Boys Next Door Reviews

Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦

It makes me far too happy to be able to hold a copy of a work by Sadahiro in my hot little hands. She’s one of the artists that I swore up and down that we would never see in this country. Now, I’m pretty sure that we’re still never going to see stuff like Rub in Love or Under Grand Hotel over here, but at this point, I will be very happy to be proved wrong!

As I stated in my review for Pathos 1, part of the beauty of this series is that it’s really not graphic at all. Vampires can’t get it up, so they get their sexual release from drinking blood. What makes this series unbelievably filthy is the subject matter and how Sadahiro handles it.

Come on! It’s vampires! By their very nature, it’s erotic. Throw in a heavy dose of melodrama, teenage angst, jealousy and you get something that’s greater than the sum of its parts. Is it cheesy at times with that heavy dose of melodrama? You bet. Am I complaining? Not a chance in hell.

At the end of the first book, King made a deal with Ace. If he waits four years before coming home again, until he’s eighteen, King will not stand in the way of J and Ace’s affair. So, Ace returns from his exile to awaken his brothers from their sleep and to see if he can be brought over to join them. J and Ace then spend the next few days doing the vampire equivalent of screwing each other blind until their carelessness leads to J being injured.

King then rejects Ace’s bid to become a vampire. Well, Ace isn’t going to stand for that, so he forces King’s hand and kills himself. Surprise, surprise, they end up bringing Ace over to save him. Now the question is, is there room for King in the obsessive relationship that Ace and J have forged or is their love going to destroy all three of them.

I want more quality stuff like this from June. They’ve shown us what they’re capable of and it’s not just school boys.

Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦

I never thought I would see any of Mika Sadahiro’s work released in English. She is the queen of perversion in my eyes. Her stories are always graphic, slightly wrong and twisted. Is it any wonder why she’s one of my favorite manga artists?

I was actually surprised that I remembered this series being a lot more smutty than it really is. I thought I remembered things being really truly graphic. Hell, I even went and got my original Japanese release to check against the June release. Then I realized it’s about vampires. It’s fucking erotic without being graphic just by the nature of the bloodsucking fiends. After that, I remembered some of the scenes, which while not being graphic in the sense that you have oodles of uncensored penis everywhere, were graphic because of the sheer perverseness of the acts. Fun times!

So, we have J and K. K turned J into a vampire and broke him out of Alcatraz prison. Oh! Did I mention that Sadahiro is a bit of an USA fangirl? Much like the weeaboo, but in reverse. If it’s in the American culture, she knows about it and will incorporate it into her stories.

Alright, back to the plot. After years of living together, killing and fucking, K and J adopt a human child and name him Ace. Ace and J have an antagonistic, brotherly relationship until Ace hits his early teens and the hormone fairy comes to pay a visit. Ace wants J and J wants Ace. K is the only thing holding them back…

It’s bloody, violent and slightly creepy at times while being good enough to make me want to dance in joy. I know we’ll never see some of her really warped works, like Rub in Love or Under Grand Hotel, but this is enough to keep me happy for a long time.