vignette00's manga / #oneshot(25)

What would have been a typical friends-becoming-lovers kind of story, with one boy desperate and the other desperately trying to hide the fact that he reciprocates, is thwarted by an unusual family circumstance. Similar to "Yagate Ao ni Naru" and "Into Your Heart Through the Door," except Hidaka Shouko allows the ending and path forward to remain ambiguous. There's this moment where one of the characters is pleading for something that's both cruel and kind to the other characters in the story, and I found myself drawing a breath that I was still holding at the very last page. And I guess that's mostly what this story is like -- a breath held, you waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the temporary, uneasy peace to splinter, and the cruel, but kind, promise that it may hold, instead, forever.

A short but memorable foray into the sex lives of two characters, one of whom asks the other to participate in a rape fantasy. As always with Ichikawa, it's the little touches that make the story good -- that the sex doesn't always work just as expected, that the "rapist" is not a good actor but finds himself getting into his partner's enthusiasm, that these are two loving amateurs who don't yet have a checklist or have everything worked out. It feels a lot like the first sex scene in Ichikawa's "Blue Sky Complex," with a lot of dialogue between the characters trying to figure out their next move before they really get into the groove of their own desires. Take Harada when she's being nice and happy, dial back the extreme to about a 5, and you have this oneshot.

Can it be? Another happy story from Harada?! The nameless couple from "Henai" come back in a sequel that's just as mindblowingly hot as the first and with just as many character breaks. It's hard to find couples in bl manga who can't get enough of each other in a healthy way, so my favorite scene is actually the second sex scene, especially because it also features 1) a call-out between an established couple about negotiating consent, 2) the two characters coming up with a bizarre sex scenario on the fly and then abandoning it for the closest thing these two will ever get to "normal sex", and 3) a romantic line to cap the whole thing off, which calls back to (if you remember!) the flashback to the couples' first meeting in "Henai." Along with Ichikawa Kei's "Test Play," this seems to be heralding in a new "New Wave." It's not that I want all my bl manga sex to be rape play comedies, but it certainly beats the never-ending parade of rape that's so much of bl previously.

A follow-up to a oneshot that is not yet translated. In a weird inversion of the "rape is love" trope, a highschooler finds himself engaging in truly bizarre sex with his friend, and no one makes any confessions. There are enough random comedy bits ("you're the only 167 cm 50 kg 17 year old virgin who's friend recently fucked him with fruit", Kaede's offscreen wailing interpreted as cat noises) that I suspect it's a knowing parody and just a way to draw a couple too dumb for words, including words of active consent.