WELCOME TO OUR BORING BLOG
Yona of the Dawn, Karubania Monogatari, Good Morning Leon, Too Long, Family!, Ciel, and The BL HordeTM
29 December 2025
I'll keep it short, yes its now biweekly maybe i should make it a monthly affair wait no it is monthly now! To celebrate this lets do the last Weekly Reading Roundup, what did I read this last two weeks? In order; Yona of the Dawn, BRONZE: zetsuai since 1989, Karubania Monogatari, Good Morning Leon, Tsuki to Kin no Shangri-la, Too Long, Machiawase wa Sasoriza no Doko ka de, Jealousy, Tatsuyuki Oyamato the 4th, Kemono/Jingai BL, Family!, The Summer of You, Ciel, and Hide Mansion. Lets talk about the BLs first!
BRONZE: zetsuai since 1989 like it name implies it's the sequel to Zetsuai 1989. One originally read this series to get a comprehensive view of the stereotypical 90s BL manga that has come to be known by everyone but one would be disappointed while reading this not really because of the story or the visual for the former is as effective a highly melodramatic story about an 18 years old pop/rock star and an aspiring football player and the latter is breathtakingly beautiful but the scan, the scan is horrible. It has all the failings of an amateur scan work; taking pictures of your physicals, not de-binding said physicals even if you used a scanner, using the lowest settings possible leading to a faded look all through out the story, horrible horrible typesetting, and on top a clunky translation. This all together makes an extremely burdensome read. We've talked the most we can out of it here and most of the time one aspect of the scans will be good enough for you to get over but volume 4-6 is so bad on all of them that I not dropped it since i still want to experience this influential BL of the 90s but reading them very slowly over the course of 2026 probably. Next is Tsuki to Kin no Shangri-la technically not a BL but who cares. Such gorgeous visuals its a treat. There are great pains taken to draw Tibetan and all of the time taken to do so immerses one greatly in the emotions of the story so well a tragic story about two Tibetan monks in 1945. Another and lets just kill two birds with one stone by talking about them together Jealousy and Tatsuyuki Oyamato the 4th. Jealousy? Good! We'll be honest and we've completely forgot what we've thought about it (damned bad memory) so who know we might re-read it again and talk about it later but the prequel? Sucks do not waste your time on a mediocre BL. And lastlies we've talked about Kemono/Jingai BL here and Hide Mansion & The Summer of You... We have read these story time and time again and this time there are nothing that hooks you in but a boring good.
Well thats long you know we are really bad at remembering what to reading and that is why we took months to read Family! a fun (a bit gay) a slice of life romp in suburban America, its fine well it is quite funny. You know another gay comedy, specifically about a gay slice of life about royal affairs? Karubania Monogatari! its fine well the arc about one of the character is pretty good. Oh and another its slice of life but not gay, Good Morning Leon, its fine. Geez thats a lot of fine SoL and to end this another quick round Yona of the Dawn, Machiawase wa Sasoriza no Doko ka de, and Ciel! We've only read the first volume and halfway through the second for Yona, havent finished the second one either, and god clearly wanted us dead for making us read two comics with shitty scans but really want to finish in regards to Ciel and Thats all. Well Too Long is pretty good read it for 2000s manhwa ball(lol we dont know we forgot our thoughts for this one too) Boring week :)
Kemono/Jingai BL Review
22 December 2025
Another week has passed, nothing in my boring life to update other than I’m bad at doing things and haven’t write up something for last week’s weekly reading roundup post. Sooner or later we’re going to change it to Biweekly Reading Roundup just so we would actually post it weekly but eh when I’m less antsy and you know what makes us feel less antsy?… Furries! The human body is fine but there would always be a disconnect for us whenever people talk about their favorite BL tropes and other related thingsies because it only makes sense to us in non-human form! Call it a love for abstraction when love is already something abstract to you, abstraction squared!
Another love of ours we read when we’re down would be anthologies. BL anthologies? Absolutely love them. Anthology featuring various oneshots made by a singular author? Love it, A great showcase of the range and essence of an artist! Anthology featuring multiple authors centered around a theme? Adore them too, seeing the ways different people interpret a theme is great. And just anthologies in general a great way to get introduced to new authors, I mean getting a taste of the catalogue for several people for the price of reading a single volume? What a deal! And so what do we think of Kemono/Jingai BL? An anthology that combines these two things? Fine stuff.
We’ve read enough of these to know what type of oneshots we could get from it from number of pages and such, like say the first chapter for a separate series. This kind of one shot irritate us because we can just read the full stuff and Boku no Danna-sama is just the first chapter of Boku no Danna-sama. We cant be objective about this be cause we have read Boku no Danna-sama five times now, ok we can its ok.
Ok but for separating oneshots by the page count there are three to us; Longies (45 pages or more), Mediums (20–ish to 45 pages), and shorties (20 pages or less). They are all more or less exercise in how much you can pack into something short and all of the work here are either Mediums or Shorties. To us a weirdly paced Mediums are kind of like a proof of concept for a series so in this anthology that would be Senpai ni Mayu to Ore and it is one. It’s like they crammed in all the tropey BL stuff under a neat world building for that one. Others like Boku no Emono, Boku no Dake no Itoshii Akuma, Hitoribocchi no Tanta, and Alpha Omega are more well paced but I just dont feel for them. Boku no Emono, Boku no Dake no Itoshii Akuma, and Hitoribocchi no Tanta are nothing more than their concept and Alpha Omega are interesting enough in concept; Current birds being the Alpha, the beginning of the new world and their Dinosaur predecessors being the Omega, The end, the thing about evolution but its so short it cant deliver on that premise fully with 21 pages! Its a disappointment but frankly that is a hard thingmto do.
And then what about the Shorties? Toraware no Otoko, Kami no Nie, Neko Neko Honey, The Basement, Ichou no Hanashi, Kami-sama no Shippo, are works we see in that way. Toraware no Otoko is in fact a peek into a larger work, Wakanaku Kiba no Dahlia by Hinako Takanaga! And we can say for certain that it has done its job of not being interesting to us(you can never make one care about a wolf named Travis nor the concepts of a captured prince of a shitty kingdom x guy who he really do thinks as a friend) and probably being interesting to others or we just dont have any time for Hinako Takanaga after reading Croquis. What about Kami no Nie? Well we don’t care for sacrifice x god stories but if the god teases him in owl form and its awesome now he then proceeds to transform into a human form for the real fucking which is quite disappointing. And Neko Neko Honey… You know what pomverse is? Its like that but for cats and I will not be explaining but its like that but cats and if the pomverses(what a weird fake sub-genre) we’ve read are lying to us its the kind of fluff that we don’t enjoy. The Basement and Ichou no Hanashi though? The best you can ask for with this kind of oneshot. Amazing intrigue and dreamlike quality for The Basement that you beg for more and the satisfaction of seeing a lifetime of two trees captured in 17 pages in Ichou no Hanashi. If you take anything from my subpar explanation of how great these are, READ THEM! They are 28 pages in total you can finish them in a second and then be impressed by how much are in so little!
Thanks for reading all of these we are glad to whomever took the time to read them! Did you know we can see the analytics for whom visits our site? We are not sure who are these 10~ people who are interested enough in our site to click it or even the possible one person who read through all of it but thank you, it’s deeply giggling to us everytime.
Gray to Blue no Ai Made, Cure Blood, and The DuoTM
15 December 2026
We never stay to our words do we? Well “feeling like we can’t do this week’s reading log but turns out we can” is a pretty low stakes lie so it's fine, a bit funny to us even! Anyway there is much to say for this week. We were pretty busy but even through that busyness we were still able to read a good lot of stuff! Like Gray to Blue no Ai Made. Despite having read it twice we don’t really know how to talk about this one. It's about a boring teacher, his gay charming 50 years old father in law, and his student. All a failure when it comes to love one way or another. Koutarou doesn’t have the drive to do anything with his wife moving away from him because of his own purported inability to help her in her dreams or anything about their stifling marriage, Koushi despite his own admission that he’ll do anything he want in his old age isn’t brave enough to actually fight or want his love for Sayotani to be more than a temporary one due to his trauma, and his student Sayotani who doesn’t have a care for whom he is with until Koushi saved him from ex-boyfriend and called him a brat. But failures they’re meant to be worked with, to face with, to not regret over and over again. Maybe that’s why the ones who’re the happiest by the end are Sayotani and Koushi. Sayotani by the mid-point knows what he wants, the flaws Koushi and Koutarou point out about him. He wants to be with Koushi and he will not live forever in his youth anymore and be a person for Koushi. And Koushi faced his fear by the end—embarrassed—but he will stay with Sayotani now. That leaves Koutarou, his wife who nearly divorced him and came back after it turns out her and her new love is a sham. He hasn’t moved in regards to his love by the end but it can start now.
Whats another one? A reread of Cure Blood. We're very into its depiction of vampirism from a medical bent alongside the way Tadayuki and Juji's relationship is written makes for us a work that is deeply in love with people. By which we mean the way their relationship is never defined yet you would be strained to not see them as anything but lovers. We value deeply any work that makes us understand romantic love which seems contrary but just putting the most basic definition of love possible—I want to take care of you and be there for you—in a romantic context makes for an engaging romance to us even through they don't exactly have a chemistry that interests us in and of itself. The bit with the vast field as representation of the distance in their age is great too. There is a nice visual too with Tadayuki's tall grass like his long life and doubles too as he hides within that grass like how his physical body not aging cuts him off from his friends and family and Juji's short grass as a normal human life. The romantic and the platonic aren't different much and this is what we imagined that would be as simply as possible.
We have another work we read again, Antique Bakery and Gerard to Jacques. This will happen a lot. We don’t have anything new to say about the latter again but the former! Reading it again made us realize what exactly made us fall in love with it the first time around, chapter 13. Of course we liked the earlier chapters but to us those chapters really only get complete when read through with the doujinshi. Chapter 13 meanwhile to us showed exactly the kind of melancholy felt during a wedding. All the time lost for you to have this beautiful day juxtaposed with your participation in making the wedding possible and a bit of a blase reaction when you express your own desire to have it. It made us understand at least a little about the emotions felt by people when they say they love someone so much they want to marry them, to build a life together. And another thing too it's very effective in regards making the emotional highs even more impactful by making it proceed an intense exchange, be it a fight, wondering thoughts, or humorous screaming match anything that comes after just seems and become a poignant end to the exchange. This is something we noticed usually contained into a single chapter but sometimes it's the cumulative feeling of being overwhelmed. From arc to arc each character talks and talks and talks like people would and when they stop and say something well cliched and stock to us they feel resoundingly human somehow.
We think we also read two be x boy comics anthologies but we are equally sure we didn’t finish it. Oh well! There is always a next time in regards to reading things you forgot. Pretty uneventful week when it comes to reading huh? But somehow we are able to make more words to describe it. That’s pretty good! Our goal when it comes to enhancing our writing is being fulfilled little by little, excitements. That’s all we have for this week, see you next time!
GOGOGOGO-GO-GHOST! and The BL HordeTM
7 December 2025
Haha, I was quite busy and sick lately so I decided to combine these last two weeks together. I believe this would work as I didn't read a whole lot this week... until the BL mania came to me... just two days before we would post this... haaa... Well we do enjoy writing these so I hope you would enjoy reading it too!
First! ongoing works we are caught up with, GOGOGOGO-GO-GHOST! We like the story well enough but it can get quite repetitive when it's not focused on specific stories what with the "THIS GRUDGE SHALL BE AVENGED!" as a tagline repeated again and again but we do like the small stories it tells. The last volume will focus on Masako and her regret with Asahi which would entail more on what we read the story for (transgender) so I'll be waiting late December! Another ongoing work and one we have never been happier to read is Lullaby of The Dawn. A fantastic fantasy BL with a good mystery about the island to hook you in. How the story answers these mysteries and it connects to the overall theme of colonialism, religion, child exploitation and land exploitation is something else! The mystery of the island might be more impactful to us than Alto and Elva's relationship mostly because we aren't fully invested yet in Alto's story but I'm sure that future rereads will change that. Next is in the same vein as Lullaby of The Dawn to us as we expected the work to disappoint us in fulfilling its premise. For the former we expected to for what it says and do with the theme to be partly toothless but we are surprised for it not to be the case and for Tamanokoshi Goyoui Shimashita we expected it to be very cliched and it is! but its very well written. I tried to explain my enjoyment of this series as "a modern take on a 2000s BL although we haven't read much of them but I think it's a good enough explanation. At first I dropped it on the first chapter a while back due to feeling how cliched the story would be but again as we gave it a chance it turned to be pretty good. We suppose the 2 volumes used to build the relationship allowed the characters to breath and interact in a far more natural way helped as opposed to the usual 1 volume. It's a such a simple work but that's more to our assumption of being able to like any cliched story when it's presented well. Lastly is on we have been waiting to read for ages, Omega Megaera! Good first chapter. We're interested how the "Megaera" would come into play. Yes, we did not read beyond the first chapter, Do not forgive us.
Those last four works are something we liked this week what about ones we liked a little less? Hana to Gin as BL coming from one of our favourite artists, Takahashi Hidebu, has the usual unique visual style that we absolutely love. We just can't like it and the last few of her works due to the fact it's centered around cops. I mean still good romance but I hope she has had her buddy cop story fill and pick any other backdrop for her story... no veterans. Next is something we are not sure still reading. Well I know, I want the seme to be cucked and Work Love Balance won't happen. We wrote about what we don't like about the story before and while I would rewrote it to be less aggressive its emblematic to the problem we have with the story. Well unless season 3 prove me wrong.
Second, Finished works we read! In advanced forgive us for this will seem more like a speed round rather than anything substantial because we don't think the story doesn't have much substance unless I dived deeper into the sexuality of each works. Well except for Kagakubu no Megane which gives us the feeling of nostalgia you have for your younger year which isn't something we could really feel for yet, instead...
So the same as before, things we like! Sunroom Nite. You can never really go wrong withTakemiya. Her visual language and story are all very beautiful and very artistically inspiring to us. We especially like the last one about when old people on their twilight years are happy they become flying children encouraging other elders to be happy in their last years. For the record when we read Rumble Rush only read the stories related to Ijima. We are charmed by this guy desire to have a cute boyfriend in spite of the world's rule of when any two men who comes in contact with him met each other they are destined to fall in love. Charmed. Nothing else to it really. Same thing with Ikenai Otoko, Renai Nenrei, and Kishi to Hakobiya all well written erotic works.
Is it a downer that the last paragraph for this week's reading roundup is for things we don't like? Well let us start with something very funny to us Gay's Anatomy: Episode Zero. The title, it is the title that is very funny to us. The story? not as funny. We're not the kind of people that has a kneejerk reaction to this kind of story anymore but we're not the kind of person who would have a preference for this kind of story, which are our biggest hurdle in liking the story. Next Nile wo Sakanobotte which can only be describe as "A very beautiful erotic orientalist work that we can't take seriously due to said orientalism." We would recommend other works by this author for the same kind of eroticism. Lastly Nichijou Sahanbi: Beautiful Life a pretty standard guy down on his luck comforted by a single dad and his daughter when you're in the right mood. Other than that its boringly twee work to a tiring degree. Iyo is cute.
See not that much of a downer you get to see a cute baby! We wish you all good readings next week and the second week of December!
Medalist, Bokura ni wa, and The BL HordeTM
23 November 2025
Week two in trying this out! it has been quite interesting actually trying to put our thoughts into words well not only interesting its also fun! without further ado, what did we read this week?
Firstly Usotsuki Kitsune Tsuki. Likely the bad translation but i didn't get into the story much. There are aspects i like such as kuramochi being called a liar with how it relates to him and his relationship with futaba but i just cant give my best opinions when the tl is specifically this bad. Would be one of those works I would revisit when i can read japanese. But the visuals are pretty good i especially liked the onomatopoeias (definitely would've liked it if the scans left it alone) again bad typesetting definitely makes the experience on the whole worse especially since the parts i liked are the typesetting of the onomatopoeias. But i suppose overall if you can read japanese or some other scan team decided to redo this(not likely) i think its worth your time from a visual standpoint and a serviceable one from a story standpoint.
I also finally did what i should have done 3 years ago... reading medalist! i have already put out our thoughts on it here but i will re read it in the future and ill definitely say more in the future.
Another is Dining Bar Akira and yeesh i'm not sure how to explain my feelings on this so I think ill be explaining it in way like someone is specifically asking whether i think its worth your time or no and no, its not. There is a fairly cute oneshot but the main story is weirdly paced to me be it because of the scan or its just like that originally. I like aspects but I cant fully get into unless i do another reread and thats not happening anytime soon with how many manga i want to read. Low, low priority on the yamashita tomoko scale be it you're a bl fan or a general manga fan.
This one is quite close to my heart, That Time a Gangster Was Reincarnated into a Historical Era. I hate this. Ok from the beginning. Back when i discovered this back in 2023? i absolutely loved it the tension and cliffhanger are great and especially as you get to chapter 20 where he isekaid back to his time but this is where it starts to crack. A major emotional core of this section is ranmaru's relationship with his dad but it doesnt bring the emotions at all and at the time i ignored this because there are 2 other chapters that are GREAT. The emotions about how 11 years has passed in nobunaga's times and the betrayal he felt and i do think what happens 2 or 3 chapters or so are good but eughhh ok so i dont really read the last few chapters i just read the raws and google translated it but it sucks. Ok not sucks but the ending is a heartfelt convo between the two of them having to separate to their own times and accepting nobunaga's death and moving on but..... sighs... in the last chapter ranmaru met the reincarnated nobunaga. The ending is all in all pretty open ended but the idea its even an interpertation is dissapointing to me. I know the idea that the lover you've lost can comeback in a different time is a comforting idea to read in fiction to some but the failed emotional moments with the dad and my absolute hatred for this trope soured this work to me.
This last one is another close to me which is Gerard to Jacques. We have read Gerard to Jacques so many times it feels like ive said everything i have to say about it but i havent really talked about it much in public let alone write down my thoughts so this is my attempt at identifying what i love about it to the point it being one of our most reread manga. I think it can be distilled into the fact that its a great drama comedy. The comedic and dramatic elements work together to amplify each other. The satire of the aristocrats and the french revolution with the serious drama with their backstories and relationship really gels together in a great way. And I would be remiss to not mention how great yoshinaga is at making wordy manga that is still very engaging to read. The wordiness of the manga makes alot for this great comedy but it isnt just wordy. Solemn moments sometimes follow the electrifying banter with little to no words and the characters in a statuesque position that really highlights the emotional moments of the story. These together makes for one of my favorite bits of manga ever. All around it makes one of our favorite bls and it would be our favorite from Yoshinaga if antique bakery isnt such a step up in terms of this drama comedy bl.
And that's all we've read this week! I think im getting better! Here's to a more mangaful tomorrow andforever!
P.S. How did we miss adding Urekko Mangaka X Utsubyou Mangaka and Bokura ni wa Bokura no Kotoba ga Aru?! anyhow both are promising work you must read! The former is a visceral story about a depressed mangaka being taken care of by a super popuplar mangaka who is inspired by him and the latter is about a deaf high schooler doing baseball. Both are gay.
I Got Medalist Pilled
18 November 2025
I love borders. There are great dynamic to be have when you fully understand the potential of the box. The normal is inside the box and the more, the beyond, the unthinkable when breaking it or even outside of it, not constrained by the logic of the world free in the moment of the page. This is how panels works to me and Medalist takes this part of me into places I’ve been too and more.
Medalist conveys the motion of ice skating so well making the characters skate and glide across the page unbothered by the panels around them, they own the world for that moment, star of the show, god of the page. But the don’t just skate when it’s visible. In comics the white space is there to be the assumed actions that happen from panel to panel and the visual here takes full advantage of that. Every jumps, spins, and steps that happens of the panels are crafted in a way that you can recreate the entire move and it helps you easily find where to put your eyes next the audience? the coaches? the skater themselves? The panel work is just fantastic in expressing the thrill of watching a craft beyond your understanding.
But this is only one aspect of the whole work, any story with a such a commanding visual especially in the way it plays with the panels will always tugs my heart. The story is what works together with the visual to create such an impacting work that I finished 13 volumes in 3 days. Sadly I’m not one who have trained their story senses to explain what impacts me but I can try and I think to start is goals.
What goals do you have? Goals scares me I suppose I have them now, tiny ones but thats the opposite for such people with drives. Their drives is what fascinates and awes me in the same way whatever the skills they hone. Inori’s drive to be a gold medalist, to beat Hikaru not to just be equals with her moves me. Hikaru finding hers after steering clear of being Jun Yodaka and being the girl that Inori can truly rival with. Such drives fills my entire body in awe in the varied ways they come to this goal, this drive.
This is where you get to the nitty gritty day to day of honing your skills. The love, the support, the money, the time, the space, the environment, each and more builds towards that you that you want to be and the differences in such is what makes a rivalry between two people who are in the same playing field electrifying. This is the entire story of medalist. The girl who spent her time to become a medalist as fast as possible with full support and love around her even if she’s late to start is different from one who spent it to be someone else who doesn’t even realize the love around her until its away from her who is different from the one who received different love from her people who all too is different from those whose home rink is closed, those who cant afford to, those whom the people around them dont even know what they want. All of them are what makes a competition in this world and it’s what I love about it.
P.S Ahh!!! I didn’t get into my boy Rioh!! No worries my little friend I will reread and watch medalist with more of you in mind! And I hate Jun Yodaka and thinks he’s a popoo head who should take a nickelodeon sliming at least 2 times.
Ikoku Nikki, Kizuna, Double House, and Joy
16 November 2025
This week and beyond I decided to have the goal to write something about the manga I’ve read. Nothing much but enough to capture what stands out to me and we are staring with Ikoku Nikki!
You know that broad aching pain after the pain when you hit a part of your body? well it feels like that. Not sure how else I would describe it. I feel adrift while reading it everyone's experiences feels like bits of my life and what it says about them comforts me in... in a way. Anyhow I found a word in a tag line to one of the cover page to be succinct, "healing" its quite a healing story to read. I feel my thoughts ripped out of me and into the story when I see one of them speak, I feel my feelings validated seeing such bareness. I don't understand most things but it touched me if i can remember it as well as it heals me... I wish and will do so.
I still want to talk more about this so bear with this. I feel deeply like Asa's dad, a nothing person, a person with nothing inside and out, yes of course just do what is said by mom they're right but its not always the case no? There is no way to tell what he is actually is like for he is dead and even if he is’nt Yamashita Tomoko can just never explain it but in that I found myself. I'm Alive! where am I going with this? maybe it comes back to that feeling "my thoughts ripped out", I saw myself in him and not just him I think everyone to an extent. Okay talking about this more will just get more confusing in essence: I see myself in these people, Their story does not have a story, I feel connected yet distant, I will see them again and again.
Next is a pair Double House and Kizuna! Eh?. what in the world is what you would say right? but they're quite similar, they're both the first volume in a series! I mean only one of them both are meant to be so! It counts! Thats my only reasoning for combining them together for now. See me finish Kizuna in like a month + and for Double House there isn't much to say for a 1 volume story canceled to soon. If i were to grade on potentials then yeah I can rate it higher but no. Ah and well I'm the kind of person who while found the use of "frames" as a tool to understand the constraints being out of the picture of good persons to be, could be artistically interesting see nothing beyond that. I'm sorry for this half baked thoughts!
Last and least Joy. I see Joy the same way i see many BL's i've read, it is fine. Yes, I dropped it but that isn't any fault(well in my eyes a bit) of the work itself. To be frank I found the characters be odd, bizarre? Ah not bizarre boring looking thats what i was going for. The story in tandem with the artstyle and general visual language to me makes the plastic cartoonishly simple story very bare and uninteresting. But i don't necessarily see this type of visuals to be always boring. I suppose the accompanying story just doesn’t gel well in my head that all i could think is how plastic all of them are. I do have a lot of Etsuko’s work in my tbr so I might find other stuff from her that I liked more.
Well I say last but I have more to say for my other read this week, Classmates! You can see my rambling later on. And thats all I got this week I decided on a whim that I’m going to update this weekly round up on a Sunday. Let’s hope I’ll continue with this for a while! P.S I dont think i'll make it so uhhh i dont really like it, its a "i am aromantic and what the hell" problem rather than anything because of the story and it did get better as it goes on(thanks friends).
I Really Like One Sequence in Dad's Assasin
16 November 2025
Ok I have to write about this at some point because it still lodges in my brain like nothing has lately and it’s Dad’s Assassin. The reason why I’m writing this is due to the last chapter of volume 3 so spoilers! Also this is going to be structured more as a rant than anything else. I should start somewhere so I guess the synopsis.
“Ryunosuke's a high school student living with his father, Daniel, who's popular with all the ladies. Ryunosuke doesn't know it, but 14 years ago, Daniel was asked to take care of him by a particular woman. Ryunosuke has a few caring friends and he spends his days filled with fun and happiness. But, he also has a secret that he can't reveal to Daniel…!!” He’s in love with him thats the secret nothing more nothing less. This is what I am expecting going into the story the mess of an incestuous love from a child to a parent alongside the political drama of being the son of the former king of an unrecognized kingdom. That was all that I was expecting and the story presented all of this good? well?
I dont think I’ll do a great job recounting the story so you’ll get the context but I’m the guy that writes here and you’re the person who reads it so… Daniel! One overprotective dad who instals trackers and other spy gadgets shit because he’s really REALLY worried about his gay bisexual son and Ryu! Guy who loves his dad sexually, is in a bisexual polycule with his friends, and hangs out and dates with a guy who looks an awful like young Daniel(him going out with this guy is one of the instances where Daniel uses spy gadgets shit because again very very concerned dad)(and I can believe him considering Ryu is 16 but he’s Daniel so weirdo)(oh and this part)
So we get to my favorite meat of the story the sex between Ryu and Daniel and I’m in love with the way it is presented. The scene moves on with the usual fashion you would a “this shouldn’t happen” type of sex interrupted for a one page flashback to when Ryu was young and then it continues of but every little action is cut into a single panel and this goes on for pages and pages and as goes flashbacks are inserted into the scene and you’d know by the hard cuts between panels that has a white background and those with a black background. Past and present gets recontextualized “Is what I’ve done really purely as a parent?” There is a moment where this back and forth stopped for a bit with Daniel comforting Ryu whose worried for how wrong it all is and how its his fault and then the back and forth with past and present continues until
This is my attempt of describing what this sequence does and maybe it’s not good like at all but trust me when I say it is absolutely riveting to see. For a moment the past and present intermingled to create a new truth not I, Daniel an overprotective but good father but a much more complex but in a way realer truth of the really taboo nature of their relationship.
And well there is a subplot about the kingdom stuff about how Ryu has to be returned back to hishome and well I don’t care maybe show will somehow make me care about them with the really dumbpreview at the end of vol 3. So thats it! Kinda nonsense I know but I suppose thats the beauty of your own personal website.
Thoughts on "Its fine if the art is bad if the story is good"
3 November 2025
I just now realized a problem in a statement I used to agree in, "its fine if the art is bad if the story is good" in reference to manga.
As I realized that the visuals of a series matters greatly to me I started to think wonder why I agree with it in the first place. Of course its obivous in itself its saying that its fine if a series doesnt have the standard well done semi realistic style. This is a fine.
I understand that it comes from a place of going out of your way to not have a knee jerk response to art that doesn't comply to what have been socialized to understand as good art(most of the time of the human figure). But that comes in contrast with the simple fact we're dealing with a visual medium. The presentation is important as its the way a story is told in this medium.
If I am to use my a little faulty memory a bit I remember how this would be said a lot to series that has say amateurish artwork. Artworks clearly trying to replicate the standard and how in spite of this bad artwork the story it is telling is a good one.
I would counter this arguement as I think it focuses on an aspect that others become underdiscussed. This focussing on the artsyle to me it comes from being more used to the language of still artworks moreover ones that centers on the human figure. We only really know when we are able to express what we know and so if you're less knowledgable or even just less used in talking about the language of comics we fixate on only aspects we understand, undermining the possibilty of a full reading of the art.
Another would be the simple fact "Does the work even aims for similar aesthethics?". Its useless to evaluate a work that is only here for fun with one that tries to say something more with the same standard. Same so with the art, a manga that is intentionally erratic or unusual in style cant really be evaluated the same way as one that is trying to be cute because they have different end goals.
And so thats my problem with it. Its a statement made to dispute a small minded reading of an art from a medium you're unfamiliar with using the logic of said reading rather than expandning on how the language of a medium differs from one another and how what work in one doesnt work in another. Also an inability to recognize what the work itself trying to be and thus sees the wrong problems and strength in them.