The BLacklist: Yaoi Reviews – Page 9 – Yaoi manga reviews and fujoshi ramblings

July 24, 2022April 23, 2024

BASEBALL HEAVEN (Ellie Mamahara)

My dad loved baseball, and though I happily went to countless games with him growing up I did not really know what was going on half the time and found the slow pace of the game to be frustrating. So dad, I just want to let you know that you can be proud of me right now, because I’m reading a baseball book. I’m lifting it up right now so that you can see it from heaven. Uhh, don’t look too closely at the summary though…what happens in it you ask? Hmmm…baseball. Baseball happens! That’s all you need to know!

There should really be more dedicated sports yaoi out there, I don’t get to use the sports tag enough. If the amount of yaoi doujins out there of Prince of Tennis, Haikyuu, Free!, and Kuroko’s Basketball are any indication, nothing gets a fujoshi’s imagination going like the all-you-can-eat shipping buffet of a bishounen-stacked male sports team roster. Who knows, perhaps it is the sheer amount of sports anime BL doujins out there – combined with having to actually know about the sport to be convincing, and having to draw a decent amount of action and a minimum of like 8 characters – that dissuades mangakas from doing too many original BL sports series, because why put in the effort for all that when you can just spin up some lewd Kagami x Kuroko stories for Comiket for some easier dough? That’s just my guess anyway. Ah, someone should make an ice skating yaoi! I bet no one has done that yet…

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.

July 21, 2022April 25, 2024

STOP BULLYING ME! (Natsuho Shino)

Is shounen-ai for kids a thing? If so, this might qualify. It’s so basic, so superficial, and so unoffensive, I feel like it’s almost a coloring book. It’s barely even a 16+ rating and might even be as fluffy as Almost Crying which is saying something. The dialogue is just so dumb and the two stories featured here are just so silly, you could probably read it while drunk and high and still understand it perfectly. Possibly better. It also occurred to me that reading it backwards might improve on the story because the confession inexplicably happens in chapter 1 with no lead-up and then nothing really develops after that, so if you read it the other way it’s almost like you get more plot development! #badyaoihacks

July 18, 2022April 23, 2024

CANDY (Satomi Sugiya)

This was one of the most boring yaoi I’ve read in recent memory; I may as well have been reading a school textbook. I was thinking about the most mundane shit during it, like that I need more granola when I go to the store tomorrow and if I should really cancel Funimation yet (I should have like 2 years ago probably, but they really are taking their sweetass time porting everything over to Crunchyroll). My eyes were glazing over even during the steamy bits. The story was so predictable and trite and the art was passable but not really to my liking. I’ve certainly read worse, but I just really struggled to get through this one. Maybe I’ve just read so much bad yaoi that mediocre yaoi is now dead on arrival, who knows.

April 20, 2022April 23, 2024

HAPPY YAOI YUM YUM (Yaoi Press)

We have (fucking finally) reached the end of the Yaoi Press pile, and I purposely saved the best for last – so if Yaoi Press titles are too offensive to your eyesight to finish more than one review, make it this one. And if you’ve read them all so far and are ready to tap out due to early onset degenerative eyesight damage , it’s too late to turn back now, my friend. We’re nearing the summit and that last avalanche blocked our descent path. Plus, do you have any idea how many Yaoi Press titles there are?! There’s like 60 of them, think how merciful I am! This isn’t Everest, this is a bunny slope! Don’t you want to see what’s at the top of the mounta…errr…large snowy hill? There’s a lot going on up there but just from this low vantage point, I can see we’ve got dudes getting fucked with corn, tentacle kemonomimi rape, and a trap porn parody of Goldilocks and Three Bears. Woo-wee! Tighten up your boots and let’s get a move on. Those people above us on the ski lift are just pussies . Oh, look, there’s a sign:

“This sounds like a great book for my 8-year-old, I just want to make sure it’s censored?”

Warning: Very NSFW images after the jump.

February 18, 2022August 13, 2024

CAUSE OF MY TEACHER (Temari Matsumoto)

My manga friend told me today this was the worst yaoi she’d ever read, and gave it 1/10 – so naturally, and very excitedly, I had to pull it from my shelf and read it immediately. I mean damn, that’s harsh, I’ve never even rated anything that low (not even Kingdom of Selfish Love, which is unfit even for toilet paper). Although I keep in mind that ratings are totally subjective opinions, I should also remember that most people don’t deliberately do the equivalent of yaoi dumpster diving, looking for the smelliest piles in the darkest corners and I’ve seen some shit. I’m going to have that faraway stare of a war veteran one of these days.

‘Grandma, why are you missing a leg?’

‘Oh sonny, back in the war, they dropped Studio Kosen titles on us, so many that we were slaughtered like cattle under a black rain of death, followed by Poison Cherry Drive for good measure which ate away our limbs and our will to live…’

‘Wow, how did you escape?’

‘I saw a glowing beam in the sky. It was the Incredible Kintaro himself, swinging his giant penis around the sky like Wonder Woman’s lasso, striking down the enemy with his thousand-pound titanium balls while yelling ‘Tofu Ball Choke!’ and shooting lasers out of his urethra.’

‘Grandma, you’re full of shit.’

‘Hey, respect your elders you little fuckhead.’

December 11, 2021August 13, 2024

AUTHOR’S PET (Deathco Cotorino)

If there was a such a thing as cheap, no-frills takeout in yaoi form, this would be it. Made from a standard recipe with no surprises, and maybe a little bland at spice level 2-3 , but it meets your expectations and satisfies your appetite. Plus you didn’t have to cook. No leftovers though, they didn’t give you any more ~~sex~~ extra rice than was required 🥡 sad panda…🐼

December 10, 2021April 23, 2024

YAOI ANTHOLOGY (Yaoi Press)

These two books contain five stories put together, and I guess ‘variety’ is one way to describe them. ‘Full of rape’ is another way I guess. We’ve got…demon threesome rape, captor x captive rape, and hillbilly rapists in Idaho *which isn’t even also* the blood-brother rape pairing. I can’t think of any clever way to combine ‘rape’ and ‘anthology’ for a better name they could have called these, but if there is one out there somewhere floating in the English language – ah yes that’s what they should have called it, that exactly.

I crabbed about this in Kingdom of Selfish Love too, but if you’re going to draw OEL yaoi, why even bother if you’re either censoring or not showing any dick? Like actually though? I mean, there’s some uncomfortable sex scenes and pairings in here I guess that’s almost a positive for these particular titles, but in general, no censorship laws is the one thing OEL yaoi has going for it and not using it is just letting their free ice cream melt.

December 2, 2021April 23, 2024

GOD OF DOGS (Satoru Ishihara)

This might be the only “BL” manga in existence where two people get dissolved in acid baths, but no men actually make contact with each other sexually in any way, shape, or form. I wish I was kidding.

I did indeed read this, I am sure of it. My eyeballs looked at the words and pictures on each page, but my brain had a hard time translating them into any sort of cohesive anything, it was such a garbled mess of idea, characters, and words – maybe I won’t even try. It’s about like…ancient Chinese assassins and NYC gang warfare? Something like that. When I was somewhere around the middle of trying in vain to process this book, I looked it up on mangaupdates for some info on how and why this mess came to be and discovered some very important information – this is the sequel to another series, one that was not licensed in English. *facepalm* Grandma June was just off her meds again guys, nothing to see here. Maybe we should take away her car keys…

December 1, 2021April 23, 2024

YAOI HENTAI (Yaoi Press)

I am slowly – so very slowly – making my way through this pile of Yaoi Press titles that has been sitting around for ages – someone gave them to me free, and now I can see why. The thought of reading the rest of these is akin to slogging back to work at 8am on a Monday after a great weekend, but it has to be done. For posterity, you know? They’re the yaoi equivalents of the forgotten schlocky VHS B-movies someone unearths outside a Goodwill that end up on Red Letter Media – except they haven’t been forgotten just yet. They will though. Let 20 years or so pass, and they’ll age like fine wine for the bad OEL manga connoisseur. So, person from the post-apocalyptic future who just found a tattered copy of Xorcisms and Pogo Sticks also by YP in some bombed out basement while foraging for expired Campbell’s tins and then dusted off the ancient internet archives using the government-issued chip in their head to see where this curious paper relic full of badly-drawn dicks came from and it led you to here to this website, well ha ha ha mister I totally predicted this already, and get out of my bomb shelter you future intruder. And don’t touch that lever! Ha, just kidding, my bomb shelter would have way better reading material – useful, serious, and contemplative tomes for humanity’s uncertain future such as Dick Fight Island, Gay’s Anatomy and Long & Hard! My Brother’s Cute Gay Classmate Fucked My Ass So Hard We Both Turned into Sentient Sex Robots In Another World Where Everyone Has 17 Nuclear-Powered Mega Dicks?! (You caught me, this one doesn’t exist yet, but I believe in the yaoi isekai future).

Warning: very NSFW images after the jump