We’re making sure everyone sees us…but with someone always watching, it’s hard to relax. I wish we could take it easy, just the two of us…
Just the two of us? Wa-wait. That’s not quite right. That would be like we’re –
By: Hyouta Fujiyama
Publisher: DMP/Juné
Genre: BL/Yaoi
Age rating: M/mature/18+
Price: $12.95
Kinsei High is a private boys’ school where, rumour has it, 90% of the students are gay or bisexual. Nanase insists loudly that he’s one of the 10% who aren’t, so when younger student Heiji gives him a box of chocolates on White Day and proposes that they pretend to be lovers to put off potential suitors, Nanase jumps at the chance to get some peace. But soon Heiji’s enthusiastic approach to the game they’re playing makes Nanase wonder whether it’s really a game at all…
I just love Hyouta Fujiyama’s work, and this collection of linked stories is a delightful example of it. Main character Nanase is clueless in a very endearing and believeable way; he’s not actually stupid, just self-absorbed, and yet because he’s so considerate when he does lift his head up and notice other people, he’s still sympathetic. In the second “Ordinary Crush” story, he and Heiji are the victims of an elaborate plot designed to break them up, and the combination of obliviousness and self-confidence makes him completely immune to it; he doesn’t even notice what’s going on, and when somebody points it out to him, he just grins and says “What? No way. Heiji’s crazy about me!” It’s refreshing to read a BL story where the lovers are so secure in each other’s affections.
The backup stories are just as good — maybe better, although they’re less conventional. “Doctor Kazuhiro Asano” is linked to “Ordinary Crush” — it follows two characters who appeared in the second “Ordinary Crush” and shows what happens next in their lives from the point of view of the school’s doctor. “Automatic Smile” is a very clever and effective sf story about an android and his owner. And “Friends” is a 4-page short about rape that is so much more honest and real than most BL treatments of rape that it feels like it came from another planet, even if the last line does let it down a bit.
Hyouta Fujiyama’s manga is always worth reading for her gifts with characterisation and plot buildup, and even though she can’t really work her best magic in so few pages, the short stories in this collection are pretty damned impressive.
