Calalaya's manga / #A Hot Mess(8)

Wow. I mean, wow. Forced body modification, questionable con, super fucking weird plot, lackluster worldbuilding, half-introduced characters, /important plot elements/ that make no sense in context; what a hot load of bullshit my dude

Awful con, but if you can get past the first chapter, the absurdity of the rest is worth the price of admission, if that's your thing. Very reminiscent of Oshioki Gakuen

A mess and a half - crazy underdeveloped worldbuilding, like, is there a series this is tied to? 'Cause I didn't read it, and I shouldn't have to, just to understand what the fuck is going on. Even without that, the pacing is awful, the characters are weak, the plot is nonexistent, and I have no idea what /anyone's/ motivations are. Maybe just a bad translation but damn

Oof, this has aged like milk. The first story is...awful. Just dreadful. The worst. Terrible gender politics, disgusting amounts of "You should only change for the person you love because they luuuvvv uuuu", like, ew. Honestly, a lot of these stories that use words like "transsexual" and "transvestite" - while yes, those words are definitely not okay by today's standards, generally the message isn't overtly harmful. A lot of cis authors conflate transgender with "wanting to be 'x gender'" rather than "being 'x gender' in a 'y gender' body" - easy enough to understand how someone with no personal experience could mix that up, especially before information was as wide-spread as it is today. It is a whole other thing when that author takes a character who was fully intending to transition and then makes them not want to because their partner thinks it would "be a shame." Gross. It was never about /his body/, it was always about what body he wanted to look at, and that's gross!! It's objectifying, which yaoi has enough problems /without/ trying to bring transgender issues in! Their whole dynamic put a bad taste in my mouth. The other stories are passable, I'm a slut for unrequited love, and I do not like that blonde kid, he needs help. I'm glad he was able to find love even outside of his first one, but damn, there are some serious issues he needs to work through. The middle story was so nothing I literally forgot it as soon as I read it. Oh boy. Not one of Takanaga-sensei's better works

Nope. Bad. Corrective rape over the literal premise of "Let's kill out humanity by making everyone stop having children" is....awful. Just the worst. Way too many plot holes, really fuckin' flippant about sexual identity which is??? super confusing when the whole premise is gay??? Like wow that's gross, don't like that. Literally the only thing that's even /remotely/ worth salvaging is the idea of an Aphrodite/Cupid-like character that also joins in the fun and then sets up a pair - as well as the final chapter's idea of two people being soulmates that normally wouldn't happen. I think that has plenty of potential, not just for sex either. Overall, very bad.

Just makin' a note of this so I don't forget: Hey asshole, you don't get to just say "I'm not gonna check in every time" you have to do that also he revoked consent what the fuck Midway through: I think I've figured out my main issue with this one (aside from high expectation since it's rated so highly and I got it off a rec list) - the S seems to give no heed to the fact that the person he's pursuing isn't really an M, from what I can tell. And while I appreciate the fact that Shirotani isn't being coddled for his condition, none of this "Oh you poor baby let me Saviour Narrative you" it's a bit too extreme on the other end for me too. Not really a slowburn and it seems a bit flippant with how Shiro-tan feels or experiences his life for the pleasure of the person he likes, and who likes him back. Just disappointing, you know Mid update.2: Ugh, Kurose is so gross. "I'm the only one that understands and will love you, you're just as gross as me I can tell" You're a fucking child psychologist, go work out your own manipulative problems first you bastard. Shiro-tan, go date Mikuni, he seems way more put-together, Kurose's gonna bleed you dry Post-read: It's that codependancy babeyyyy. Ugh, what a mess. Understanding the characters and their motivations took way too long and they were fully unlikeable up to that point which made the plot twist? revelation? whatever it was, feel flaccid and lack any kind of punch to it. I don't give a fuck about Kurose, he's a piece of shit through and through, no matter how much he's "softened" by the end, and Shiro needed like, actual help, not whatever Kuro was doing to him. What it finally comes down to of "There is no cure and that's okay" falls utterly flat on the deflated gut of this story, it's so much better suited for a story that treats its issues more carefully The only time I laughed was when the editors put their watermark over Ueno's face, despite being able to tell that some of the scenes were intended to be humorous but fell flat. I could also talk about how the only prominent female characters were either - there to cause trauma i.e. Shiro's trigger or Kuro's abandonment issues - or exposition dumps. Female characters are already a tough topic in yaoi, way to add more to the pile Last thing, I swear, reading the comments about how the ending is disappointing or anticlimatic; I hate to be a "You just don't get it" especially with how much I Do Not Care about it, but like, that's the point. The whole point is that they wouldn't have been able to be at a point in their relationship where they could do something like that if not for everything leading up to it I just jkgdslahfjdsf fuck this manga lol it makes me so irrationally angry

Ugh, I want to like this one soooooooo much more than I do. To be clear, I do like it! Art's lovely, the characters are very well fleshed out, the X scenes are excellent, it's just....such a shitty mystery lol. It's mostly the pacing that undoes itself - if it was framed just a /little/ better about who's lying about what and why, just to feed the audience a little better than it does, I'd have basically no problem with this. But Dowon's right and Jiha's right - it doesn't matter whodunit after a certain point, and Ye-Eun is right too, if someone's lying to her then she can't be in a relationship with them, no matter how casual. If you want my opinion on whodunit, I think the best bet is our resident yandere, or someone we haven't seen before, which would definitely land this mystery into the 1/5 category lol. Ugh, if only the audience knew a little better; To be completely fair, I don't even necessarily think that having an omniscient 3rd person POV would fix it either, if the audience knew /every/thing it'd just be more of an idiot plot than it already is. Such a shame. I can't recommend how to fix it without knowing the twist myself, but it is in desperate need of cleaning to make it a good porn-with-plot If you read it as a PWP (which is difficult to do since the number of X scenes are actually pretty sparse!) it's excellent. Femdom is one of those things that is very rarely seen and criminally so! Ye-Eun is perhaps a perfect dom? She's adorable and strong and knows what she likes and what her subs like from the looks of it, and it really does seem like she can attract any M (which, I really liked that metaphor in the beginning. I love a clever theme!) I think my favourite chapter, which I don't know if that says a lot about me or this particular story, is the one where Ye-Eun and Jiha are beating the crap out of each other lol. They're both probably my favourite characters, and I side with both of them, despite them very clearly being on opposite sides. They both have some really serious flaws that are very clear to each other and are not even a little shy about pointing them out, which is massively refreshing. Last note, I swear - I love the reverse harem/Mary Sue aspects surrounding Ye-Eun. It's extremely well done, more impressively because Ye-Eun is not written to be overpowered, rather just very powerful. She's beautiful, attractive in body and attitude, silly, confident, a bad drunk, makes friends easily, lusts deeply - she's an extremely intense character, and it's really awesome to see a female character especially be written so lovingly. Update: Now that we're delving a little deeper into the love(?) triangle of the past between Jiha Ye-Eun and Chulsoo, the plotting actually feels like its reentering a correct path. Something to follow that's not a shitty mystery, just people doing bad things to hurt each other lol, and I don't mean that in a bad way at all! I think it's very humanizing to see just how cruel everyone was being to each other. I personally really don't like Chulsoo, I think he's a possessive bastard playing the long-con for his own purposes and that he doesn't actually care about Ye-Eun but that's just me. Even seeing just how fucking horrible of a boyfriend Jiha was, and that even though Ye-Eun had every right to leave him, it doesn't make either of them all the way in the right or wrong about how they handled the situation, it's so humanizing! They're still definitely my favourite characters. Also finally seeing Jiha bottom? Hot Ch.36-50: Boy did I fuckin' call it or what lol. Honestly, veering away from the mystery plot to how these characters interact with each other makes the story so much more cohesive, snappy, interesting and entertaining, and makes way more sense, which makes it more engaging. Plus, added bonus, it lets the audience see exactly how not just the character dynamics but the sexual chemistry play off each other. Also, Dorim is quickly rising on my favourite list, so seeing him and Jiha together was magical, and soooo fucked up in the best way to have him pretend to be Dowon. Past and present, come to fuck you, it's so messed up, I love it. The way you can just barely tell that Jiha kisses him back kills me. And then Dowon - I never trusted that fucker, and I still don't, but his hair suits him now lol. He finally let down his overly=sparkly exterior, the brown hair looks good on him. I can appreciate the effort he's putting in, but he just seems like a wrong fit for the group, he seems to have a much lower threshold and isn't as interested in the M part in proportion to Ye Eun. If he keeps acting up, at least that'll make it all the more interesting to see him trained. Ch.51-66: And the mystery returns.....At least it's less about jerking Ye Eun around by supposed good partners this time, I'm looking at you Dowon and Chulsoo. Plus this time the mystery is pretty easy to see, and the payoffs for the aspects that would otherwise be unexplained are decently handwaved if nothing else, I actually like the twist with the notes. We're still returning to the well of Whodunit which is still very tired, but at least there's some actual stakes now! I'll be curious to see how Chulsoo's situation is explained lol, he's gigantic and not moved easily in heart or body. I'm also excited to see the resolution of Jiha and Dowon's conflict, not like I've been shy about my love for Jiha, so I hope to see him succeed tbh Finished reading update: What an anticlimactic ending :/ We never got to see all the puppies together, and a lot of the loose ends were either left loose or like, implied? to be wrapped up but not clearly, like the main mystery is just kinda side-stepped like "Oh yeah the guy who's a pathological liar? He's telling the truth let's never worry about it ever again" and then it just doesn't come up anymore. What's the point of making a mystery if you're so disinterested in solving it, ugh, I knew I was right to dislike it from the start Also still hate Chulsoo lol <3 Can't believe this nonsense 66 to the end: Ugh. Literally what is the point of a reverse harem if you don't have the ultimate dom scene

Realistically I'm giving this two and a half stars because I? like? some of the concepts it brings up, and there are some genuinely clever twists, but there's just so much rape and murder, I didn't watch GoT for a reason and seeing something similar - to what I'm aware of - isn't really worth the ticket price. I did read it anyway tho lol so feel free to take a pinch of salt with that I think the interesting concepts are really interesting! Like how to put a soul into a curse to kill two birds with one stone, kind of literally. And the concepts of parent/child soul sharing is interesting as well, even if I don't always think the internal logic is completely sound. Even Leo's twisting and untwisting emotions, which is very very annoying and they both just seem like they're jerking each other around in the early chapters, is explained, which is more than can be said for other manga There's just....so much rape. So much. The entire thing could practically be classified depending on how Leo's feelings shake out, it's all emotional manipulation and it's just really gross on that front