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PICNIC (Yugi Yamada)

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.

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LOVER’S PLEDGE (Kae Maruya)

It must just be luck of the draw, but the last three BL I’ve reviewed have all pretty much been scored somewhere in the 5-6 range out of 10. It almost makes me not want to give this manga that score just because of that, even though that is how I’d rate this one too. 5 is a “good” score to me, it’s like if it was just average but still had things to like about it. Some may say I am a hard rater, but if you’re a veteran manga reader too you’ve probably also come to realize over time just how good or how bad a manga can be. When I first started reading BL, everything got a good score, because I just didn’t have as much to compare it to – perhaps you were the same?

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LAUGH UNDER THE SUN (Yugi Yamada)

This story stars a 25-year old former boxer named Sohei who was originally inspired to become one after he read Ashita no Joe as a teenager. As far as boxing manga goes I haven’t read Joe (which recently got licensed in English) but I am currently reading Hajime no Ippo which is I am enjoying, although I don’t really know anything about boxing despite this. This manga was so boring it made me want to read that instead though…or anything else…insurance paperwork or algebra would have been more entertaining.

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HAPPINESS RECOMMENDED (Souya Himawari)

Tfw you were raised as an only child by your grandfather because you dont have any other family and he dies but turns out he was actually lying to you about not having family it’s just that your parents were pieces of shit who left your six younger brothers to raise themselves in poverty in a hovel somewhere and you finally go to meet and live with them but they all hate you and one of them always has to suck the neighbor’s dick for money.

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SWEET REGARD (Juji Fusa)

After the death of their parents, Kohei became an overprotective brother to his younger sister Chieko. But when she got married against his will and brought her husband Shingo to live with them, Kohei had trouble letting his sister go and mostly avoided the newlyweds. Then tragedy struck – Chieko was suddenly killed in a traffic accident and now Kohei is stuck sharing both his personal tragedy and his living space with Shingo, the brother-in-law he hates.

This is a really, really good BL story idea, no? With such a great concept, what could possibly go wrong?

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DON’T BLAME ME (Yugi Yamada)

Yugi Yamada’s work echoes Fumi Yoshinaga’s – quiet and serious slice of life dramas and art that has a comfy vintage feel to it no matter when it was drawn – but her work never reached the same level as the great Yoshinaga, whose stories were usually more thought-provoking, unique, emotional, and mature. Still, Yamada was a prolific mangaka who was semi-popular in the late 90s and early 00s, has a lot of work in English, and carved out a niche of her own drawing realistic BL dramas. Don’t Blame Me definitely comes off as rough in places, but it’s mostly ok for being done in 2000 and I’ve read a lot worse.

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