Responses
This sums up everything I have been thinking I remember the first time I read this I really wanted more rabbit hole's and I really wanted Kei to have to chase Naru a bit more haha
Not true. I remember reading this older manga about two ukes that were in love being pursued by two semes and that was much dirtier.
┑(￣Д ￣)┍
My problem is the personality of both characters is gross. Why wouldn't he have just confessed instead of going around playing that weird game and the way the uke acts is also really inconsiderate and not at all in any cute way.
Despite the low rating, this was pretty good! I get the impression that even though this is a website full of extremely kinky smut (as well as other stuff), that there is still a lot of prudishness going around about characters' choices about who they have sex with, leading to arbitrarily low ratings on certain titles. While this comic isn't particularly top-shelf stuff, it is pretty good and worth a read, and IMO, warrants a better rating than its current 8.3 (probably more like an 8.8).
Anyway, back to this comic.
The story is pretty good as it is. Both characters are kinda jerks in general, no one really becomes a better person by the end, but we have kind of a situation where two crazy, manipulative guys shuffle the deck chairs of their relationship around by the end of the story.
With about 3 changes, this manga could've been way better, something really outstanding (omg llists! and spoilers):
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Recommended changes to improve this story overall:
* An actual character arc for Naru. Naru, the main-character, is a selfish, bossy brat and extremely inconsiderate of Kei at the beginning of the manga. Have him learn a lesson about treating people you care about well by the end of the story.
* Crank the rabbit-holes up a notch. Once Kei initiates a relationship with surrogate-bottom, have Naru have his growth moment then decide to be the bigger man about it and let Kei go, since Kei'd always had the choice to approach Naru, yet chose the surrogate-bottom instead, making it seem like he hadn't necessarily liked Naru from the beginning. After Kei pretends to be sick and screws surrogate-bottom in their room while Naru looks on, have Naru leave and go immediately to apply for a room transfer. Later, Kei returns to find all of Naru's things gone and just a note saying that Naru had asked that surrogate bottom not be allowed in the room, Kei had not complied with this request, so Naru's leaving. Then the plot can be branched out any number of interesting places from here (new roommate becomes a new love interest for Naru, Naru starts becoming friends with people in his class, Kei flails, going a little more crazy trying to find a way to salvage the sitch, etc...). This is the sort of plot twist that makes BJ Alex so dang satisfying to read and there's soooo much you can do with it.
* Really truly explore the S&M angle this manga only lightly touches upon. At the beginning of the story, Naru acts like a dom, and Kei sits in the role of a sub, but both are play-acting without realizing the other is doing so. Once they split up, and then later get back together, have it be revealed that Kei was always secretly an obsessive psycho dom (kinda hinted at in the story, but not taken far enough), and have Naru realize that he (Naru) really gets off by being humiliated and dominated by Kei. Have them both not only mutually enjoy this new arrangement, but both find it way more fulfilling than their play-acting at the beginning of the story.