vignette00's manga / #rape(26)

A hodgepodge of bl tropes (fell in love when they were children, rape after a misunderstanding, jealous possessive seme, the "third man" who is just an old friend) that are straightforwardly trotted out. The second couple is barely more interesting if only because one of the characters is a trickster who bullies the people he loves and literally says out loud "did you know that during sex, no means yes?" which cracked me up but not for the reasons I think the mangaka intended. Passable art with too many close-ups of people's enormous sparkling or troubled faces. It reminds me a bit of the infinitely superior "How to Capture a Martini," (http://www.mangago.me/read-manga/martini_kouryakuhou/) but at least Tateno Makoto knows how to write a good hot-and-then-cold object of desire.

A man re-encounters a childhood friend -- and victim -- of his who isn't ready to forgive or forget his past transgressions. One of those stories that fits strictly within bl manga rape logic, where rape is just a declaration of unrequited love, this story always seems to be teetering on the edge of a much more dramatic tragedy (c.f. Fusa Juuji's The Gospel http://www.mangago.me/read-manga/the_gospel/, which similarly chickens out of the dramatic "bullets-fly-everyone-dies" ending it seemed to be headied for), but settles instead for an unrealistic, but satisfying conclusion where the two mains forgive each other and themselves. The climax, which involves an attempted double suicide, a hospital visit, and a very emotional confrontation on a stairwell, is well-manufactured if you ignore rape-as-romantic-window-dressing. I can't help considering this to be "Kunieda Saika's B-team," even though I think Fukai Youki is competent enough in her own right.

Nishida Higashi, queen of the salaryman oneshot, collects five (and a half) stories here, about high-powered, overworked men and the high-powered, overworked men who love them. There's a little variation with the third and fourth stories, which are set outside of the office, but the other three stories all star a chief and his secretary, but to very diverse ends. I find the first and the fifth oneshot to be Nishida at her best and most bittersweet, which might be expected for a collection titled "marvelous heartbreak." In the first, a man in love with his domineering section chief is suddenly forced to confront the impossibility of his love when he's raped by an ex's brother. In a bl reversal, the rape isn't a catalyst for love, and the section chief's family features heavily in the moral balance of the climax, which is tender and affirming even when it lets down its main character. The same plot elements -- a secretary in love with the president, a family, a dubiously consensual sex scene -- come back for the last oneshot, but the conclusion is far sadder. Nishida's plots are often about timing: bad timing that leads two characters to like each other in mismatched cycles, or coincidental timing that brings two people from completely different worlds together for life. In the fifth oneshot, though, the timing is uncharacteristically perfect, and the characters don't have any misunderstandings about each other's intentions or feelings, but it still ends marvelously, inescapably, in heartbreak.

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.