35 days of BL manga! – Day 25: A non-BL series that you wish was BL

What can I say? It had to be Banana Fish. There are a lot of implications in this story and some might say this is shounen-ai…but seriously, it is not. I wish it were, with all my heart. Most of the times I don’t feel like pairing random characters around if I’m not reading/watching BL. Sometimes it happens because…well, there are a lot of hints around (yes Saraiya Goyou, I’m talking about you).

I never wished more for a manga to become BL as I did with this one. There is a certain detail here that doesn’t let us imagine it could happen at all unless the story changed. Oh well, at least I can keep my IchixMasa fantasies alive…

Summary:

Nature made Ash Lynx beautiful; nurture made him a cold ruthless killer. A runaway brought up as the adopted heir and sex toy of “Papa” Dino Golzine, Ash, now at the rebellious age of seventeen, forsakes the kingdom held out by the devil who raised him. But the hideous secret that drove Ash’s older brother mad in Vietnam has suddenly fallen into Papa’s insatiably ambitious hands–and it’s exactly the wrong time for Eiji Okamura, a pure-hearted young photographer from Japan, to make Ash Lynx’s acquaintance… (Viz)

Review: Love Full of Scars

Love Full of Scars
傷だらけの愛羅武勇
Psyche Delico.
2008 – Tokyo Mangasha. 2009 – Netcomics
Genre: Comedy, Drama, School Life, Yaoi
Buy: USA , Rent it
Rating: 18+

Love Full of Scars by Delico Psyche follows some of the rougher, odder, and even taboo relationships known to the yaoi genre.
The stories in Love Full of Scars tell of both the physical and emotional marks that tough love can leave on a person.

Review: Dash!

Dash! – ダッシュ!
Natsume Isaku. 2006. Ookura Shuppan. Juné.
GENRE (S): Comedy, Drama, School Life, Yaoi
JPN: Volume 1 (C) | USA: Volume 1 (C) , Kindle (C), Rent it (C)
RATING: 16+
SYNOPSIS:

Akimoto entered the judo club because he was a huge fan of Saitoh. But all that was waiting for him was a daily life being an errand boy. Things liven up when Akimoto finds out that Saitoh has a deep, deep secret?! Don’t miss this charming volume of pure love between a cute boy and an ideal man, and of a devilish cousin’s anguish at the mercy of a beauty.

Review: Arashi no Ato & Double Line

Arashi no Ato -After the Storm- by Hidaka Shouko is a sequel of sorts to Signal, by the same author. However, this time the story is about the really interesting and seemingly obnoxious character we caught only a glimpse of before; the president of an interior design company, and friend of the previous main characters, Sakaki Masahiko.

We would always like to think that we have control over ourselves, especially when it comes to our feelings. Of course, most of the times things don’t turn out exactly the way we want them to in that area. There are also those occasions when a conviction takes form on its own, completely ignoring the conscious mind, and you can find yourself wondering if there isn’t someone else sharing your inner boat. It can be a surprising, refreshing, or even dazzling feeling, to find oneself attracted to someone you are not supposed to; it can be a really bothersome issue too…which is exactly our the case for Sakaki.

Review: Dog Style

Teru Chiaki and Miki Terayama are high school students who belong to different years but, somehow, happen to constantly stumble upon each other in some pretty unusual situations. It’s not like they are fighting together; since the odds are against them, it’s more like they are running from danger together. Chiaki and Miki aren’t friends, so they are quite amused finding out that their very best friends are actually brothers. That aside, those very best friends are exactly the reason why these two feel so lonely as to not care if they have to share their hideout anymore.

Unexpectedly, Chiaki, the delinquent, and Miki, his promiscuous sempai, become buddies in the midst of danger and loneliness. They feel at ease with the other and their time together is the perfect scape from their difficult  situations. Soon, in what seems the most logical next step, their games take fooling around to the next step; Miki and Chiaki have become sex buddies.
This story is funny, a bit violent, sexy and sometimes a bit sad. Add to that the fact that this is an equally standing couple, with a manly uke and probably the shortest seme around; now we have the perfect recipe for an unique yaoi. Not only that, there is a fair amount of humor and some fights that throw a shounen feeling to the mix. This is indeed the perfect example of a good school delinquent’s yaoi; sometimes you are having so much fun that you might forget that there was a pretty steamy sex scene around the corner.

Review: Memory of the Future and Kaze no Yukue [Future Lovers]

Two men, that have nothing to do with each other, end up having a one-night stand in a very unlikely situation. Kento is your average straight guy, his dream is to have a perfect wife and loving children, but he wants that future so much that he always overlooks an important detail, love. Thus, his straightforward personality leads him to be dumped by his fiancee when he proposed to her. Heartbroken Kento wants to get drunk and doesn’t really care about the company, a man who seems to be just a harmless onlooker and was affected by the ex outburst. Well, it turns out that the charming stranger is no less than a very loose homosexual, and, what’s more, he’s looking for fun. As expected, alcohol, plus broken, heart plus debauchery incarnated in a man, are too much for our ordinary guy to bear, so of course, he just drowns in the sensation, deciding to forget later. What looked like an awful mistake, that should be buried in the depths of his mind, became a really troublesome situation when Akira, the seductive stranger, appears as the new teacher in the school where Kento works.

Review: Finder No Hyouteki [Finder Series]

Finder No Hyouteki is about the freelancer photojournalist Takaba Akihito, a high-spirited young man that is always fighting to achieve his dreams, to find the shots that would prompt him to be a professional in the future. Akihito always tries his best with a positive mind, which is a really good quality, until it gets him too involved where he shouldn’t have been. His carelessness, while trying to catch politicians doing dirty businesses, almost got him murdered by one of the big shots of the underworld, Asami Ryuichi. However, in a display of even more of that careless behaviour he managed to scape from this dangerous man and the easy punishment.

Asami is not a man to joke with and when he finds a suitable prey to tame there are no means to escape from him; Akihito will get an even more humiliating punishment from the yakuza leader and thanks to his stubbornness he will never be able to get away from Asami’s grasp. If you don’t like BDSM things and violence or are strongly against rape, even if it is kind of “justified” in the plot, you should avoid this story. If that’s not the case welcome and enjoy the thrill!

Review: Doushitemo furetakunai [No Touching at All]

Doushitemo Furetakunai –No Touching at All– tells the story about Shima and Togawa, your average company workers. Shima is the new guy, he has a shy and blunt personality; he doesn’t talk unless it’s necessary and when he does he is very incisive. Togawa finds these traits really interesting and, after a really bad first impression, he can’t help but want to tease Shima every time he sees his inexpressive face. This situation could turn out to be a normal boss/employee relationship, or even a good friendship, but, what happens when Togawa accidentally discovers the other side of Shima and becomes even more curious about him?

Yoneda Kou is another mangaka that, working with a common plot, can achieve an amazing result that stands out from your usual BL. The greatness of this manga is on the details and the way the story is presented; normal, realistic and focusing in the characters’ feelings. We are allowed to see some pretty painful struggles, bad decisions based on a confused judgment and love as it is most of the times; really complicated and scary.

This story is deep and with a perfect amount of drama that doesn’t go to the point of becoming unnatural. It centers on a major fact of life: in a good or bad way, the sad parts of a person’s past affect their personalities and choices forever. Togawa and Shima represent different ways of dealing with those painful memories; they are polar opposites that wouldn’t have been more than friends if it wasn’t exactly for their difficult pasts.

Review: Sangen Tonari no Tooi Hito

I stumbled upon this manga, like many times before, with rather low expectations. To my surprise this turned out to be the first of a series of great findings, really different to my previous reads, by the pen of Suzuki Tsuta.

The Guy Three Doors Down is the main story that revolves around a stoic and disconcertingly frank man, Mitsuya Kishimoto. Aside from the fact that Mitsuya is an adult, and has learned to smile more, things haven’t changed that much for him in the last ten years; every relationship has been a failure that has only granted him the coldhearted tag, and he doesn’t seem to care about anyone or anything in particular. Well, what nobody really knows is that Mitsuya is stuck, feelings-wise, on his teen days; the time when a stupid action drove away the only person that he has really loved, Noboru. After spending all this time regretting it, and selecting girls that look a lot like Noboru, Mitsuya has reached a point where he thinks that he is never going to be able to get over that old mistake. As to be expected from this objective and blunt person, he comes up with the logical conclusion, better give up and live with it, lacking love forever. Nevertheless, just when Mitsuya comes to this realization, he is faced again with the source of all his love problems, Noboru.

Review: Haru wo Daiteita [Embracing Love]

This time is Haru wo Daiteita’s turn, thanks a lot to bouenkyou that helped a lot with the review and made the beautiful art for this Special Read.

Even though I wasn’t a Youka Nitta fan; I picked up this title out of boredom, after putting it off for a long time, and I was blown away. Haru wo daite Ita begins with two actors, Iwaki and Katou, that are trying to make it to the big screen. Iwaki is quiet and humble, a strong man who is deeply ashamed of his past as an adult film actor. Katou, on the other side, is an arrogant and proud young actor who thinks of Iwaki as a rival in the adult film industry.

It’s only natural that, when they try for the same part, their competitive personalities clash against each other, turning the audition into a decisive war. To their greatest surprise, the director has different plans for their future and they end up working together on a project really different from usual. How much are they willing to bet for the sake of their dreams? Will their careers finally explode to stardom like they both expect?