Blue Exorcist 1
Posted: February 10, 2012 Filed under: Blue Exorcist Leave a comment »Kazue Kato – Viz – 2011 – 8+ volumes
Honestly? I knew better than to pick this book up. Demons? Fighting demons? Slightly quirky art? The main character is the son of Satan? This series practically has my name on it. It’s a wonder I held out as long as I did.
So yes, that’s the premise. Rin is a scrappy young lad raised in a monastery with his twin brother. Rin gets into a lot of fights, but stands up for what he believes in. His guardian, Father Fujimoto, gets on his case about his fights, and wants him to get a real job. Rin grudgingly listens to Father Fujimoto, and goes to the interview he arranges, but along the way, he gets into yet another fight and is nearly eaten by what appears to be a demon. Father Fujimoto shows up to exorcise the demon, but then drops a hard truth on Rin: Rin is not a normal human, but the son of Satan, and he needs to get away from Father Fujimoto as soon as possible. Rin gets upset at first, but something terrible does indeed happen to Father Fujimoto. Resolved to become someone who eliminates demons rather than be consumed by his demon side, Rin joins up with a group of exorcists at an elite high school and is taught the ways of exorcism… by none other than his weaker younger brother, Yukio.
This series is so full of awesome I don’t even know where to begin. How about Father Fujimoto? He’s a rough love kind of guardian, but still dotes on Rin in a fatherly way. And the notes in the back reveal he’s got a healthy appetite for women too, which is always a plus. Rin himself? He’s kind of a scrapper, but at one point, he’s sobbing in bed over a copy of Tegami Bachi, which made me laugh. The demon transformation designs are bad ass, and I love the way he can apparently exorcise demons while being a full demon himself. Plus, DEMONS. There are very few series I will turn away that have demons for main characters. How about Yukio, the wussy younger brother-turned-badass-assassin? The parts with him in the second half of the book are highly enjoyable, since he turns out to not be the weak, helpless foil that he appears to be at first. There’s also Mr. Mephisto Pheles, who is some sort of super powerful overlord character that dresses like a clown, turns into a cat, and has a complete disregard for what anyone thinks of him.
If this series were any cooler, I don’t know what I would do with myself. It got me with the knee jerk reaction to all of the above. Maybe the plot will get formulaic later, but HOW COULD IT I MEAN LOOK AT ALL THAT STUFF.
The art, and character designs in general, are also all kinds of amazing. I mentioned Rin’s demon design, which is great, but the real winner here is the city/school that Rin and Yukio go to. True Cross Academy has a kind of old fashioned supercity design that I could never get tired of looking at. There’s lots of detail, buildings upon buildings, and little windy castle passages to look at, and everything is a little grungy and old fashioned, while the accessories in the character’s clothing suggest a more modern look. The goofy facial expressions on Rin are a pleasure to look at, and I love all the fashion design flourishes.
I don’t know. This first volume doesn’t do anything wrong. The premise is the kind of thing that sounds like it will go south fast, just reading the back, but the first volume delivers so hard that I’m probably going to go out and get the ones I’m missing tomorrow. It’s that good. Or, at least, it suits my taste that well.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Men of Tattoos
Posted: February 10, 2012 Filed under: Men of Tattoos | Tags: BL Leave a comment »Yuiji Aniya – June – 2011 – 1 volume
This book. Not only is it a mature romance, with yakuza and police officers and the sort of gritty crime angle I can’t resist, it has actual gay men in it who meet at a bar, and it also has a highly unusual narrative structure. A really good one. Not quite nonlinear, but it definitely jumps around a bit and brings everything together at the end. Someone pinch me, I’m dreaming.
I thought this was a collection of short stories. The first story in the volume is about a couple named Katagi and Kubota. Katagi is a yakuza, and Kubota is kind of his caretaker. The first story is mostly the two of them lazing around Kubota’s apartment while Kubota mentally goes through how they met and what it is that Katagi does. The story opens with the two of them watching a news report about a gang-related shooting, and Katagi keeps trying to get away to meet his boss, with Kubota continually delaying him. But it turns out that Kubota is an undercover police officer, and when he finds a gun in Kubota’s coat, he arrests him. But he really does love Kubota, or so he says.
The second story is about a couple named Arima and Mutou. Arima is the son of the boss of Mutou’s gang, and Mutou is a kind of sub-boss. Arima is also the son of a woman that Mutou was deeply in love with. It would seem that Arima is in love with Mutou, but Mutou dare not lay a finger on Arima, despite the blessing of Arima’s rather callous and uncaring father. You can guess where this goes. The story ends with Mutou telling one of his underlings to meet him at a ferry at 10am the next morning, the implication being that Mutou and Arima are running away together.
The third story is about an extremely violent gangster named Nogami. Nogami, while squeezing protection money from a brothel, sleeps with one of the women. The woman turns out to be a man, who Nogami has sex with anyway while nearly beating him to death. Turns out the man is an undercover cop. And actually, the undercover cop is Kubota from the first story. The man that Nogami was threatening to rape while beating Kubota? Coincidentally, it was Katagi, Kubota’s lover from the first story. Kubota arrests Nogami, but not before beating him within an inch of his life right back. Then you realize that the underling that Mutou was bossing around in the second story was Katagi, and that the 10am meeting at the end of the second story was what Katagi was trying to leave for during the first story. And the activity that Mutou and Katagi were planning in the second story was what Katagi and Kubota were watching on the news in the first story.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t bother to memorize names in these books, so this was all lost on me until I made the connection of “undercover cop who arrests yakuza he has sex with.” Then I connected that character from the first story. Then everything else fell into place.
There are several more chapters. Everything in this book made me go back and re-read the stories before, assigning new meaning to them. It’s difficult to figure out what’s going on in one of them, and I actually finished the book and read it again before I could place all the events and everything that happened. This is not a bad thing. The feeling I got when everything lined up was overwhelming, and it made the story, really, that much better. The short stories stand quite well by themselves, but to have them all snap together in an overarching narrative… it’s almost too much to ask of any book, but this one does it. There is a reunion between Katagi and Kubota in the end, but it’s… tragic. It deals with an issue that never comes up in BL manga (let alone BL manga that might take place in a prison and deal with… Katagi’s particular trial), likely because this issue is a little too harsh for many to deal with in a casual read like this. And to be fair, it’s not really dealt with here, either. It’s merely something between Katagi and Kubota. It took me a minute to process what was going on and to re-interpret what Kubota was saying, and how Katagi felt about it, but it… did make me tear up. It also dealt with a realistic after-effect of what led to said issue. I thought that was a nice touch, too, and made the ending that much more haunting and heartbreaking.
There’s a short story that takes up the last quarter of the book that almost spoils the tone of the excellent main piece. It’s about a young man who falls in love with a classmate, but can’t admit his feelings. But every night, a near-solid ghost comes to said young man’s room, and the two have sex. There are… apparently real-world repercussions for this. This is never explained. It’s a little silly, although it’s still a sweet love story.
I can’t tell you how much I loved this book. It’s one of the best BL one-shots I’ve ever read, the right mix of gritty, romantic, utterly tragic, heartbreaking, and touching. The nonlinear narrative makes it that much better for me, because I love it when a story can break itself up and come together like that, especially one that’s essentially a simple romance like this. And yet, it isn’t a simple romance. There are certainly love stories, and revenge stories, and yakuza violence, and lots of other things. It’s so well-written. And the art is wonderful, too. Everything about this book… it’s just about perfect. The only thing I would change is the unrelated story in the back, and I would have liked even that in any other context.
Really. If you’re into BL, and enjoy the tragic/depressing books like I do, you have to read this. It’s great. Get your hands on a copy.
Natsume’s Book of Friends 4
Posted: February 10, 2012 Filed under: Natsume's Book of Friends 1 Comment »Yuki Midorikawa – Viz – 2010 – 13+ volumes
Still playing catch-up with this series, and loving every page. Such a slow, sweet style of storytelling, and I still get a kick out of seeing all the monsters that come out of the woodwork. Some of them are really scary, too. For some reason, it makes me think of the illustrations from Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark, but Natsume’s Book of Friends isn’t that scary.
I’m still kinda waiting for the regular serialization to start. Judging by the notes in the back, this series is still running in seasonal extra issues of Lala Magazine. It’s good enough that I’m sure it was brought into the regular Lala Magazine fold at some point, and while I’m sure it still tells mostly one-shot stories, I would love for it to reach a point where the premise doesn’t have to be re-explained in every story.
There are three stories in this volume, all of them strangely bittersweet. In the first, Natsume and Nyanko-sensei help out a yokai guardian, who is trying to gain control of an evil spirit that has been terrorizing the area. Much like Nyanko-sensei is a yokai that has fused with a strange clay cat sculpture, the yokai guardian fuses with a snow bunny that Natsume makes and uses magic to appear as a bunny-boy. It’s a nice story about both Natsume and the guardian doing what they can to control the evil spirit, but the bittersweet part comes when we learn what the evil spirit really is. It’s a nice story, but very sad as well, in a way that this series is very good at.
Actually, this series is probably one of the best examples of “mono no aware” manga I can think of. That is, many of the stories are about Natsume appreciating his life and realizing what he has, for fear the future won’t be nearly as pleasant since he could die and leave Nyanko-sensei, or his guardians could find out and force him out of their house, or his friends could shun him again, et cetera. Usually, mono no aware stories are a little more grounded in reality than this, and are a little more mundane as a result. That this series can still pull it off using demons and a boy who can seem them is quite a feat.
The second story is about Natsume’s friend, an exorcist named Natori. The two of them go on an overnight trip together, an activity that neither has done, but that Natsume, at least, is very much looking forward to. He begins to suspect something is wrong at the inn they go to, but he doesn’t mention anything for fear of spoiling their trip. Turns out that neither Natsume nor Natori was being completely honest, and they hurt each other as a result. Again, the bittersweetness comes at the end, when the moral of the story is that they want to be friends, but can’t tell the other the truth for fear of what they will think. There’s a happy resolution, but the distance between the two is still a little painful.
The third story is about Natsume himself, and is a nice little story about he and Nyanko-sensei trying to de-yokai a painting that seems to have latched onto Natsume and is siphoning his power. Natsume doesn’t want to simply destroy the painting, since it is an important memory for a yokai, but it is slowly killing him, and Nyanko-sensei wants to just get rid of it. The bittersweetness is in the memory of the painting, which was found by a yokai who would always meet a particular human in a field while cherry blossoms bloomed, hiding in the trees so that the human couldn’t see her face. The human stopped coming, and the yokai found a painting that coincidentally was of the field, and had the human in it. She began traveling the world, looking for the human, hoping that the painting would remind him of the field where they met every year. The human died, of course, but the yokai still treasures the painting and her memory. See? It’s horribly sad, but the yokai learns to cherish her memory, and the journey with the painting was also something special to her.
It’s a cute series, and while it’s not an extraordinary or exciting read, I love the way it is slowly building the characters, and it still manages to be fairly engaging and quite unique. The fact that the focus is on cherishing the present brings me a lot closer to the characters, and there are few series that can depict the likes of Nyanko-sensei and Natsume and make me really feel what makes their mundane (or, in this case, not so much) lives special to them. It’s wonderful, and I hope it’s getting all the readers it deserves.
Recipe for Gertrude 5
Posted: February 10, 2012 Filed under: Recipe for Gertrude Leave a comment »Nari Kusakawa – CMX – 2007 – 5 volumes
Such a good book! I doubted the fact that a volume of short stories post-ending would be very engaging. I forgot how much I like Yuki Midorikawa and her characters. I think I may have liked these short stories better than I liked the end of the series last time. And I liked that ending quite a bit. Also, it’s worth mentioning that none of these stories are really romantic, and I still loved all of them. That’s really saying something.
The stories are in a wide range of genres and even time periods and places, which was completely unexpected and a welcome surprise. The first one is the most “mundane” in the context of the series, and is simply a demon that appears and wants her hand back, so Gertrude and Sahara have to drive her away. The second story takes place in Canada in the 1960s and is, bizarrely, about Gertrude trying to track down a Bigfoot. The third is actually about Curtis, one of the side characters, and is set in Victorian England. He teams up with another demon and takes an assignment to kill a human fortune-teller, but winds up striking the bargain that costs him his eye. Another is about Puppen and Mariotte and their extra-curricular activities at Sahara’s school. Yet another features Puppen and Mariotte on a weight loss campaign, along with an explanation at the end about why that’s a bad idea. The final one is a strange one, again featuring Puppen and Mariotte, and is told from the perspective of a little boy who has just lost his grandfather.
I would be hard-pressed to say which of these stories was my favorite. I loved the Curtis one, which was probably the most well-developed in the book, and was a little romantic. I also liked the first, which was the least exciting in terms of something “different,” but was in the spirit of the series, and I liked that anyway, right? I also loved the Puppen and Mariotte story that showed them participating in club activities. I didn’t even like the characters that much, and I still loved that story. And the weight loss story. There’s just something about watching those two enjoy themselves that’s quite compelling, and that “something” is one of the things that makes this series so special. They’re just a blast to read about.
The whole series is good in an understated way, but don’t shy away from this final volume because the storyline ended last time. It’s worth picking up with the rest, and I have to say, this is the most fun I’ve had with this series since the early volume. And again, I liked the series an awful lot, so getting a volume like this to go out on is a rare treat indeed. I hope to see more of Nari Kusakawa’s work in the future, but I doubt any publisher aside from CMX would take a risk like this anymore. She’s charming and compelling, but not nearly as ostentatious or attention-getting as a best-selling series. A shame, because she’s still very, very good in her way.
Gorgeous Carat Galaxy
Posted: February 10, 2012 Filed under: Gorgeous Carat Galaxy | Tags: BL 1 Comment »You Higuri – June – 2006 – 1 volume
Another story in the Gorgeous Carat series. Aside from the first volume, I think each installment of the series covers a separate story arc. The first 4-volume chunk is “Virtue of Darkness,” then there’s this “Galaxy” segment. Blu folded before they could publish “La Esperanza,” and Higuri is currently doing another installment, but no compilation has been released yet. Following the pattern of the series, these aren’t so much BL/romance as they are adventure stories about things that happen to Florian and Ray/Noir, in the sense that they are rich jewel thieves that live in France around the turn of the 20th century. Which is a lot! They remind me of From Eroica With Love, as I may have already mentioned. They tend to go to different locations (especially in Virtue of Darkness), are only slightly BL-themed in favor of action and globetrotting, and there’s usually some item at stake. There are no analogues to Klaus and Dorian, though. A shame.
In Galaxy, Ray and Florian are summoned out to the estate of a distant relative of Florian’s. The relative has fallen on hard times, and is hoping Ray will buy some of the art and other items from his estate. Once there, Ray and Florian are snowbound and realize there is more to the estate than meets the eye. A young girl named Eleonora lives there, and is sheltered by her relatives, who think she is mentally unstable. She is a fan of the Forest of Monsters, a sculpture garden around the estate that figures prominently in a memory for both she and Florian. There are murders, near-misses, characters long-dead that return, hidden passages, kidnappings, and all of it is confined to one manor. It’s a proper Victorian mystery, and Higuri pulls off the tale with style.
The story isn’t so much about Ray and Florian this time around, but rather use them as pieces in the mystery that unravels slowly and gains momentum gradually. I didn’t mind the fact that the story wasn’t character-centric, as the mystery plot was so well-told that I tore through all 250 pages in one sitting. I don’t want to spoil this too much, but it really is a proper Victorian horror story. The atmosphere is similar to Black Butler, actually, and just as good, if just a touch less sinister. And again, there is little to no BL content, for those who are averse to such stories, so this is a good general audience title, and You Higuri is always worth reading.
Her art is still quite good here, too. Better than in Virtue of Darkness, in fact. The clothes the characters wear, the character designs themselves, the manor, and the hidden passages and dark forest come to life, and Higuri clearly puts a lot of work into the period detail and setting. It’s a good-looking book, and while the story doesn’t give Higuri as much opportunity to flex her artistic muscles (the setting stays the same, and all the action takes place over the course of about a day, so there’s no costume changes or different characters introduced), it’s still a very nice-looking book.
You could probably pick this up without reading Virtue of Darkness, the first part of Gorgeous Carat, and still enjoy it immensely. I loved that the volume was self-contained, and the complete and very involved mystery plot took me by surprise, but was still quite good. Sadly, I don’t think this sold very well, because Amazon still has it in stock 6 years after it was released. That doesn’t bode very well for a La Esperanza release. But Gorgeous Carat Galaxy is a great book, and definitely worth a look. Someone buy that last copy from Amazon!
Rin-Ne 8
Posted: February 5, 2012 Filed under: Rin-ne Leave a comment »Rumiko Takahashi – Viz – 2012 – 8+ volumes
Every volume of this series that I read makes me like it a little more. I’m a little sad that it’s taken this long for me to warm up to it, but Rumiko Takahashi is always worth it.
This book introduces a new character, the shinigami-in-training Shoma. Shoma is doing a home stay with Rin-ne, and was disappointed to learn that the grandson of the very famous shinigami Tamako was dirt poor. While most shinigami-in-training finish their homestay by earning points slowly shepherding the souls of dead pets and animals to the afterlife, Shoma wants to take care of all his points in one shot by exorcising an evil spirit. Since Shoma is approximately a fifth grader, you can imagine how this goes. A devil gets involved after a time, too. Shoma is fairly hot-headed and impatient about exorcising his evil spirit, so the lesson becomes one of caring about the spirits of the dead and not being over-eager to take care of things. His hurry is usually what creates the evil spirits in the first place, which Rin-Ne usually has to take care of himself.
This longer story/series of stories is followed by three adorable one-shots. In the first, Ageha, the shinigami with a crush on Rin-ne, is conned into buying a kotetsu she believes has the power to make Rin-ne hers. While it can’t do that, it does bring her closer to the other characters in the series in a nice, friendly way. Plus, it’s the middle of winter and Rin-ne and Rokumon don’t have heat in their apartment, so…
The second story is about a “haunted” cooking table in the home ec room. This involves the usual suspects: a disgruntled ghost and the ruining of food that Rin-ne was dying to eat. He eats it anyway, even after the ghost ruins it. I’m not sure why, but sadly, Rin-ne’s constant poverty and the jokes associated with it are quickly becoming my favorite part of the series. I particularly enjoy Sakura Mamiya’s complete indifference regarding this. One of my other favorite things about the series is the slightly eccentric use of Sakura Mamiya’s full name by Rin-ne. It’s a little awkward every time he speaks to her, but not in an overt way.
The last story is about a scarf that is showing up to strangle people who are receiving hand-knit scarves with their love confessions. This is a cute story, and involves Sakura Mamiya knitting a scarf for Rin-ne.
All of the stories in this volume were cute, fun to read, and very much gave me the flavor of this series. Sakura Mamiya and Rin-ne still aren’t very distinct characters, but they’re growing on me, and I’m enjoying their stories more and more. They’re more comedies than anything else, and I doubt anything about this series is ever going to be over-complicated or plot-driven. But I’m still enjoying it, and I like it now that I’ve hit a comfortable groove.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Black Butler 8
Posted: February 5, 2012 Filed under: Black Butler Leave a comment »Yana Toboso – Yen Press – 2012 – 13+ volumes
As if to prove my complete dismissal of the staff at the Phantomhive manor was unjustified, Black Butler suddenly proves that all those characters are not only useful, but bad ass. I was wrong, terribly unfunny staff of the Phantomhive manor. I was wrong.
And that was only the first chapter! Various members of the circus show up to wreak havoc at the mansion, and are… dismissed by the staff. I can’t tell you how much I loved this entire chapter. Not only was I reeling from the complete reversal on these characters, it was also an excellent action scene, with every manner of fighting you could want. There’s even a garrotte at one point.
And while all this is going on, Sebastian and Ciel are simply sneering at Joker, completely confident, when Joker tells them their home is being invaded. I’m not sure how this could have been any better.
And while this is going on, things get quite serious over at the mansion where Ciel and Sebastian are confronting Baron Kelvin, his mad doctor, and Joker. Joker asks what he could have possibly done, since Baron Kelvin made the circus staff do his bidding in exchange for his monetary support of their handicapped brothers and sisters still in an orphanage. Ciel states he did what he had to, and Ciel was simply stronger and was taking all that away from him. It was interesting, and surprisingly straightforward and bracing, logic. Later, Ciel has an uncharacteristic moment where he loses his composure, and the matter at the mansion is resolved, rather messily, in a matter of moments. It really is that simple in this series.
There’s lots of other interesting story after that, too. We get a closer look at what it is that the grim reapers actually do, courtesy of Joker. We find out just how cruel Baron Kelvin really was to the performers in the circus. And there’s even a cute little one-shot at the end of the book that serves as a nice non-sequitor and a wind-down to all the action in the past couple volumes.
After this last storyline, I am a raving fan of this series. It’s just the right mix of mystery, evil, black humor, and faustian bargain begging to go bad to keep my interest. It’s well-written, it dwells on some truly cruel topics, and all the period details keep the story rooted quite firmly in the Victorian era, and are much appreciated. There’s honestly not very much I would change about Black Butler at this point. I love it almost unconditionally.
Tyrant Falls in Love 5
Posted: February 5, 2012 Filed under: Tyrant Falls in Love | Tags: BL Leave a comment »Hinako Takanaga – June – 2012 – 8 volumes
You knew I was all over this. I just can’t get enough. I’m sorry.
Though Souichi and Morinaga are now living together, Morinaga realizes that he’s gotten no action over the past couple months. After a failed attempt to take advantage while Souichi is drunk, Souichi announces that he will be flying to Canada for a 2-month research trip. Morinaga is devastated. Souichi seems indifferent, until he gets there and… well, context would have you believe he misses Morinaga. Morinaga finds a chance to head to Seattle for a seminar, and he manages to meet up with Souichi in Vancouver. Souichi seems more than a little bothered by Morinaga’s visit. Bothered in a different way than usual, though.
Basically, very little happens in this volume that isn’t sex. I… can’t say I mind since this is my favorite volume of the series and all. Some of it is, admittedly, a little out of character. There are hints that Souichi misses Morinaga scattered throughout some of the Canada scenes. A conversation with his younger brother Tomoe reveals that Souichi is trying to hide the fact he lives with Morinaga. While he is homophobic, and wouldn’t want Tomoe to think he’s gay, it’s also a case of Souichi wanting to hide his relationship with Morinaga, regardless of meaning. He also mentions he’s not at all lonely in the “apartment by himself” while in conversation with Tomoe, but he certainly does look lonely when he gets back to his Canadian condo later. And, more damning, is an extremely out-of-character… uh, scene with Souichi. And while all this does seem out of character, I like that it gives Morinaga and Souichi something to go forward with, in terms of finding some sort of common, mutually enjoying ground in their relationship. Morinaga is still pretty concerned with finding some sort of middle ground with Souichi, and while volumes like this do make it seem like he (or both of them) are more interested in sex, both are putting a lot of thought into how they treat the other in this volume. Especially Souichi. He gets quite a bit of time to think about how he feels about Morinaga.
And there’s not much commentary I can offer about the later scenes where Morinaga comes to Canada. To say much would be a spoiler, and really, you know where all this is going. It’s great. I don’t know why I love the sex scenes in this series so much. It’s just better here than it is in other books. It just seems to mean a lot more to Morinaga and Souichi. Plus, again, I get a big kick out of watching them bicker, which happens even in bed. For instance, here, Morinaga gets more than a little terrifying when he suspects Souichi of cheating.
There are several extras in this volume. The usual bonus story here is actually an extension of the last sex scene, and Takanaga mentions that it was material that made the chapter too long for the serialized magazine. Another story is a silly one-shot that has all the characters in the series playing in an adaptation of Cinderella. Morinaga gets to be the prince, and I loved his first panel, where he’s sitting bored at a party full of young women in ballgowns and thinks “When will they figure out I’m never going to pick a bride because I’m gay?”
The last story… is a little more troubling. It’s a two-part side story, called “Our Mistakes,” about Morinaga’s brother Kunihiro and his friend/Morinaga’s first lover, Masaki. They meet back up, and… uh, it’s basically an extended rape scene, with Kunihiro as the victim. He tries really hard to reconcile with Masaki after a chance meeting, but Kunihiro gets too drunk waiting for Masaki’s shift to end, so Masaki takes him home. And ties him up. Then sexually abuses him for… uh, days? And then Kunihiro forgives him? And is likely attracted to him? Really? What’s even more disturbing than this is that, apparently, the Challengers/Tyrant series is going to continue with this couple in Takanaga’s next series. That’s a shame, because I hate them both.
But! In the meantime, The Tyrant Falls in Love continues to be my favorite BL series of all time. This is mostly a “physical” volume, but it also appears to be the beginning of Souichi beginning to realize his romantic feelings towards Morinaga. He’s confused, and angry, and apparently resisting every step of the way, but it seems to be happening. I liked that, with all the sex, the commentary this time around was mostly from Souichi’s point of view, something we are not often treated to. I’ve gone on and on about why I love this series from the bottom of my little rotten fangirl heart, so I don’t feel the need to justify admiration for a “physical” volume. But yes. Any fan of the series is going to be more than pleased with this. Just sayin’.
Bed of My Dear King
Posted: February 5, 2012 Filed under: Bed of My Dear King | Tags: BL Leave a comment »Sakae Kusama – SuBLime – 2012 – 1 volume
Since I have been relentlessly stalking eManga, you can bet I had my eye on the grand opening of SuBLime, the new digital BL imprint of Viz Media. If this succeeds, I hope like nobody’s business to see Zetsuai and the BL work of Setona Mizushiro, which are published by Shueisha and Shogakukan, companies that… uh, own Viz.
For my first foray on the site, I picked The Bed of My Dear King. Other launch titles include Oku-san’s Daily Fantasies (which sounds a little zany), Husband, Honeymoon (which I’ll read when the second volume comes out), and Love Pistols (which is all kinds of crazy disturbing I’ll talk about at a later time because I read it anyway). I’ll probably read all of these, honestly, especially since the digital editions only cost $6 and come with a PDF. That’s still a little more than I’d like to pay for something I don’t own a physical copy of (ideally, $5 would be the ceiling), but it’s a bit better than the $7 price tag at eManga, and I’ve paid that over and over again on that site.
I suspect The Bed of My Dear King is the best of the bunch. It’s more of a josei-ish romance than the usual (admittedly shallow) BL book. It’s a collection of three short stories. In the first, Koga, a repairman, visits Tohno to repair his phone and cable lines. Tohno lives on a remote mountain, and is an eccentric sculptor whose house holds all sorts of surprises for Koga. Koga tries to get the awkward repair over with as soon as possible, but the two wind up snowbound in the house and cut off from the outside world. This leads obvious places, but the mix of timid and frank behavior from both is interesting, as are the continued and unexplained, unapologetic eccentricities of Tohno.
This was a decent story, and I liked it quite a bit when I finished it, but it’s the least interesting in the collection. The whole situation’s just a little too weird for my taste. But both characters are likable. Koga’s sexual orientation remains ambiguous throughout (so he’s not necessarily a straight man that falls inexplicably in love with a gay man after one day), and Tohno is fairly frank about his orientation, and that he’s not really interested in Koga sexually. Koga is the one that initiates, at the very end of the story. It’s a cute one, and more about Tohno’s insecurities and whatnot than it is about love or sex.
But, more to the point, what is up with all these BL books about sculptors? I suppose it gives one a reason to touch another, but it’s been coming up pretty frequently for me lately. This, Gentle Cage, the aforementioned Love Pistols, and Tonight’s Take-Out Night. All of these I’ve read in the past month. It’s a little weird.
The second story, Cherry, is a cute and light romance between two students. It’s a slow burn, and it’s nice to see the two stepping so delicately around the subject when they’re together. This reminded me a lot of the wonderful stories I’d just read in Kyudo Boys, by Keiko Nishi. It’s a fluffy, nice story to read.
Flowers, the last story, is the longest and my personal favorite. It tells the story of two students who appear to be quietly attracted to one another. The one that initiates the relationship, Ozu, appears to be forcing physical affection on Kumon, who is a compliant partner. The relationship, however, appears to be founded on gossip. As the story continues, and Kumon continues to meet with Ozu to hear the next part of the story, we find out that Ozu was involved in a local and family tragedy with a young woman. The gory details are given to reader through random lines of gossip at the beginning of the story, but as Ozu tells his side, the facts only get sadder and sadder. Kumon is mostly silent through all this, and appears to be listening to the story, but he starts to speak up towards the end.
Kusama has a knack for characters and pacing, which is extremely key in BL. Finesse such as hers makes a book like this more than simply BL. It’s a worthy shoujo/josei read, as well. Sex is only really depicted in the last story, and the physical relationship is key to the narrative and relationship there. All of the stories in here are gentle, in their way, and none of the usual bodice-rippers or high drama that I usually favor. Even the tragic final story is not so much dramatic as it is… well, just sad.
Overall, this is definitely worth a read by romance and shoujo fans who aren’t necessarily into BL. Romance is still key in all three stories, but all three study the characters and relationships in far more depth than the usual BL one-shot, and the context of all three is important as well. They read as slice-of-life, as well. I was just all sorts of impressed with this. I sincerely hope that we can see more from Sakae Kusama in the future.
Recipe for Gertrude 4
Posted: February 5, 2012 Filed under: Recipe for Gertrude 1 Comment »Nari Kusakawa – CMX – 2007 – 5 volumes
I was a little surprised when the main story ended in volume four, which means volume five is just short stories, or an unconnected one-shot. It’s not a bad thing, I was just expecting the Claude story to stretch out a bit longer.
On the other hand, I think it would have dragged too much if it had. The story is paced very well here. We find out the true nature of the “real” Gertrude and her sister through a flashback. There’s a very long, extended goodbye between Sahara and Gertrude, and an even more triumphant scene right after that, courtesy of Sehara. I can’t spoil too much, since the whole book is about the ending of the series, but I thought it was a cute and very fitting ending to a series like this.
I can’t recall if I’ve spoken about this before or not, but this is a really great first series. It is a little rough around the edges (Puppen, Mariotte, and the other demons on Team Gertrude never feel like more than hangers-on, which is my biggest nitpick), but the fact that the story is so easy to get caught up in, and Gertrude and Sahara are both such likable characters, speaks much of her later skill. I adored Two Flowers for the Dragon, and while this isn’t quite as good, it’s still a very solid read, and has a very rare and genuine all ages appeal to it.
Plus, I still like demons. There’s a lot of vague magic stuff happening in this volume, and not so much demon stuff, but I still like the fact that Gertrude can still be a powerful demon when all is said and done. But mostly, I love that the relationship between Sahara and Gertrude took precedence in the end without overruling everything else that had happened. The ending was about the two of them wanting to be together, but both accepted the circumstances that were separating them, and the fact that other people exist. That is a somewhat rare point of view for a shoujo manga.
As much as I liked this series, I’m a little less excited for the last volume now that it’s not tied into the main storyline. But more Gertrude and Sehara is never a bad thing, and I’m sure I’ll love it. Hopefully it’ll be a cute place to leave the series off.
