Boys Next Door Reviews

Rating: ♦♦♦♦

I adore Yamada Yugi. Her characters are batshit crazy in the very best way. The plots are completely unbelievable. Yet, instead of them making me cranky, I fall into them and get sucked into their little world of insanity. That’s quite a talent. After reading BL for longer than I want to admit, I’ve just about had it with some of the more outlandish plot-lines and tropes that go along with this genre.

So, Yamada Yugi, you’ve got the rare talent of making me forget that, at times I hate this genre, and remind me of just why it is that I love it.

Itaru had grown up taking care of Tatsuhiko. Tatsuhiko grew up in love with his caretaker. Time goes by, and the two grow apart, leaving Itaru with a bittersweet memory. Years later, when Itaru has joined the wonderful world of salary-men, he is tasked with a mission. It seems that young Tatsuhiko has run away from college, and his family desperately wants to find him.
In the normal world, the police would be called in, which Itaru points out, but as Tatsuhiko’s family hates the police, he’s charged with the task.

Along the way he’s put in contact with a less than honest private-eye, the #1 massage girl at a local parlor, and Tatsuhiko, who’s never outgrown his love for Itaru.

It’s slightly crazy, but works out in the end. Trying to explain the plot here, in just a few paragraphs is giving me fits, because it’s so amazingly convoluted. By all rights, this manga should not work, yet it does.
It’s like she broke all the rules that govern what should make up a good release, and in putting it back together, came up with something utterly wonderful.

I want more releases from her. This one just made me happy.

Rating: ♦♦♦

Because of the plagiarism scandal, I have a love/hate relationship with Youka Nitta. On one hand, I love her stories. I enjoy her character designs, and when she’s writing BL, it can be utterly filthy, and it’s wonderful.
On the other hand, she’s traced some of her best images from fashion photography.

So, while I did enjoy this release, in the back of my mind I’m wondering how much of it was her talent, and how much was taken from outside sources.

Now, this is not a BL release. This kind of sucks, because I could have really used some of her smut styling right about now. Still, I’m going to take it for what it is, a gorgeously drawn murder mystery with pretty boys and an ambiguous relationship.

This really does beg to be slashed, and slashed well.

There’s Kaname, a man who can hear things most other’s can not. His hearing is so sensitive, that he can hear the screams of the dead. His friend, Hide, used to work with Kaname for the police, but now both have left the force and are trying their hands at other careers.

Hide, is trying his hand at being a private detective, which brings him in contact with a lot of murder victims, which brings him into closer contact with Kaname.

Kaname likes to keep Hide around, because unlike most of the population who’s voices sound distorted, Hide’s sounds clear and true to him.

See what I mean about the slashy-bits?

It’s pretty. It’s a fun read, and I’m going to enjoy the rest of the series if it continues in this vein.
I just can’t get the nagging thoughts of this not fully being the work of Youka Nitta out of my head, and that’s spoiling the fun for me.

Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦

Toko Kawai is my favorite mangaka. There are other artists working currently who may be more graphic, but when it comes to telling a story that brings a tear to my eye, and makes me fall in love with the characters, it’s she’s key.

In the Walnut is the name of an art gallery owned, rather reluctantly, by Tanizaki. He specializes in restoring and selling art, no questions asked. His methods may be a bit unethical at times, but under his rough exterior, his heart is pure. This being Toko Kawai and a BL manga, we should expect no less.
His boyfriend, Nakai, is an aspiring filmmaker, who has made filming Tanizaki his life’s work.

The back-story on how these two got together is pretty interesting. Nakai was looking for a subject to film for his senior project. He saw Tanizaki and loved the way he looked through the viewfinder.
Tanizaki really wanted nothing to do with being filmed, but agreed to do it under one condition, that Nakai sleep with him.

Yeah. Told you he was a pretty unethical guy. Nakai isn’t that into it at first, but grows to enjoy their encounters, and finds that he loves filming Tanizaki while they’re intimate.

His senior project, featuring just Tanizaki is a hit, and Tanizaki gets more fame than he ever wanted.

They break up, go through heartbreak (because this wouldn’t be a BL manga without a good dollop of angst) and only get back together after Nakai shows his true feelings by releasing a film that is just composed of Tanizaki’s face during intercourse.

But, that’s all in the past. The bulk of the manga revolves around the art gallery, and the clients that come in to see Tanizaki, and how he manages to make them happy, even through his illegal means.

I don’t know if Toko Kawai is everyone’s cup of tea. She’s more of a quiet artist, instead of being in your face like some of the other artists I really enjoy.
The only other artist that I find comparable is Est Em, who manages to pull together the same magic of heart rendering stories, and happy endings that are laced with enough sadness to make them ring true.

Buy this one. Buy it now. It will restore your love for the genre.

Rating: ♦♦♦♦

It’s graduation time for the boys, and while whether or not Tokumaru will even be able to graduate is still up in the air, their relationship is still solid.

Or, is it? Hasune wants nothing more than a confession of Tokumaru’s feelings, while Tokumaru is just fine with things going on as they always have.
Predictably, this leads to strife - and with the introduction of someone Hasune has had a relationship in the past - confusion and jealousy on Tokumaru’s side.

Both characters have grown over the course of the series, but have they grown enough to be able to express their true feelings to each other, without loosing each other?

I’m going to miss this series. It was far too much fun. It wasn’t anything groundbreaking, but it was well drawn, and managed to combine humor with angst very well.

I wish everything that got released over here was this charming.

Rating: ♦♦♦

This book has been sitting in my To-Be-Read pile since it came out. I kept getting distracted by other releases, and passing this one over in favor of artists I was familiar with.
Now that I’ve broken down and read it, I have mixed feelings. I liked it. It was nicely graphic. The only thing that bothered me a bit was the forcing of our lovely uke-boy into happy butt-sex land.
Now, we all know that in the world of BL, forcing your lover into intimacy = TRUE LOVE - so this is something that I’m used to.

It just makes me pause for a minute, when I’m reading a story like this. In any other genre I would be ready to throw the book against the wall, but in BL, I just accept it as happy-fun-time.
Weird how this genre messes with your brain like that.

So, there’s Yanagi, who picks up a pretty young man at a bar. Yanagi, looking for nothing more than a night of fun, invites the young man back to a hotel room.
There, he discovers that our drunken uke-boy is a virgin, and spends the rest of the night playing with his new toy.

All well and good, right? Well the next morning, our young ex-virgin isn’t too pleased to wake up next to Yanagi.
He cusses Yanagi out, and rushes out of the room.

Now, Yanagi is a bit perturbed at this. He had a great night, and wasn’t expecting a boatload of drama, so he sets out to find his mystery man.

The mystery man, Arata, is the twin brother of a bartender that Yanagi knows, and is horrified at his behavior.

Now that Yanagi knows who he is, he’s going to leverage Arata’s request for secrecy to have him at his beck and call. But, when things start to get intense, both Yanagi and Arata have to question their motives.

I’m not sure if I’m going to pick up the rest of this series, but I have to admit to being curious as to where they’re going with this. Well, aside from the happy ever after and declarations of true love. That’s standard.
I’m curious to see just how much angst there’s going to be while they’re getting there.

Rating: ♦♦♦♦

Ah, another GloBL manga from Tina Anderson! This time she’s teamed up with Amelie Belcher. Now, we should all know by now that Anderson delivers the goods. However, before I got my hands on Loud Snow, I wasn’t familiar with Belcher. After poring through Belcher’s deviantART, I was sold. What a talent!

Anyway, enough of my gushing. Loud Snow is about an ice-age family living on the coast of North America. In this happy family is Anituk, who is not happy. Anituk shows that teenagers are sulky and grumpy no matter the era. He’s cute and harmless, though.

One day, a stranger from the south pulls into camp. This stranger, Abalu, takes a keen interest in Anituk. Anituk, completely taken off guard, rebuffs Abalu’s friendship. Of course, Abalu won’t give up the pursuit our surly teenager.

As the tale continues, Abalu teaches Anituk some important lessons. With these lessons, Anituk lowers his guard and the two become closer. And, as they become closer, Anituk finds himself attracted to Abalu…

There’s more to this story, but I don’t want to spoil it. Also, it doesn’t end exactly how one would expect. Having said that, Loud Snow is entertaining and touching. I dare call it sweet. ‘Sweet’ is not usually an adjective I would employ to describe an Anderson manga, but it fits this time.

Overall, Loud Snow isn’t one of Anderson’s most complex stories nor is it gritty. It’s a delightful story with lovely illustration, though. If you’re a fan of GloBL, I think you’ll find this manga to be worthy of your shelf.

Rating: ♦♦♦

I just like assassins. I don’t really care what shape or form they’re in, I just like them.
So, a story revolving around a runaway from a secret government lab, and the assassin who takes him in, makes me a very happy Cyn.
Oh, and did I mention that this young runaway has ESP? All the things that make me happy in one release.

Keigo is mainly known as a private detective, but moonlights as an assassin for hire. As he’s returning home one night, he finds a smelly, disheveled waif on his doorstep. He takes the boy in, offers him a bath and crash space for the night. Surprisingly, the boy then asks him if he can stay there indefinitely.
Keigo is a bit flummoxed by this, but after the waif points him in the right direction on a case, he agrees. Emiya, our little waif, just has something about him that charms the crap out of him.
It’s a good thing that he’s charming, too, as he’s useless around the house.
It turns out that Emiya is a refugee from a government lab. He has the ability to ascertain information about a person, just by touching an object.

Now, obviously, the secret government project wants their little lab-rat back. The problem is that as the relationship between Keigo and Emiya has blossomed, Emiya has lost his powers. True love has wiped him clean, and restored him to being a regular human.

My main complaints with this one, is that things got wrapped up too neatly. I know that Happy Ever Afters are the norm in this genre, but when you’ve got assassins and secret government agencies, I expect there to be ongoing conflict. One feeble kidnapping attempt just doesn’t ring true for me.

Even with that complaint, it’s cute, and kinda fluffy - even with the assassin. I’m not sure I’m madly in love with this one, but it did make me smile. Most days, that’s really all I want my manga to do.

Rating: ♦♦

I’m kind of ashamed to admit that I didn’t realize that this was book four in a series. I’m sure the first three volumes of Junior Escort are sitting somewhere in the mountain of To-Be-Read books that keeps threatening to take over my bedroom. I thought I had read the first book in the series, but as BL tropes can blend together - I’m not surprised that I really didn’t have a clue.
Oh well, on with the show! We’re visiting Pomeh, the singer for a ‘hip hop’ group and music producer Toya. Mr. Music Producer is brought in to write a new song for the group. Now, instead of writing the song for the lead singer, he writes it for, Koji who we were supposed to have met in Junior Escort, because he’s known true love, and Pomeh hasn’t.

Later we find Pomeh and Toya spending more and more time together. Toya even gives Pomeh a key to his house. Pomeh hopes that this key means that Toya wants something more than friendship, but Toya does little more than pat him on the head like an obedient puppy dog.
See, Toya doesn’t want to ruin Pomeh’s purity. And in the world of BL logic, this makes sense, somewhere. Pomeh being an average teen, just wants to fuck.
This leads to an argument, which leads to fucking. Pomeh for the win!

we also get a glimpse in to the events that changed Koji. His life as a rent boy, and the man that made him change his ways.

This was a fairly enjoyable piece of fluff. I don’t know if I’ll remember much of the plot in a week, and I’m not sure if it’s going to end up on my keeper shelf, but it did keep me amused while I was reading it, and I guess that’s all I can ask for.
I’ll be digging through the To-Be-Read pile to find the rest of Junior Escort, but if it’s along these lines, I’m pretty sure it won’t be staying on my keeper shelf, either.

Rating: ♦♦♦♦

I shouldn’t have been as charmed by this release as I was - yet re-interpretation of fairytales has always been one of my downfalls.

This release opens up with a mish-mash of the Little Mermaid fairytale. Haru has always used a giant clam as his sounding board. Every time something’s gone wrong in his little world, he would go and cry to the giant clam and tell it all of his secrets.
The giant clam was listening. After one night of tearful confessions from Haru, the giant clam prayed to be given a form that he could comfort Haru with.
It’s wish was granted, and he became a mermaid. The only thing was that he wasn’t given a voice, so, he has no way of comforting Haru, or even letting him know that he is the giant clam that Haru is now going crazy looking for.

You can see where this is going. It’s cheesy. I’ve seen it before, but damn if it doesn’t pull the right strings and leave me with that warm, fuzzy, just petted a basket of puppies feeling.

This release is really a great example of the whole being worth more than the sum of it’s parts. Taken individually, the stories, and the art wouldn’t be enough to make this stand out - but on a whole, this series sticks with you, and is going firmly on the keeper shelf, to be read when I want to just smile, and let happy fluff spill all over me.

Rating: ♦♦♦♦

You know, it’s kind of nice to get back to vampires that are demonic and bloody. Most of the vamps that we get in manga form are too lilly-white to be able to cause some real carnage.

Not so for the vamps in this release. Lots of gore, complete with hearts being ripped out of chests. While I’m not a huge horror fan, vamps should be a bit forbidden and scary. They can’t be sexy and mysterious all the time. Hell, they’re supposed to be killers, not saints.

When we last left these guys, Sein was recovering from an attack by his older brother, Verloren. His devoted human Lou wants nothing more than to be first in Sein’s eyes, and to keep him strong.

Verloren has different ideas for his brother, and is going to do everything he can to turn Sein into a killer like him.

What really makes me happy is the mix of serious drama, and silly, silly art. One moment things are very detailed and all of a sudden Lou says or does something that’s exasperating/cute, and the characters go super deformed for a panel or so.

While there wasn’t quite enough romance to make this a truly stellar release for me, it was really damn good - and something that’s going directly to the keeper shelf.

Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦

I adore Makoto Tateno. I know going in that there’s going to be a boat load of angst, there’s going to be boys screwing madly and there’s going to be a happy ending.

She doesn’t tend to stray from this format, and I’m not complaining. Reading her is like escaping into a romance novel. It’s sweet fluff, that doesn’t leave you feeling bloated afterwards. By all rights, I should be looking for something with more substance - but, there are times when you just want something that you know is going to have a happy ending.

While in High School, Naoyuki fell in love with his sempai, Shinobu. Naoyuki was convinced that they were going to be together, forever, and was making plans to follow Shinobu to college. They had agreed to meet after Shinobu’s graduation, so Naoyuki could give him a gift.
Shinobu never showed.

Years later, Naoyuki has moved on. He’s got a girlfriend, but he’s never really forgotten Shinobu. While going to bars one night, he and his girlfriend run into a bartender that looks familiar. It’s Shinobu.
Problem is that Shinobu has no interest in Naoyuki, and is not too pleased to have this blast from his past.

To make things even more problematic, Shinobu has been acting the whore, and sleeping with any male that shows interest to him.

Now, we all know that in the world of BL, this means that Shinobu is hiding his pain and that he’s still in love with Naoyuki, right?
God, I love BL tropes. They make for such fun angst.

So, now Naoyuki has to fight to get Shinobu to recognize that what they have is real, and get him back.

It’s fun. It’s decidedly romantic, and it’s just what I want to read when I’m having a bad day.
Just like everything else that Tateno has ever released.
I know that it’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but when I’m in the mood for it, it hits a home run.