super lovers by abe miyuki

Thanks to modorenai for pointing out a post with the first chapter at komahoshi. Damn irritating way to read the chapter (each image took forever to load and can't be saved...), but at least I got to see it. It's about a high school first year named Haru visiting his biological mother in the wilds of Alberta, Canada. His mother has taken in a mysterious kid found laying on a road without his memory and speaking Japanese named Ren. Ren runs around with the dogs. Haru, who is by nature very nurturing, takes care of Ren. Slowly Ren comes around, even though he's very afraid of nice people and Haru is the nicest person he's met so far. Haru finds Ren adorable and promises to have him come to Japan and live with him when he moves out of his house after graduating high school. At the end of the summer Haru returns to Japan and is met by his father and stepmother. The chapter ends with them in a car accident.

The story and the characters felt kinda disjointed. I couldn't get a good feeling for the characters, but then Abe Miyuki tends to be wishy washy in the beginning of her series, IMO. Is this going to be BL? Because Haru is about 15 and Ren is 8 when they first meet. I certainly hope the first chapter is a "how they meet" thing and the story will jump forward to when Ren is no longer a little kid if they are meant to be romantically involved. Otherwise I will be squicked. :P I really wonder what will happen in chapter 2 since the ending of chapter 1 was very ominous. I'm assuming the parents are dead, so what happens to Haru and his two younger brothers? Also, I'd think Ren will hold Haru to his promise and will come to Japan in two years...Or maybe not. I really don't get what kind of story this will be. Happy family manga? Angsty painful manga? Mix of both? *scratches head*

One really irritating detail: At one point Haru has a fever. The thermometer reads in Fahrenheit, but Canada uses Celcius ,right?

Kyo-ren by Miduki Mato and illustrated by Sasaki Kumiko

Kyo-ren by Miduki Mato and illustrated by Sasaki Kumiko is not quite my cup of tea, but was still an interesting read. It's about a sex-crazy hot-blooded yakuza wakagashira Daigo and the grandson of the kumicho Souichirou who loves him. Daigo had gone to jail when Souichirou was ten during a clan war. Souichirou's grandfather had been hospitalized all this time, so Souichirou had kind of held the clan together in the meantime. Six years later, Souichirou finds Daigo having gotten out of jail. Instead of coming back to report that he's out, he'd gone to a soap and had been having sex for days. He'd been missing out on women for six years, after all. He had a lot of catching up to do. Souichirou pulls Daigo out so that he can have Daigo clean up and greet his grandfather properly. Unfortunately his plan doesn't quite work out when Daigo gets Souichirou to have sex with him. Six years ago Daigo had beaten up a whole bunch of enemies, grabbed ten year old Souichirou and kissed him hard, and promised to take his virginity before being hauled to jail.

Daigo is a cad and a bastard and objectively a very bad man. He'll have sex with anything, resorting to rape if necessary. He's also very charismatic and the (nearly) perfect yakuza, destined to be the next clan head (since Souichirou totally does NOT want the job). Typically you'd think a sixteen year old would be a pushover, no matter how strong willed. Souichirou, however, is beyond strong willed. He'd make a very good yakuza leader if he'd wanted to. He's smart, pragmatic, and is very capable of making decisions and leading people. He's just inexperienced, and he's also in love with Daigo and thus weak against him. Daigo, for his part, is weak for Souichirou--though that doesn't always stop him from being a bastard.

The most interesting aspect of the book was the conflict with another clan. That clan leader wanted to make Souichirou his boytoy, and eventually kidnaps him. Typically the big manly seme comes and saves the helpless uke from being ravaged, but not in this story. Oh no, Souichirou gets raped. He's also shot. Daigo does barge in and is enraged to see Souichirou being brutalized. The other clan members are all freaked out by Daigo (he's scary in general, and his reputation precedes him) and can't handle him. They all run away. Rapist clan leader and Daigo end up in a fist fight. Souichirou really wants to just faint, but he knows he has to stay awake to put a stop to Daigo. Which he does. Daigo gets the better of rapist clan leader and shoots him in all of his limbs. He wants to kill the dude, but Souichirou does NOT want Daigo to go to jail. He asks if Daigo wants to kill the dude and go back to jail, or NOT kill the dude and have fun and merry sex with Souichirou every night? Daigo has to answer the latter, and so does not kill the dude.

Normally when a person gets raped and shot at, they'd be traumatized, right? In BL that's usually resolved by the magical healing cock of the seme. In this one Souichirou is healed by being able to cry in the arms of the man he loves. They do end up having sex, but that's not what soothes Souichirou. Plus, Souichirou is able to put aside his trauma for the most part because he's just a strong kid. It's been abundantly shown throughout the book, so it's not hard to swallow when he deals pretty well with the trauma. I appreciated that it more or less made sense with these characters in this book, unlike in so many other BL books where trauma is brushed aside like so much nothing.

I can't get into such a bastard seme, even though at least in this book the uke is his equal, so I don't quite like the book. But I'd say it's decent. :P