Haruka Minami

There's a pretty easy way to sum up this manga. And that would be to answer the question “How much does the cover (sporting the main character wrapped around his friend and with his shirt open and nothing on his lower half but some tight, skimpy briefs) say about it? Because sometimes you don't know, right? It's a little more blatant than most, sure, but this kind of thing is the default for yaoi manga, even plotty ones, so just because your cover screams “This manga is completely gratuitous boy smex!!!!” doesn't necessarily mean that's all it is, right?

...Is what I tell myself so I can keep my hopes up when reading these. But no, really. This manga is completely gratuitous boy smex. Light on plot and character. Which isn't exactly my cup of tea, but I can sometimes enjoy it a little if there aren't things that annoy me. But, well, especially as yaoi goes, I'm easily annoyed.

This is about an uke who is worried because his parents have invited his old childhood friend (who he drifted apart from a bit uncomfortably) to live with him during exam time at school so he will have a shorter commute time and more time to study (he lives an exaggeratedly long distance away). I've got a thing for childhood friends, but frankly, these characters act nothing like them. *slightly annoyed* The seme is the predatory seducer type that seems to desire no meaningful connection and just wants to posses and dominate. *more annoyed* Of course later we find out this is not so (gasp), but it isn't done convincingly at all. *definitely annoyed* I'd say the sudden change in character when this revelation is made is also unbelievable, only he had so little personality before it's hard to really say anyway. The uke is the silly type that takes the seme's advances as 'teasing' or 'acting weird' for a while *even more definitely annoyed* but when it gets through to him mostly all he does is worry about if he still likes his friend or not and not about the fact said friend is treating him like a blow up doll. *intensifiers cannot express*

The sex through the story is alright, but I didn't find it anything too special, though I think some might disagree. Anyway, I couldn't really enjoy any of it since the horrendous psychological unbelievability of it all was constantly punching me in the face. I'd seriously rather be reading/watching porn. At least then I wouldn't have to deal with junk like that. On the other hand, in the last 30 or so pages there is a chapter with nothing but sex. No, really. And it's not even separate sex scenes smashed together. It's a 26 page long sex scene. Again, the sex isn't amazing, but hey, 26 pages. With all the annoyingly short sex scenes in yaoi sometimes, you've got to give a story props for that. And since that's all that's going on, you can kind of block out the stupid character issues. There was also an odd (for yaoi) amount of talking in this scene. Not the usual sappy diatribes on undying love and strange feelings, but a little more like stuff people might actually say during sex. So. ...Interesting?

I was going to rate this as slightly below average (*sigh* Oh, yaoi, why must your standards mean that a book reviewed so negatively only constitutes a “slightly below average?”) but the spectacle in the end gets it another half star, I suppose. But yeah. Really, the cover says it all.… (plus d'informations)