vignette00's manga / #friends become lovers(32)

I have to be honest, I loved this collection. The first story should come with trigger warnings, because it starts off so sweetly you don't realize what you're in for -- it's a brilliant exploration of its own thesis statement, which is, "what happens after the love story?" An unrequited love becomes a requited love, but one side of the couple becomes intensely, emotionally obsessed with the love succeeding, to the point where it becomes self-destructive and hard to watch. Jaryuu always has a little bit of that psychotic darkness swirling in her stories, and this one was definitely threatening you with that cliff into the tragic, only she pulls you back the last minute. I can't say the characters really found a solution, but they seem to be trying for a "happily ever after," so rest assured that the midway point of the first story is not indicative of its ending. Then, the second story is an oddly coded non-bl, between a transwoman and a wayward young man who turns out to have been a childhood friend of the woman. It's not a romance, really, more like a found family kind of story that hints at a deeper, but maybe simply platonic? connection between the two characters. It's heartwarming in a very nontraditional way, or at least nontraditional for bl. I have to give props to Jaryuu for not making the transwoman necessarily "pass" as a woman -- there's a celebration of gender noncomformity, and while that's a punchline for a joke or two, it's never portrayed narratively as a negative or disgusting thing. Again, a non-ending. The last is a story of two classmates that jumps around in the timeline and always seems to be hinting at something less fluffy, but really it's just a story about two people whose high school romance was thwarted and get a chance to reconnect now that they're older. The art and character archetypes are familiar but loving and warm. Not a standout, but not a dud either.

Of Jaryuu Dokoro's stories, probably the sweetest. The title story, Yakozen, puts its main character Monji in a friends with benefit situation with his friend Chiba and then surrounds Monji with unrequited love -- his best girl friend Chie is in the same situation, and eventually it comes out that another character has an unrequited love for Monji. There's a really important lesson to learn here about balancing selflessness with self-love. Monji puts himself second and Chiba first, and soon becomes beholden to ever one of Chiba's heartless and selfish whims. It's not that Chiba is sadistic or likes making Monji miserable -- it's just that he's not even thinking of Monji's feelings, and there's a great line where Monji asks Chiba if Chiba thinks Monji won't be hurt no matter what Chiba does. The great "twist", as it were, is that Monji's friendships save him, through two conversations that tell Monji that his happiness is just as important as the happiness of the people he loves (and, as a corollary, that true love is wanting to see the person you love happy). Cue Rupaul: "If you can't love yourself, how the hell are you going to love somebody else?" A sensitive and realistic story about learning to love yourself, whose happy ending for everyone involved genuinely makes the reader happy as well.

"Prince Charming" is not going to be to everyone's taste, but if it's to your taste, like it is to mine, then whooo boy are you in for a treat. Start with a main character (Asahina) who loves sex and is indifferent about teaching but then is about to lose his job bc of his sex hobbies, add in a feisty student (Yuasa) who has a boy's curiosity for Asahina and a man's possessive interest in being with Asahina, throw in Akemi Takaido's trademark humor and characterization with Yuasa's meddling friends Nagai and Kagami, and then add a vigorous and delightful dose of two almost love triangles that collapses into a love square, and you have Prince Charming. What's wonderful about this series is that the plot climaxes never quite come where you think they will. Yes, all the characters in this series are less than sexually monogamous, and yes, Asahina and Yuasa's primary motivations are to have their cakes and eat them too, but refreshingly, sex in this manga is neither the focus nor the answer. Instead, it's more focused on the tangle of relationships: Yuasa's constantly evolving friendship with Nagai, Asahina and Kagami trading teacher and student roles as they navigate sexual attraction and looking after Yuasa, Asahina and Yuasa trying to work out exactly how much commitment and investment they need from each other to feel satisfied. Takaido's characters are filled with contradictory desires, but instead of picking between them, they often try to take all of them at the same time, and instead of rescuing them from their messes, Takaido lets them wallow. Asahina should know better than to sleep with Yuasa -- he doesn't. Yuasa should know his friends and articulate his desires better -- he doesn't. Kagami should just let things well enough alone when it doesn't involve him -- he doesn't. And Nagai should either be hands-off and cool or passionate, not both -- but of course he is both. Which makes for a story that feels like it's full of false starts and promiscuous, distasteful characters, but I find them incredibly realistic and, more importantly, charming. Because the other thing about the people in Prince Charming is that they're never cruel or vengeful. In the middle of an ever tangling love square in volume 2, Kagami and Yuasa put themselves in harm's way for friendship more than for love, and there's a sense in volume 3 that the collapsing of Kagami's leg in the love triangle is more because he can't stand to keep betraying Yuasa's friendship than because he doesn't love Asahina. Kagami's last line in the main story is pretty telling ("I have so many kind people to take care of me!") because the atmosphere of Prince Charming is a happy, caring one. Asahina isn't the best teacher, but he wants the best for all three of his students. No one wants to be the bad guy, even when they're sleeping around. It sounds crazy and against everything bl manga usually stands for. But it works, and miracles of miracles, all four characters make it through to the end of three volumes as, reluctant or otherwise, friends. Probably the only thing that doesn't work for me here is the way Nagai's storyline is bundled up, with a graduated senpai and a blackmailer. The epilogue tries to shed light on the relationship, but only serves to confuse the themes without actually connecting them to the main story. Still, he's a strong enough player in the first two volumes, and is the wry, cool-headed character that the quartet needs, so I can't complain too much. A note that the scanlation job here, after the first volume, consists of someone taking pictures of the book. It's hard to read, faint text, and double pages.

Main character Gin is from a rich family who refuses to accept his homosexuality. He strikes out on his own as a famous professor of archaeology, but has been for 14 years sex friends with his childhood friend Ei, himself a forensic scientist. Gin has been denying his feelings for Ei, but Ei is determined to prove to Gin that they, too, can find love. The story is ultimately about one person's (Gin's) dramatic reaction to the equally dramatic rejection of his sexuality. I love the story for Ei and Gin's relationship -- not because it is realistic, but because it manages to retread setups and ideas without feeling tired. There's a little bit of Koisuru Boukun (which I hate) and a lot of Junjou Egoist (which I'm fonder of) in the setup, but Ei has Nowaki's steadiness and Morinaga's devotion without Nowaki's inferiority issues and Morinaga's... everything else.... and that really turns the story around. He's not fazed by anything Gin throws his way, because he hasn't spent 14 years loving a difficult man for nothing. I want to love this story of human feeling transcending all else, but there's the issue of just how tried all the other components of the story are. It's not that these aren't real social issues gay men face every day (rejection by family, professional ostracization, sexual assault), but somehow throwing them together into the same story and giving it a rapid fire approach cheapens Gin's story. So ultimately but for the grace of Ei goes Gin -- this is a story fully saved by Amasaki's humanism.

An odd debut by the mangaka who would later go on to do Strawberry 100% (?!) and whose most recent story, Gunjou ni Siren, is basically a more mature, better illustrated retread of this. But, without getting sidetracked, Sora no Seibun is I'll/CKBC (http://www.mangago.me/read-manga/i_ll_generation_basket/) meets Kimi no Mukougawa (http://www.mangago.me/read-manga/kimi_no_mukougawa/). Okamoto, a junior high basketball prodigy, ends up at a high school with a weak basketball team, but still manages to inspire his classmate -- the tinier, completely amateur, but naturally gifted, Koizumi. In typical bl fashion, basketball and a latent attraction forges a strong bond between them, but it's shredded to pieces when Koizumi is chosen over Okamoto to be on the provincial tournament team. Added to the mix is Okamoto's "distant relative" Yumi, who is something in between a sex friend and a girlfriend to Okamoto, and is hiding her own wounds (which, I might add, Okamoto is helping her lick). There's nothing revolutionary about the development of the story, which really is equal helpings of the basketball drama in I'll and the rather rudimentary and tired machinations of Yumi + "we can't be together/but you're the only one for me/let's sacrifice our emotions stupidly for the sake of drama" that you'd find in Kimi no Mukougawa. What saves it from the slush pile is an inspired ending that predates The Carp on the Chopping Block..., only with two characters walking together slowly in the summer instead of in the snow. Okamoto tries to let Koizumi down gently, but Koizumi parries with a loaded metaphor, comparing his feelings for Okamoto to Okamoto's feelings for basketball. Though the last scene ends, abruptly, with none of the characters actually together, you can almost smell the sweat, hear the cicadas, and feel the hot sun as Okamoto and Koizumi reach an understanding somewhere in the middle of love and friendship. It's very real, and oddly human. Can't say I'd necessarily recommend it, but there's something psychologically interesting hidden in the banality, and at the very least, I look forward to the rest of Gunjou ni Siren.

This story reminds me of a Japanese term "腐れ縁" (kusare-en), which means basically a destined but unwanted bond you have with someone. Sora and Tetsuya are childhood friends who become estranged, then reunited, then estranged again, all the way from childhood into adulthood. Tetsuya wants to protect Sora, but thinks the only way to do that is to make Sora depend on him, and Sora wants Tetsuya to recognize his own agency in a way Sora's father can't, which leaves us with two people talking at cross-purposes with an extra dollop of sexual tension on top. So of course Tetsuya runs away to college and gets a girlfriend, only to be called back to rescue Sora, and of course Sora has to escape from Tetsuya's smothering, only for all three of them (Tetsuya, his ex-girlfriend, and Sora) to reconnect when they're older. Things would be easier if Tetsu learned how to stop projecting his own insecurities all over his partner before he got back together with Sora, or if Sora learned how to advocate for himself before he reconnected with Tetsuya, but -- kusare-en. Which is how we get three volumes of bad communication, followed by a strangely paltry climax bringing Tetsuya and Sora together. I'm making this sound bad, but actually I really enjoyed it. It feels a little like Mimurake no Musuko (http://www.mangago.me/read-manga/mimurake_no_musuko/), a similar three volume work about childhood friends, with a slow meandering plot and people behaving selfishly but not, necessarily, badly. I think what Kinoshita is trying to convey is the careful interplay of saving someone and helping yourself: Sora and Tetsuya couldn't be together until Tetsuya stopped needing to see himself as the cool, collected white knight and Sora was able to choose Tetsuya because of love and not because he needed Tetsuya to save him. With that theme in mind, the aimless plot makes sense. They needed to fail first before they could learn to succeed. An extra shout-out to Ryoutarou, Sora's best friend, and Yui, Tetsuya's ex/girlfriend, for being the MVPs of this series. Ryou is the pitch-perfect almost-ran boyfriend, and you get the sense that Kinoshita had to make him small-minded and less forceful so that he wouldn't actually end up the better boyfriend for Sora. He's awfully similar to Ogawa from Emotion Circuit (http://www.mangago.me/read-manga/emotion_circuit/an/emotion-circuit-chapter-4.html/1/) only Sora has none of Maki's self-awareness. Yui gets the Cornered Mouse/Chopped Carp treatment, as she's clearly too good for Tetsuya and is unfortunately delegated to being a stepping stone (twice) for Tetsuya and Sora's relationship, just like the ill-fated Natsuki and Tamaki.