Bonds
Posted: October 16, 2011 Filed under: Bonds | Tags: BL 1 Comment »Toko Kawai – 801 Media – 2006 – 1 volume
This was the other volume of Toko Kawai manga I happened to have at my house after I finished the wonderful Just Around the Corner. That one was so good, I dug through the stack to read this one immediately. It did not disappoint.
Actually, it disappointed a little. The title’s really [bónd(z)]. That’s a high hurdle to overcome, but I forgave it after the first story.
The first story is titled [bónd(z)], like the book. This story. I don’t even know. It’s probably one of the most erotic and sweet short story I’ve ever read in one of these books. It’s very passionate. And it’s almost believable, which is the important part. The two main characters wake up one day to find that they’d had a little too much to drink the night before, and wound up sleeping with one another. They’re best friends, and they’d been on a double date with their girlfriends. Both admit that the sex was hot, but they vow to take the secret to their graves, since the girlfriends wouldn’t forgive them. But they can’t forget. And one hot summer day, one pushes the buttons of the other, and both find that the sex was a sort of boundary breaker in their friendship. They decide to become friends with benefits, and they have sex wherever, and whenever, all summer long. There’s no humor here. Only passion. And Kawai writes the characters believably enough that the story reads more like the two just can’t help themselves. It builds and builds, and the hot summer figures into the relationship as well, until it culminates in the two piercing each other. One gets a tongue piercing, and the other gets a cock piercing. They agree to wait until the piercings heal and to then make love like new lovers. But one walks in on the other when his girlfriend is staying over, and when he realizes he’s jealous, he walks away, afraid of the fact that he’s fallen in love with his best friend.
I can’t really convey just how good this story is. It’s not even really the sex that makes it good. It’s the fact that Kawai’s writing is just… it’s believable. The two guys fall slowly, passionately, and obsessively in love, and it’s a wonderful story.
This story sold me on Toko Kawai all over again. I liked Just Around the Corner, but this story made me a fan for life.
The second story was good, too. It was about a pair of neighbors. One is a responsible older brother, and he finds himself constantly pushing his neighbor away. The neighbor hangs around all the time, and he always finds reasons to be over at the other’s house. The responsible older brother type feels like he has to keep the neighbor at arm’s length, since he’s bound by the advice of a teacher that told the two boys that only girls can marry boys. He has to reconcile this advice from childhood with his feelings before he either pushes the neighbor away for good or moves away for college. The characters were a little annoying, but I liked that I still enjoyed the story in spite of that.
The third story was a weird fantasy story (the author promises it’s the only one she’ll ever do) about a rose that comes to life as a young man and lives with the young man that takes care of his garden. It’s… weird. I didn’t like it nearly as much, and the couple was a little less believable. Perhaps it was the fantasy element at work, or it was just too weird a situation to reconcile. It was still a little sweet, though, and better than (sadly) most of the BL short stories I’ve read.
The fourth story was also a little disappointing, about a salaryman that’s instructed to look after the heir to the company for a month, and teach the rich young man how to be a regular person. At first, the salaryman doesn’t really know what to do with the rich young man, and resents that he has to do this task at all. But the two slowly bond, and… you know where this goes. I was a little surprised that the relationship in this one seemed so forced, which is why it fails (also, it fails my older/younger relationship rules). It reads a lot like it might have been one of her earlier stories. But it’s still a pretty okay story, and better than the ones in some of the other 801 books I’ve been reading lately. If this is the worst Toko Kawai has to show, she’s in pretty good shape.
I was a little intimidated at first. I recently bought about a half dozen volumes in an 801 sale, and realized that any 801 book that is still in stock after two years probably isn’t very good. This came out about five years ago, so I was expecting it to be terrible. But either the word didn’t get out about this, people are scared off by the title, or they overprinted the first few 801 books, because this is very good, and it is still available. The first two stories are good enough to make up the slightly weaker second half of the volume, and even the last two stories are better than most others in BL anthology books. It’s good. Very good.
Recipe for Gertrude 1
Posted: October 16, 2011 Filed under: Recipe for Gertrude Leave a comment »Nari Kusakawa – CMX – 2006 – 5 volumes
Has it really been a year and a half since CMX announced their end? Has it really been seven years since they launched? And I’ve been writing reviews at this website even longer than that? Why am I so old?
Anyway. I’m still a little sad about CMX closing, and I’ve still got a handful of volumes I haven’t read yet, and can’t bring myself to. I also keep picking up more and more series as they come in at work, and they are starting to accumulate. At this rate, I will have everything CMX published, and that will be a little sad. But for now, I really wanted to read The Recipe for Gertrude. It’s by Nari Kusakawa, who also wrote one of my favorite CMX series, Two Flowers for the Dragon. Gertrude is about demons, so I had very high hopes for it.
Gertrude is also clearly an older work than Two Flowers for the Dragon. In fact, I would guess it was one of her first. Sadly, it’s very messy story-wise, and I almost gave up after one chapter. It irons out some of the kinks by the end of the volume, and I’m hoping it finds its groove in volume two, but this volume was hard to get through.
The premise is sound. A demon named Gertrude was made by a kind of scientist-demon by stitching together the best parts of all the best demons. He recorded his methods in a book called The Recipe for Gertrude. Flash forward, and Gertrude the demon is hunted by other demons who want their body parts back. Also, Gertrude and others are after the Recipe. While evading capture and looking for the book, Gertrude runs into Sahara, a normal and perfectly happy girl. She helps Gertrude, and the two become friends.
But there are… some questions. For instance, Gertrude is being hunted by two other demons who look like patchwork stuffed animals. Why does Gertrude look like a regular boy, but these demons are different? Even more puzzling, apparently Gertrude has the ears of these demons, but Gertrude’s ears are human ears.
This is only the beginning. It’s often not clear what’s happening, especially in the early chapters, and there are a lot of puzzling logical problems.
But some of these issues resolve themselves as the volume goes on. I never got a good explanation for my questions about why Gertrude is different from other demons, but by the end of the volume, the actions in each chapter start making more sense. There’s also a little bit more to ruminate on when a relationship begins to develop between Gertrude and Sahara. It goes a step further at the end of the book when they actually find the “recipe,” and that could be all sorts of fun… or a “magic” cop-out. We’ll see. I like Two Flowers For the Dragon enough that I’ll read all five volumes of this, but I do hope it stabilizes into something fun. Nari Kusakawa does seem to have a knack for a light touch.
Please Save My Earth 12
Posted: October 16, 2011 Filed under: Please Save My Earth Leave a comment »Saki Hiwatari – Viz – 2005 – 21 volumes
Things take a turn for the weird when all of Rin’s plans come crumbling down. Mr. Tamura finally makes a play that seems to shake Rin, but not before Rin reveals another play he’d been working. From the hospital. Seriously. That little kid’s a creep.
Plus, he takes something Alice says the wrong way and goes into a full-blown fit of anger, forcing her out of the hospital room. Alice doesn’t understand what the problem is, only that it has something to do with Gyokuran. With the past lives again. Part of the problem is also that Jinpachi and Issei are doing some digging about the incidents that Shion has put in motion, thinking that Haru is Shion. Alice begins to suspect that Shion isn’t a good person after all, even though her heart and unremembered personality is telling her otherwise.
There’s a rather romantic scene between Jinpachi and Alice towards the end of the volume, too. I hated it a little bit. It’s got all the right things happening, but I can’t explain why it’s so uncomfortable. Perhaps because, after bravely professing that he wanted to forget the past and Alice didn’t have to remember, he continues to give a speech about how much he loves Mokuren and how evil Shion is. Plus, he’s still forcing his feelings on Alice.
There’s a fantastic scene at the beginning of the volume, too, where though Alice hasn’t remembered Shion’s personality, she just keeps circling the truth again and again. You become certain she’s going to go home and remember, or that Rin is going to tell her, or that she’ll somehow say it out loud and know. It was maddening. I kept waiting and waiting for the other shoe to drop. That scene ended spectacularly anyway, but that opening was still spectacular.
And that wasn’t even the best scene in the volume. That would have to be when Rin travels back to the moon base and meets Shion after he lost his sanity. Since Shion was insane, Rin can’t know the memories, so it’s interesting that the alternate method is to confront Shion and have conversations between Rin and Shion. But after he went mad, Shion built something that’s upset even Rin. Rin doesn’t know what it is, but he’s obviously very, very shaken. It’s highly unusual to see him like that. Also unusual is that Shion doesn’t seem insane. He seems at peace, and Rin holds that against him. Hmm.
Knights of the Zodiac 28
Posted: October 16, 2011 Filed under: Knights of the Zodiac 1 Comment »Masami Kurumada – Viz – 2010 – 28 volumes
I was a little afraid of finishing this. I knew that the ending wasn’t going to be as over-the-top as the parts I liked best. I knew it was just going to finish itself off like a good shounen manga should.
It did. The bronze knights fight Thanatos, and they fight Hypnos, and then they fight Hades. Athena gets to put on her cloth and fight Hades, too. Everything goes about how you would imagine it. They fight, get beaten down, then their cosmos explode infinitely and they somehow triumph. Unusually, the characters do give up at several points, which has never happened before… but because this is the final battle in the final volume, it doesn’t quite have the impact it should.
There were two things that surprised me. Well, three. One involves the cloths. It’s not… really a surprise, but it was something I had wondered about the whole series. After all, Seiya and company are always the last ones standing, and yet they have the lowest ranked cloths of all the 88 warriors of Athena. The second involves Seiya. Something random towards the end. Something I like to see in my shounen series, but rarely do. Possibly because it’s super-unsatisfying. Which brings me to the way the series just… kind of stopped. To be fair, there weren’t a whole lot of loose ends to wrap up other than the one I just hinted at. But still. Series don’t end like that anymore.
I couldn’t really get into the last volume, but I was behind most of the rest of what was going on for all 27 that came before it. It took me a few volumes to understand what makes this series special, but watching the characters throw each other at enemies again and again, making up new limits for themselves with every attack, was something I’m glad I didn’t miss.
Plus, Virgo Shaka was well worth reading every page of this series for.
Medical Manga
Posted: October 14, 2011 Filed under: Miscellaney 5 Comments »I went to the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia about a month ago, where I got to see a real-life Pinoko.
Not really. But they did have… something along the lines of Pinoko, without the cute robot body, among the collection. They also had many other things that one finds in Black Jack and/or nightmares on display. So this has put me in the mood for medically-themed manga lately. And since I’ve got this blog and all, I thought I would make a list and share it.
Skip Beat 25
Posted: October 13, 2011 Filed under: Skip Beat 2 Comments »Yoshiki Nakamura – Viz – 2011 – 28+ volumes
This book was so good that I went back and re-read the series from the beginning in two days. Skip Beat is a force to be reckoned with.
But really, this one is probably the best volume yet. And it’s going to be hard for me to talk about, because I really don’t want to spoil it. But the volume opens with a confrontation with Sho, and ends with Ren getting jealous and taking action. Kyoko is, of course, in the middle. Misunderstandings get sorted out. New misunderstandings are created.
Only Skip Beat can take what is usually a sweet, but noteworthy moment in any shoujo series and make it happen twice in one volume, and somehow humiliate all parties involved both times. And really, it’s Nakamura’s ability to completely shame her characters, to make fun of them relentlessly and exploit their quirks, that makes Skip Beat so much fun to read.
There’s still plenty of funny mixed in here, but both events are… almost no laughing matter. And even with all the humor mixed in with the drama and romance and ridiculous rage, the volume still ends on a really sweet, positive note that almost makes you think “welllllll… maybe Kyoko is starting to come around.”
Because seriously, Ren is too cool a guy to keep humiliating again and again like this. Of course, that’s part of the fun. But still.
And if my hints aren’t vague enough for you, here’s a concrete plot point: Kyoko finally explains what her Valentine’s Day intentions towards Ren are. It’s, unusually, a little more than you could hope for in this series.
But every single page of this volume was delightful. I can’t stress how much fun this series is every single time. I have yet to be disappointed by anything, really.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Please Save My Earth 11
Posted: October 13, 2011 Filed under: Please Save My Earth Leave a comment »Saki Hiwatari – Viz – 2005 – 21 volumes
Halfway point!
I was so, so happy to see the flashback end this volume. While I do find Shion infinitely fascinating, I was beginning to miss the present and the other characters. Plus, Shion is also very depressing in large doses.
The present (or at least a 1990 version of it) comes back in style. Most interesting here is the fact that the characters are trying really, really hard to ignore their past lives and live the best they can in the present. Jinpachi says as much, and he believes the meetings and such aren’t good for any of them. After an emotional scene between Issei and Sakura, Issei agrees with him and decides to give up on Mokuren’s feelings. Alice doesn’t want her memories back, since she’s worried that she’ll stop being Alice.
The Issei scene was the highlight of the volume for me. I was worried it was going to be more shoujo hand-wringing over the fact that he had an unrequited love for Jinpachi. He gave the full speech and everything, how he wanted to spite him for falling in love with Alice, how being in love was so painful, blah blah blah. Sakura snapped him out of his funk by talking about how ugly he was being, and how beautiful Enju’s love was. I didn’t appreciate it while I was reading it, because much has been said but not done on the topic of the love between Issei and Jinpachi, and I thought there would be more scenes like this before the ending. But maybe that’s not the case, because Issei just decides… to stop. He decides to be Issei, instead of Enju. And as Issei, the end of the scene implies that perhaps a relationship can exist between Sakura and Issei. That would be pretty great, actually. So the aftermath made that scene loads better.
Hilariously, after an extended flashback where Shion positions himself against Gyokuran in every way, present-Gyokuran decides to ally himself with present-Shion, who he thinks is present-Shukaido, in opposition to who he thinks is present-Shion but is actually present-Shukaido. I love that Rin has manipulated Gyokuran into doing all the work for him. Jinpachi decides collecting the passwords is a good decision in order to prove everything is real once and for all, so that they can stop obsessing over everything. Rin’s motives are still ambiguous.
And then… there’s the last scene in the volume. It is simultaneously creepy because the piano teacher is Ayako (seriously, Rin), and a little funny because it seems that Alice is jealous. Aww.
Seven Days 2
Posted: October 13, 2011 Filed under: Seven Days | Tags: BL 1 Comment »Venio Tachibana / Rihito Takarai – June – 2011 – 2 volumes
I loved the first volume of this, and the second volume was a worthy conclusion to the storyline. Again, each chapter is structured as a day of the week (or part of a day, like Friday Morning and Friday Afternoon), and this volume chronicles Friday-Sunday of the relationship between Shino and Touji. Touji always goes out with the first person who asks him on Monday morning (usually a girl, but in this case it’s Shino), and then breaks up with them on Sunday evening, saying that “I didn’t fall in love.” This entire book has that hanging over the character’s heads.
And that’s really one of the best parts about it. It’s very good at having both Touji and Shino slowly feeling each other out. They have each fallen for the other, but both seem to be afraid of admitting this, since the premise of their current relationship is something like a a joke and is set to end in just a few days. Shino keeps telling himself that, wenever Touji does anything that makes him feel like his feelings are returned, that it’s just something Touji does whenever he’s dating one of his weekly girls. And whenever Touji thinks Shino is returning his feelings, he remembers that Shino only asked him out to see if he would date a guy. And both seem to be trying to find a way to bring it up to the other that they want the relationship to continue after Sunday. Shino is very volatile with the deadline bearing down, so he seems to say and do things that ruin the mood frequently, too.
It’s a wonderful, wonderful series. I mentioned before that it’s a love story without a whole lot of romance, and yet it’s still an incredibly touching one. There’s a lot of drama in the unsurety of the relationship, and yet it never feels like the situation explodes, or blows out of proportion, or is something that Shino and Touji can’t fix. They simply get to know one another, and get closer, both because they want to know more about the other. It’s one of the very best character-centric BL stories I’ve read.
It’s a very, very sweet story, and the ending is worthy of the first volume. I was a little surprised it didn’t go farther, but then again, the seven days are in the title. It stops once there’s an end to that, and there’s a very brief epilogue.
The BL translation law continues, and I was happy to find out that the writer, Venio Tachibana, does have another work available in English. Her BL novel Love Water is floating around out there, but it is unfortunately out of print and apparently very expensive. Unless you have a kindle. Then it’s only six bucks.
Please Save My Earth 10
Posted: October 13, 2011 Filed under: Please Save My Earth 2 Comments »Saki Hiwatari – Viz – 2005 – 21 volumes
The Shion morality roller coaster continues. In case your heart was softening in the last volume, don’t worry. I think he’s also a rapist. The sex scene was ambiguous enough that I can’t tell if Shion actually forced himself, if they were in the middle when she asked him to stop, or if they were interrupted before things could escalate. I just can’t tell. Either way, he wanted to keep going after she said no. Seriously. I guess he just wasn’t enough of a bad guy yet.
Otherwise, I can’t quite figure him out. This is the point when they lose contact with the home world, and most of the crew wants to go to Earth since their society and culture was annihilated. But there are rules against it. Shion argues that rules don’t mean anything in the face of survival. When he persists in trying to stir the pot, they throw him in prison. I’m a little divided in my thoughts on this. On one hand, it’s true that he shouldn’t have been isolated simply because his views differed, and for trying to persuade people to his opinion. On the other hand, when you’re seven people living on a base with no hope of rescue, harmony and getting along is important, and Shion doesn’t understand this. Would I want to be forced to live with him for the rest of my life, knowing I was going to be verbally abused regularly until I agreed with him? No.
He doesn’t want to make up with Gyokuran and Hiiragi, doesn’t want to apologize and promise to be good. That’s easy to understand, because he’s not wrong, he’s just got a different strategy. I’m not sure how to resolve this situation, because they would have to agree to disagree, and when the topic is survival, that’s a tough thing to do. But again, he’s not in prison because his opinion is different. He’s in prison for being an asshole.
The whole rapist thing was completely unexpected. I thought he was telling the truth, though he certainly wasn’t motivated into action out of love, that’s for sure. His real motives somehow make the act even worse, and pretty much cement his negative image for all time. What if he learns something and repents his actions, though? That doesn’t really make it right or better, but I know that’s what is about to happen next volume.
I was a little shocked by Mokuren’s words on the final page. I had no idea that’s how it came about.
Falling Into Love
Posted: October 13, 2011 Filed under: Falling Into Love | Tags: BL Leave a comment »Takashi Kanzaki – 801 Media – 2008 – 1 volume
I bought this because of the recent 801 sale at the Right Stuf. What can I say? I wasn’t expecting too much from it, and… I got what I was looking for.
It’s a story about models. Hisashi enters the modeling world hoping to follow in the footsteps of Tomohito, a supermodel who winds up having an extremely aggressive and off-putting attitude. When Tomohito kisses Hisashi, Hisashi winds up punching Tomohito in the face and making problems with his schedule. Tomohito insists that Hisashi fill in while his face heals, Hisashi can’t get the fact that Tomohito is paying attention to him out of his head, and… well, you can see where this is going. Straight into Tomohito’s bedroom. There’s a second chapter about Tomohito cruelly teasing Hisashi, and how he has a little brother obsession.
There’s zero chemistry between the two, and I hated Tomohito, but somehow, the story was still fairly entertaining. I’m not sure how that works, but there you go. There’s not a whole lot of drama, it’s very relationship-focused, and I read it simply wanting a quick romance manga read, and it’s great for that.
But there are many, many other books out there that are better than this if all you want is a quick read. In fact, this volume left so little impression that I set it aside and was actually writing this review before I realized I hadn’t read the unrelated short stories that make up the second half of the volume.
Those short stories left even less of an impression than the main storyline, and included a too-condensed story about a pair of detectives solving a mystery and falling in love, another story about… some sort of messed-up familial incest that I really don’t want to think about, and a final story that involves rivals at school and non-con that of course leads to true love. So… yeah. The last two I was a little sorry I read, and the first of the short stories just wasn’t good.
Basically, give this a pass. The best part is the modeling story in the first half, and even that’s not very good.
But part of me does want to read the sequel to see if Kanzaki gets any better. I think it’s… His Arrogance? Apparently she has several other volumes in English, too. Maybe I just got a dud, but it’s also possible she’s just not for me. She has a rather masculine pseudonym, so part of me wonders if perhaps Kanzaki is really a man. Would that make this more interesting? I don’t think I’ve ever read BL written by a man. But judging by the dozens of books Kanzaki has penned in the BL genre and nothing else, I’m guessing she’s a woman.
