pidgeonreads's manga / #sensible age gap(29)

This is is. The #1 SFW BL story. Love Tractor contains the amusing, feel good heart touching story of two people that find theirselves in each other beyond each other. One is a man who gave up everything important for the person he thought was ‘the one’ for himself and in the process lost who he was. The other is a man who never thought broader than the home in which he grew up in. This is story with more heart touching and teeth aching sweetness than angst, but there still managed to be a depth to it that made me fall for the love shared between the characters.

Despite an utter lack of relationship build up, there’s truly something about these two. Kaoru is a student well known for being a delinquent to most … and a big softie to his best friend. He comes equipped with a history of ‘breaking up’ fights by beating up everyone involved and a rival (cough - childhood bestie) who occasionally shows up at his school just to have a good spar. He hears word of a new delinquent transfer student and immediately high tails his way to the scene of the fight only to be struck by something entirely unexpected upon witnessing the new student in action: love. And, as any rational person does, he immediately confesses his love. Or - I should clarify, he first gets his ass handed to him by a confused Shun, then confesses his love and then experiences his first several kisses AND enters his first relationship all in a handful of very confusing moments. None of the characters have a ton of backstory introduced, saved the slight history between Karou and his rival as well as the concerning information that Shun comes from an abusive home. The couple makes quick work though and in the course of four chapters go from strangers who started dating before knowing each other’s names to fucking. And that short timeline even left room for Karou being taught how to kiss, Shun nearly ruining it all by admitting that he doesn’t particularly feel anything like love for Karou (only to immediately change his mind after he witnessed Karou beating up some ruffians), and plenty of comedic content of Karou sparing his friends absolutely zero details of his newly found sex life. Including an entire arc where he has his rival go to a sex shop with him and give him advice on how to take it. Overall, these two tick off so many of my favorite tropes. There’s a plentiful selection of horny heart eyes, Karou is a very enthusiastic bottom despite Shun being a full head shorter than him, Shun himself is stupidely hot. The entire sucker and candy scenes had me blushing. There’s also a delicious contrast between Karou constant expressiveness and Shun’s lack of expression that makes it so *chefs kiss* when you catch that slight blush on Shun’s cheeks. They’ve both got a few screws loose and it makes for some hilarious little scenes of the best friend and rival going :0 ??? The both of them are also hilariously shameless be it that they constantly screw around at school, can’t stop themselves from telling the others all of the details or even Shun with his dedication to making both of Karou’s friends his friends … even if he doesn’t quite understand the how.

dnf. Bad plot unlikable characters. The top literally says he only wanted to help the bottom because he was attracted to his illness tf

tldr; surprisingly alright story? … for a manga with a completely unnecessary graphic rape scene ️ This manga is going to have me sitting up in bed for a few nights going ??? because I’m so confused how it was so good. I throughly enjoyed it despite the fact that it somehow also awful and disgusting. This could so easy have been a top ten favorites 5 star manga for me if the author had just ?? Not decided to include the vocalist getting raped and tortured. Like it wasn’t at all a needed plot point and contributed literally nothing. And it was so weird that my guy literally had to be nursed back to health and canonically developed ptsd symptoms from the trauma but the event was still treated kinda as a joke like ‘haha that was crazy’ and the mob boss guy still came to shows that they were pretty cordial. It didn’t really even make sense for the mob boss guy to do it. Up to that point he’d been presented as a die hard yuru fan so it made zero sense for him to throw that all aside just because the guy slapped his sister. Completely unnecessary and weird. Don’t get me wrong, the top in this manga was unlikable from the start and treated the bottom horribly but it made sense for the story and the bottom never complained. His whole thing was that he was happy to receive attention from the guy even if it was bad. The plot could easily have leveraged using the slap and how it made the top feel about himself as the thing that broke the barrier and brought them together. Could have even went with the mob boss hurting the top physically. But the inclusion of the rape was unnecessary and gross and ruined what should have been a solidly good story. Like I liked this pairing. They’re both stupid and insanely full of faults but they were funny and silly and a little adorable at times. I genuinely found myself laughing at the top struggling with being shorter and the honest realness of that last blowjob.