Yeah I’m disappointed. This manga has been so refreshing and different art style wise and story wise....only to fall back into the same old tropes. Honestly it gets emotionally fatiguing to read stories with sexual abuse so often. I like yaoi but it really has started to effect me. So many stories end up having dark stuff in it for NO reason and I feel like it’s starting to skew my thoughts a little bit. No other genre has so much sexual abuse in it. It’s also really frustrating to find really nice art and interesting characters and plots only for so much of the story to end up having abuse, rape, and prostitution in it.
At least this one treats it seriously and doesn't present the assault in a titillating way rather than having it be a "oh noooo kawaii uke was raped and now he needs seme dick to make him healthy again" story. I find it quite refreshing. It's possible to tell dark stories well and I think this is an example of that.
Dark well done stories are like aku no hana and the authors most current work, have a psychological element and actually have a message. Yaoi just gets dark with rape and abuse as a genre trope. It was literally started with that as one of its main defining characteristics, so at this point it is not new and therefore I don’t find it refreshing even if it’s put in a setting or context where it now makes more sense or seems more realistic. I’ve read plenty of stories that are serious like this but still just full of sexual abuse of specifically men and boys, like Yoneda Kou’s yakuza story or Acid Town. Like yeah it makes sense in the setting, but to show it so explicitly rather than what most genres that include abuse do, which is allude to it or show hints that it happens rather than showing somebody actually being raped which even tv doesn’t allow, just reinforces the point that it is jerk off material for its female fan base. Which, I’m not kink shaming, but for me it’s one thing in a porn context and another in a story context. When it’s in a real story it feels extra wrong and like exploiting the characters. Some of this is just my thoughts on the genre in general rather than just this story. But basically, the only thing original or refreshing here is the art, so I guess I had higher expectations.
But this manga does show hints that it happens rather than showing somebody actually being raped? The closest it gets is this scene with Aisuke, and it's framed in a way that's meant to be scary. Eight even went soft when he realized what he was about to do and paused like he was wondering if he should stop just as Seven bursts in. In future chapters, which I'm guessing you haven't read since they are not translated, the abuse Seven and Eight suffered is explained very seriously and isn't shown. I get your problems with the genre, I hate shit that sexualizes assault like that too. I find it very triggering and drop manga where that happens. But this one does not have that effect on me, rather I found it validating of my experiences. I just want to make this super clear, I agree with what you're saying about BL as a genre, it has a serious problem with assault being presented for titillation. I just really don't think that's the case with this particular manga.
That’s why I said not necessarily this story but the genre in general in my second to last sentence.
OK, we good then
***Spoiler alert***
Whoa this got super serious. Floofy date at the aquarium to child prostitution in like two seconds flat. I mean I guess I could have imagined it since he was homeless in a park, but yaoi uses stuff like that all the time without any serious backstory. I still like it but I feel a little dizzy.