nothing else she’s staked her claim in the genre by sheer willpower and steady output of work, since she never really had a blockbuster series in English (Punch Up is stellar, but not on the level of, say, the Finder series). She is also fearless in what she commits to paper, for better or for worse, with a unique style that she has managed to tweak through the years to keep fresh. That’s the top cushion of the sandwich for what I’m about to say, which is that sometimes her stories are so trashy or ridiculous or her characters so unattractive with their weird short haircuts and prominent noses that I just can’t get into it (like Affair for example). BUT, here’s the bottom cushion – with a body of work as large as hers, there’s bound to be some duds mixed in, right? Thankfully, this isn’t one of them.
Continue reading “KISS ALL THE BOYS (Shiuko Kano)”
I once came across this title when I first started collecting. Back in the day when naught but a few Makoto Tateno titles and random volumes of Junjou Romantica graced a single shelf above my bed, I flipped through it a used bookstore and didn’t see anything that grabbed me. I passed on it then, but this was before I developed a thing for handsome salarymen fantasizing about freeing each other from their expensive suits and ties and semblances of self-control to fucking each other in the learn-by-example way that working for The Man has taught them. With this new insight ripened and in season, I came across this title again, a year later – and now here we are. Harvest we shall.
Continue reading “LOVE BUS STOP (Ritsu Natsumizu)”
So quick reader poll, when going down on a guy for the first time, what’s the first thing you should do?
A) Lick their balls
B) Eat their ass
C) Bite their frenulum
D) Give them a Lion King (Flip them over, fuck them from behind, and pull out and come on your hand – when they turn around to see what you’re doing, dip your thumb in your semen and rub it across their forehead while whispering, ‘Simba.’)
Guess which one our uke Mizuki here chooses? Not D, unfortunately, but that’s my favorite thing I’ve ever read on Urban Dictionary.
He actually picks C. Guess it doesn’t seem all that weird now compared to the last choice…
Continue reading “PET ON DUTY (Nase Yamato)”