What’s the point of having a blog if you don’t use it to needlessly complicate your life from time to time? The newest edition of Diamond’s Previews catalog has arrived, and while I plan to do my usual “make me suffer” poll later in the week, I’ve decided to add a new wrinkle to the process.
You see, I feel like I should read more boys’ love titles, but I like to do a certain amount of investigation prior to investing, because sometimes something sounds good and ends up embodying everything that makes me uncomfortable about books in the category. So I’m going to ask for your help, and your vote, in winnowing out the listed title that best matches my taste.
For the record, those tastes include: adult characters with interesting lives outside of their romantic relationships; a sprinkling of issues related to sexual identity; and no forced sex, or at least as little as possible. I also tend to prefer a light touch, though high drama is fine if it’s persuasively done. I don’t think that’s asking for too much, and if none of these candidates pass the test, I make no promises that I’ll suffer through one, but if enough of you make the case for a particular work, keeping my preferences in mind, then I’m on board.
So here are the candidates:
Tonight’s Take-Out Night, written and illustrated by Akira Minazuki: Matsumoto was sent from his company’s planning department to assist in the expansion of a fast food restaurant. Little did he expect to encounter sexual harassment from Iwakiri Kiyoshi, the extremely competent manager of this successful shop. How should he respond? And is it all in jest?
Okay, they have jobs, but sexual harassment is right there in the solicitation, so I’m leery. It ran in Taiyo Tosho’s Hertz.
Entangled Circumstances, written and illustrated by Kikuko Kikuya: Himeko and Shibui not only work for the same company, but had also attended university together. Himeko was wildly popular, and nicknamed “The Prince.” But whatever Shibui may be trying not to recall about their shared past, one thing is certain. Their present and future are tangled together, with the past knotting it quite firmly. Seeing Himeko everyday, Shibui finds his feelings ever more swayed. “Whatever it takes to get you…”
I absolutely love the cover art for this one, though I would vote for a moratorium on any character ever being nicknamed “The Prince” again. It also ran in Hertz.
A Liar in Love, written and illustrated by Kiyo Ueda: After receiving an interesting phone call from his brother, Tatsuki Hiroshi decides to go for a visit. There he encounters Miura, and as the two get to know each other, they begin dating. It is not supposed to be for anything but fun with no strings attached. So when did Tatsuki become a fool for love? What is he to do? As he finds out, affairs of the heart are complicated!
My ears perked up at the use of the word “dating.” This is not a word I usually see in BL solicitations. It’s apparently Hertz month.
I Give to You, written and illustrated by Ebishi Maki: Reeling from betrayal at the hands of his lover who left him in incredible debt, Ryouichi finds himself aimlessly wandering in the midst of a storm. Suddenly finding himself standing at the door of a teahouse. He goes in, and soon finds himself indebted to the owner. Helping out around the shop to pay back the owner’s kindness. Ryouichi finds that he’s looking forward to it, and not just to pay back the debt either. Has Ryouichi found where he belongs?
Again, it’s a gorgeous cover, but that blurb is kind of tortured. I know that doesn’t reflect on the book, but it is a little irksome. This one ran in Taiyo Tosho’s Craft.
This Night’s Everything, written and illustrated by Akira Minazuki: A certain politician has his own private security group. In that group is someone special. That man, Aoi, is someone who is extremely capable at his job, handling even dirty work with ease. But in that heart lies not only cold reason, but passion. Can love survive in such circumstances, and light a path out of the darkness?
Drama, drama, drama. I’m leaning backwards, because it’s getting really intense and all up in my face. We’re back to Hertz to wrap things up.
All right, those are the choices. Advice? Insights? Revealing tea leaves or possibly coffee grounds?
I vote for The Night’s Everything, which has the most cliched of the 5 BL covers.
Sadist.
It’s either gonna be Entangled Circumstances or I Give to You, or budget allowing, both! I’m a sucker for gorgeous covers… hey, even if the story wasn’t so good, at least it looks good on the shelf >_<
I would go with Entangled Circumstances and I Give to You. I like BL series that have a story and not just plain sex. I Give to You sounds like too much drama but it definitely looks interesting enough to me. The same goes for Entangled Circumstances as I have something for stories about ex-lovers meeting again when they are adults. Kinda reminds me of Hyouta Fujiyama’s Jyunjyo.
I would go with Entangled Circumstances and I Give to You. I like BL series that have a story and not just plain sex. I Give to You sounds like too much drama but it definitely looks interesting enough to me. The same goes for Entangled Circumstances as I have something for stories about ex-lovers meeting again when they are adults. Kinda reminds me of Hyouta Fujiyama’s Jyunjyo.
The ones that perked my interest reading through were Entangled Circumstances and I Give to You. Those grabbed at my personal preferences somehow, and would be the ones I would check out myself.
Tonight’s Take-Out Night looks like a collection of shorts, which is usually not a great sign, but if DMP is putting out two books by Minazuki in the same month, they must feel she’s got something.
I Give to You looks like the best bet to me, based on the cover and on liking Craft as a magazine.
Could you describe Craft for me? Does it have a specialty in terms of the kind of stories it features?
I’m not sure it has a speciality as such, just that it runs a lot of quiet atmospheric stories that I like (and some weird stuff, and some totally plotless fluff, so it’s not all gems).
If you want an excellent example of CRAFT go with Kou Yoneda’s “No Touching At All” (seriously, best yaoi to be published in the U.S. since “Future Lovers.”). Michelle did an excellent review of the work on week in the BL Bookrack feature that she and Melinda do).
Also, I would go with “No Touching At All” because it has 1) adults, 2) dating, 3) real gay people. And it’s awesome.
I’ve got to say, what with all the glowing reviews I was expecting great things from No Touching at All, but came away disappointed; it was… kind of bland. If we’re going to break away from the listed choices I’d plump for Yugi Yamada’s No One Loves Me instead.
I’m really fond of that as well (for the record, the translation on “No Touching” kind of lacked…bite. I don’t know, something was definitely lost.)
Amusingly both involve a straight man who falls for a gay man (a plot that BL authors like mining).
Re: No Touching At All, I felt the same way, JRB. I mean, I liked it fine, but it didn’t charm me to bits the way I expected.
Doushitemo Furatakenai (in Japanese) is wonderful, and the author, Yoneda Kou is in my top five, but I’ve heard from multiple people now basically what Melinda and Danielle say about No Touching At All (the translation)- it’s kind of boring and not too impressive. Also, although Doushitemo Furatakena does it better than usual, I’m really not thrilled with the whole “gay guy falls in love with straight guy” storyline in the first place, so if you take away the great writing, there’s probably not much left that I think would be appealing.
Of the ones above, I’ve only read Tonight’s Take Out Night, and I don’t remember a thing about it, so it probably didn’t impress me too much. I’d probably pick I Give to You, or maybe Tangled Circumstances, mostly based on the cover art, which is admittedly not always a great criteria.
But if you’re open to things not on the list, and you want adults with jobs (my primary criteria for BL), not too many stupid BL stereotypes, and no rape, I suggest Open the Door to Your Heart by Yamada Yugi or The Prime Minister’s Secret Diplomacy by Youka Nitta.
I’m totally open to suggestions not on this list, though I’ll almost certainly pick one of them just because I said I would. I definitely need to stock up on some Yamada manga. I’ve heard great things about her work.
I love the mang “No Touching at all” too! Akadot sells all kinds of YAOI manga!
http://www.akadot.com/no-touching-at-all-yaoi-gn-p-31929.html
I think I would actually read all of those. Maybe I’m no longer picky enough with BL. Still, I Give to You probably looks best to me.
The lightest of them all sounds and looks like “Tonight’s Take-Out Night”. I’ve never seen a fast-food Yaoi before
Two of the other covers look quite angsty but could prove differently inside. Based on cover and synopsis alone, I vote for “Tonight’s Take-Out Night” due to the other synopsis’ not doing a thing for me
But really, this looks like a great batch no matter what you choose. I love the stylized character designs here amongst all of these titles with the big, bushy, bob haircuts. Oh so cute and more Western-looking than ever.
They all sound pretty good! Kiyo Ueda’s name sounded familiar — she did The Color of Love, which I rather liked. The other names aren’t familiar to me, though I can tell by the cover art alone that they will be soon. I can’t wait!
On a side note: I’ve got to say, I’m really glad that more Hertz titles are being licensed. Every manga magazine has a certain range of art styles, usually not as restrictive as the term “house style” implies but still distinctive enough that you can tell at a glance that a given title was (or was not) originally published in a given magazine. I vastly prefer the Hertz style to the B-Boy style — there’s something more sophisticated about it, somehow. The stories tend to be more mature, too.
I’m glad to hear that about Hertz. To be honest, those covers resonate with me more because they look like they could come from the Opera line of books. They have a similar sort of attention to graphic design and interesting composition rather than what I’d describe as more conventional cover styles.
I have read four of these five titles without having read them at all. I suggest “I Give to You” mainly because it sounds like the one book that has a premise that hasn’t been run over, backed over again, then scrubbed off the gay comic highway using bleach. While, everyone once in a great while you get an author that can put a new spin on the “molestation at work (there’s no glass ceiling on sexual harassment?)” or the “co-workers that went to college together” tale, it’s few and far between. Still common, but usually more endearing, the “we work at a (insert food shop) together” tale sounds the best. So yeah, I’d go with “I Give to You.”
For purely selfish reasons I’d like you to review Entangled Circumstances and I Give To You. I’ve read some Akira Minazuki and Ueda Kiyo and am crashingly indifferent to both so have no interest in buying any more of their work ^^;
Regarding the comments on No Touching At All, it’s sad but I know several people who were intending to buy the English volume but then chose not to on hearing of the bad translation. If you comare the original Japanese text to the translated lines it’s not long before you discover that it’s not merely a lacklustre translation but one riddled with mistakes. No-one Loves Me is also not impervious to dodgy translating but I love Yamada Yugi so much that I can overlook the awkward parts of the text.