otakulys's manga / #pathetic uke(3)

Guy rapes kid to get back at the chick who didn't run away with him years ago. Kid, of course, is madly in love with him for no reason. (I mean, Yaoi-land reasons, but that's pretty much the same thing.) This is a scary-unhealthy "romance" which, of course, is never addressed as such. If this were real life, that guy would have murdered his lover or gone to jail for something, I'm sure.

And then he realized his true feelings, and all of the rape and torture and choking and kidnapping were okay! Hurray! Seriously, though, at least I knew what I was getting into reading this. For what it was, it wasn't too bad. I had already prepared myself for the irritating "it's okay because love" trope, so it didn't bug me as much as it could have.

Very sad. Beautiful art, complicated human emotions. Reading the comments made me think I should skip this, but it ended up being painful in a satisfying way, rather than in a way that destroyed me. I actually preferred the complicated, messy story to the first story. I'm not a fan of incest, for one, but it was also just more typical and cliche than the second story. Didn't hate it, though. I haven't read the precursor manga, so I was sort of filling in the blanks as I went, but I appreciated the nature of the character unfurling, these people lashing out, hurting others so that they can feel your own hurt, etc. Definitely sad, and it leaves a little empty feeling in your gut, but... I've seen much worse. At least they're still trying. (Just from this, though, I wish Sato would dump Akira and find someone better. He's the only one who doesn't seem redeemable, but maybe he's featured in the first story?)