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ZESTY (Yaoi Press/Studio Kosen)

Zesty is apparently a free shounen-ai web comic made by Studio Kosen/Kosaru, the Spanish studio whose work is often featured in US-based Yaoi Press Publishing. I say “apparently” because the introduction mentions it, I haven’t read the webcomic. If they said it was subversive literature encoded with secrets symbols to bring down the regime of Kim Jong Un, I would just as easily believe that.

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A KING’S LESSON (Futaba/Mitsuba)

…in which I learned that apparently Japan isn’t really familiar with Christmas lights. I know they don’t really celebrate it like we do but I definitely saw them on the trees when I was in Japan around November, maybe they just don’t associate them with the holiday? Hmm. Oh, also, there’s a weird weiner in here. Like, not that I’m a professional, but I’m pretty sure they’re not supposed to look like a wet finger.

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DASH! (Isaku Natsume)

Oh my God, this book. This freaking book. I never thought a shounen-ai could get my heart pounding like a schoolgirl talking to her crush. Yes a shounen-ai, as in no explicit sex – that’s a feat for someone who has spent enough time in the dark corners of the internet to have careful instructions to trusted people to destroy my hard drives upon death. And it takes a special kind of sexless BL story to get an 8+ out of me. Plus, it gets a bit hard to regress from M titles once you get far enough in the sin bin. Then again, there is lots of M-rated BL that simply slaps together a lame and unsatisfying sex scene just to reel in your eyeballs with that “explicit content” box, and they are the worst offenders in my opinion – if a book claims to be rated M, it better damn well better be. With 16+ stories, at least I know what I’m getting (or rather, not getting) – you can’t be upset about no sugar in your cornflakes if the box says there isn’t any.

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SAY PLEASE (Kano Miyamoto)

When I’m in the mood to read (loosely-used term here) something totally slutty, a Deux Press title is always my go-to. Their titles even sound trashy (Cigarette Kisses, Mister Mistress, FreshMen, Seduce Me After the Show, or, possibly my favorite title for any gay romance, Chocolate Surprise). The only real shame with this publisher is that they completed wasted a golden opportunity by not using the initials “DP” on their book spines. Why bother pumping out pulp fiction about male prostitution and gay Yakuza sex when sharing initials with ‘double penetration’ is too much? I’m just saying, relevant branding opportunity wasted.

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DEAR MYSELF (EikiEiki)

Note: The crying-to-sex ratio is about 20:1 in this book, which I just feel like should be stated upfront.

So, I usually don’t read a lot of shounen-ai – somehow I skipped over that stage and went straight to the smut, and find it hard to regress now. ‘What, no cupping invisible shafts? How will I get to the end?” (No pun intended) The lengths I go to on my quest to read every yaoi manga (Totally realistic goal, right?)

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MILLENIUM DARLING 2006 (Maki Naruto)

I really want to like June as a publishing company more than I do, considering the amount of money I give them. They have an enormous library of some really great titles (well, they did anyway, before they lost their contract with Libre). However, they 1) Can’t keep most of them in print without asking for money on Kickstarter, and 2) Do shit like only license/publish the third book of a series. What kind of shiitake are they smoking over there where they think this a good idea?

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