vignette00's manga / #Family(44)

Half-hearted fantasy involving a royal family who has very specific connections with a certain angel. Predictable with a central conflict, if you can even call it a conflict, that results in a meaningless angstfest for the two main characters. Achille was one-note (naive, enthusiastic, ultimately responsible) and admirably makes a selfless decision to give up love in the third chapter, but even though he's supposedly different from his grandfather Grain, he might as well be just a conduit for Grain to spend the rest of his life "touched by an angel," as it were. This is a solid PWP -- personality, what personality? Meanwhile Raphie seems tormented by an "affliction" and a past traumatic relationship, except neither seem to actual register on his characterization. Maybe he cares about "his affliction", maybe he doesn't; maybe he gives a shit about Grain, but mostly I can't understand why he does, or really if he does. Finish all that off with work-a-day and unremarkable artwork and a worldbuilding that is so light it might as well be transparent, and you get the blah sandwich that is this story.

Overdramatic and strangely shallow despite its weighty themes. Set in Meiji Japan, we follow the bad relationship between two brothers as it ropes in a third party -- a young duke who specializes in teaching ballroom dance. Things end tragically, though a love story does emerge and survive. Youka Nitta makes some very odd choices about when to summarize and when to introduce time jumps, resulting in a lurching, melodramatic ride with lots of deadspace where characters don't develop, change, or learn anything new, and the last scene ties up the whole mess in a deeply silly play for people's love of "until death do us part." Shoots for "Farewell My Concubine," with lots of nods towards real history and upheaval, but ends up achieving none of the gravitas. Still, an extra star for Youka Nitta's art, which is always pleasing to look at.

Aijin wa Korosareru is, I think, less about love than it is about rejection and abandonment and the pure instinctual fear people have of not being wanted. That's what makes this story so strong. Hikari is deeply, deeply traumatized by his father's departure and his mother's insanity/emotional issues, and it makes him desperate for acceptance and love, so much so that when Kizaki reaches out even that little bit, Hikari grabs on. Which makes Haizawa and Hikari's relationship all that more painful, because Haizawa is one of those amazing characters that I think can only be found in sad, heartrending yaoi manga. Haizawa is sarcastic, and caustic, and manipulative, and mysterious from the beginning, and he probably has abandonment issues the length of his arm, but he thinks he's survived. He thinks he's over them, living his life, being a new man, and Hikari frightens him because Hikari hasn't. Hikari is a pure boy with pure emotions and he is at once drawn and repulsed by Haizawa, but Haizawa is scared and now I'm just psycho-analyzing this manga too much. Umetaro makes deeply flawed characters who are alive and emotional and filled with dimension, especially with Haizawa and Kizaki. I love how at first you think Kizaki is just going to be a minor character but then Umetarou draws Kizaki closer and closer to the heart of the story. Umetarou always gives Haizawa this subtly adult and mocking smile, which will become important later of course, and Haizawa is a man with so many faces and so many sides but the story makes them all believable. And this is a story about change, about growing up, about dealing with abandonment, about wanting just one person in the world to be happy that you were born, and I love it because even though there are not serious plot twists, what you think is going to happen doesn't. There is room for so many cliches, but the story doesn't go there. It takes middle ground, and takes you with it.