vignette00's manga / #bartender(1)

Naoyuki is reunited with his ex-boyfriend Okada, who turns out to be the apprentice bartender of Maria Elena. What starts out as a one-off date with his girlfriend ends up being Naoyuki's ticket back to a relationship with Okada. Main character Naoyuki is as sweet as a Kamikaze, with just as much depth. The story starts and ends with him mooning for his old senpai, and when Maria Elena's boss lets him part time at the bar, he's more than willing to jump at the opportunity to get reunited with his first love. But when Okada pushes him back-- and Okada does, more than once, with different degrees of forcefulness-- Naoyuki eventually has to step down. It's a neat little drama that Tateno Makoto enjoys writing over and over again in each of her series: the beloved who believes for one reason or another that he has to refuse the lover what he wants, and the lover who after a while feels as if he's backed the beloved in a corner, and thus steps down. Sadly, Martini Kouryakuhou starts to fall apart towards the emotional climax. The beauty of Naoyuki and Okada's situation lies very much in us and Naoyuki having no clue as to the reason why Okada disappeared from Naoyuki's life. So we're intrigued and swept along for the ride, because we keep wanting to know why. It mounts and mounts for so long and the explanation, when it comes, makes so little sense and is so strangely frustrating that you're tempted to rewrite it and elaborate it yourself, because you just so badly want Okada to live up to his earlier standards as a character. That too, I guess, is a sign of a good manga, but really, I was so ?!?!?!? about the ending that most of the time I purposely forget the reason Okada left, just so I'll enjoy the manga more. The art is Tateno Makoto standard-- neither mindblowing impressive nor anything short of good craft. Kousaka, the main bartender, is just funny and real enough for Tateno Makoto to have made him the star of Side Car Seigyohou. And there's the issue with the owner and the owner's brother, which, well. You'll see.