Boys Next Door Reviews

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.