vignette00's manga / #blackmail(5)

Two-story volume. The first is about a high school student who is blackmailed by a salaryman(?) over stealing pencil lead. If that sounds petty, that's because the characters are bare sketches, and the plot merely hints at development. The fundamental question of "do the characters fall in love?" is answered, but there's a family subplot for the student and a backstory for the salaryman that falls to the wayside. It's not terrible, just too hesitant to be anything substantial, and then it just sort of ends. Story two is about two actors starring in a drama about two high school boys in love. As expected, reality and the drama begin to mix, and the mangaka does a surprisingly effective job superimposing the two on each other. The ending scene on the beach is probably the best moment in the whole volume, and even though the same issues from the first story carry through (no real understanding of either character, sketchy hesitant plot development) it works here because she doesn't try for weight themes, just a nice mood of two young men exploring the bounds of first love, professionalism, and communication. Maybe skip "Akudama" and jump straight into "Nonfiction," would be my recommendation.

All hail Scarlet Beriko, who will surely save us all. In between this and "Jackass!," I'm ready to crown her as the challenger to the bl manga throne (I wonder who holds it now? A thought for another time!). Tatsuyuki, wayward fourth head of his yakuza group, is shipped off to Fukuoka, where he meets Nozomi, a young man he once saved as a child, and Rogi, an old, old acquaintance of his father's. What starts off as a very well-rendered sex romp dives very quickly by the end of chapter two into a much more serious story that twists the three mains into a complicated web woven by their pasts. At one point midway throught he story, Nozomi, desperate to get Tatsuyuki to hear him out, asks, "How am I supposed to tie the person I love to me? I have no idea." Weirdly enough, this becomes the through-line of the entire story. Nozomi's father tries to tie Nozomi to him after the death of his mother by making Nozomi into someone else. Tatsuyuki doesn't realize he's tying Nozomi to him when he extends his hand as a child, but now it's a tie he can't throw away. Nozomi tries to tie Tatsuyuki to him by becoming the ideal partner: can cook, fight, love, cry when Tatsuyuki can't. Rogi tries to tie Tatsuyuki's father to him by manipulation and dirty dealings, but in the end his only tie is through Tatsuyuki, for better or worse. Happily, it's Tatsuyuki and Nozomi's tie that survives the series, not because of love at first sight, necessarily, but because both of them fight and sacrifice for it, even when they are powerless. There's a subplot about the weight of responsibility: Tatsuyuki has hundreds of ties to his group, which turns out to encompass Rogi, Nozomi, and his father, and his emotional maturing in the story allows him to bear the weight of their sacrifices for him because he finally understands what it feels like to sacrifice himself. "Put your weight on me," as he says in chapter 7, "I will carry all of it." Beriko's artwork is a joy to behold. The sex scenes, obviously, are a standout -- graphic without being extreme and rendered with a loving hand to detail and facial expressions. But the rest of it is amazing too: a character silently walking into the sea in chapter 4, an elaborate dinner and seduction sequence in chapter 6 that involves an unnerving blowjob at the table, the beach scenes of chapter 8. This manga feels like a weird mix of Zakk's Canis, down to the art, but I also see echoes of Kamatani Yuuki's rather singular "Shimanami Tasogare" and Kyuugou.