Boys Next Door Reviews

Rating: ♦♦♦♦

As much as I usually don’t care for works from Yaoi Press, I do find myself being drawn to Kôsen’s work. The art is deep and lush with incredibly pretty boys and the plotlines are fairly engrossing. All of which contribute to making me happy that I spent the money for the book instead of bitching about wasting my money. This book is no exception. I love the title story, and for once with a Yaoi Press release, I did not hate the other stories that were included in the book.

When we last left our heroes they were in fairly dire straits. Kôsen managed to take a fairly trite fantasy story and turn it into something sweet and refreshing with sly doses of humor to cut through the sweetness. I just wish we could find out what happened to the horn-ball of a prince.

The companion story in Saihoshi, Volume Two revolves around a little fox-boy who’s been bred for pleasure and the mercenary who’s taken it upon himself to free him from captivity and take him under his wing. While the art isn’t fully my cup of tea, it’s a nice story and fairly compelling.

But I guess after art like Kôsen’s, just about everything falls short. I truly wish that Kôsen would get more books on their own. Their talents are wasted in having to share books with others.

At least this time Yaoi Press didn’t fill the middle of the book with advertisements for up and coming releases. They stuck all of the advertising in the back of the book. I’ve got no problem reading about up-and-coming books when they’re placed at the end of the book I’m reading. Hell, I’m planning on buying two of the releases they mentioned, but their old style of placing adds in the middle of the books just completely turned me off. If I want ads in the middle of my reading, I’ll pick up a magazine or a newspaper thank you very much.

Here’s hoping we get some more OEL manga that’s as high quality as the stuff that Kôsen’s been releasing. I hate to turn into a drooling fangirl, but their work just brings that out of me in spades.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 12:36 am and is filed under ♦♦♦♦, Kosen, Saihoshi the Guardian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.