A Wasted Cow's manga / #Shounen Ai(86)

This is a Chinese webtoon so don't expect too much. Furthermore it's BL, Chinese BL's never really have a serious plot and it always gears BL as comedy because the majority of the writers can't portray BL as anything but a comedic piece because Chinese culture doesn't quite believe in same sex relationships. Good thing is that this hasn't been too cringe. Edit: After reading for a while longer, the story finally seems to be ramping up. It took over 70 chapters to get something moving. A lot of the comedic moments are still bad jokes, but overall it seems to be getting better.

A story about two guys who met through fate and supernatural means quite literally. I really want to like this but the storyboard became piss-poor in the last couple of chapters. The pacing was good for the first 35 chapters, but you can tell the author forced the pace to speed up which ultimately ruined the story. There should have been more development in general. One of the two (the seme) isn't even homosexual to the point where they very clearly elaborated that he himself thinks he can't be with a man, yet magically decides that he'll go along with it. They portrayed the seme as this character who's cautious because of bad past experiences to the point where he's "rational." Yet none of this rationality shows up like questioning the bullsht behind the angel's promise. The foundation of their love interest in one another was forced to begin with. They will die if they don't maintain the relationship. The theme surrounding it left a lot of room to work with for the author, but it was forced to finish because the publisher/editor didn't allow the full story to unravel. Therefore, there's so many major plot turning-points that were missed. 1. Myungjun-sunbae was set up to have an arc where he likes the uke but their relationship eventually veers towards the uke realizing that maybe he liked his sunbae back out of solidarity. They cut this character off after fleshing him out. He deserves his own side story. 2. Seme's father was inserted into the story for literally 3 panels and never showed up again. You can easily tell that the father was supposed to be a source of friction for the relationship because it was heavily hinting that if the seme causes a scandal (which points to his relationship with the uke), it troubles the father. Again, another character who was supposed to provide development but was cut off. 3. The uke's issue with being in the closet. In the beginning, he realized what his sexuality was and they never truly expanded on that except for the one interaction with the sunbae, but that interaction was so brief and bland that it only served to show readers why the sunbae liked the uke to begin with and didn't develop anything at all. 4. The female intervening on the main couple because she liked the seme. She was cut off rather quickly even though the steps were leading towards her pumping out more schemes to cause drama. 5. Need to elaborate on the ending. What was that. They try to wrap it up by referencing the tattoos again which....means nothing at this point. In fact it undermines the relationship because all it serves is to remind the reader they're only together to not die. After writing this, it just becomes clear that this was basically equivalent to a random fujoshi fanfiction you can find anywhere because of how the angel is forcing this relationship along to ship them. It's just disappointing that it's so short and rushed.

FLUFFY!

This really isn't yaoi. This is shounen ai aka BL. The plot is driven by dialogue which is rare for BL stories. It was refreshing (the talk about sexuality) and very realistic (bisexual erasure unfortunately). Half the story would have been for naught if they talked about bisexuality. They treated sexuality as if you were either gay or straight like black and white. Other than that, the points made in this series were pretty on point here and there. They distinguished what being homophobic really means and what being just "tolerant" means as well. They talked about the emotions each side faces and the way people can experience an awakening outside of heteronormativity. This was tough to read at times because it showed a lack of understanding on the author's part about sexualities unless this was blatantly written this way.