insaneneko

Holy crap, they are manga-izing Deadlock? I am so getting it, I don't think I've ever seen Takashina Yuh do a full-blown manga!!

I checked out the latest Yoneda Kou manga that's been making the rounds, Saezuru tori ha habatakanai, and was rather underwhelmed. I appreciate how the main character is a fucked-up sexed-up uke yakuza boss and all (as opposed to asshole seme yakuza boss), but I wish she'd just continue the more domestic stuff like Ore ni koishite dousunda. *sighs*

( fic-dump )

Read two fun bonus stories in the Deadlock series. One is set in the first book when leader of the Latinos Net (?) is released from solitary and sees Tonia, his "girl." You know...I didn't know Tonia is actually his younger brother but they are not a real incestuous couple. Did this come out in the original series and I somehow missed it or was it in the offshoot book that I hadn't bothered reading? In any case, I enjoyed hearing their impressions of Dick and Yuuto. Love how Net agrees with Tonia that Yuuto "is like a prince." XD The second story is set after the series and features Yuuto's protective older stepbrother being a macho protective older brother towards the bad, bad man that turned Yuuto gay. Yuuto, you are so protected! And then the obligatory bed scene where Yuuto and Dick throw around more gag-worthy declarations of love before they have mad sex (in many positions!). They are uploaded here.

I also listened to the CD drama of Arashi no ato, the Hidaka Shouko manga I loved so much (and squeed over here). It was fabulous! Morikawa Toshiyuki (seme) and Nakamura Yuuichi (uke) were spot on. They made lovely salarymen being professional and cool. Uploaded here.

I learned some new terminology today...Fascinating doesn't begin to describe it.

I just read and thoroughly enjoyed DP Scanlations' recent release of the first chapter of a manga by Aida Saki and Yamada Yugi called Taka ga koi daro. First off, thank goodness for decent scanlations! I couldn't find Japanese scans so had to settle with the English, but luckily this one was good. In any case, it has one of my favorite set-ups...A single father with young son combo! In this case the young father is a widower. There are other elements in the mix that I'm not too sure about (I fear the tortured web of misunderstandings and angst that could develop), but I am rooting for hard-working dad to find true love and happiness with a good man. XD

I'm not sure I can ever get myself to read Kiseki no object, despite the fact that that Enjin Yamimaru illustrates it. I think I've found a knee-jerk anti-moe: A smexy bald Buddhist monk uke. Just...No.

One More by Fuyuno Jinko and illustrated by Asou Kai is the typical diffident nobody uke falls in love with some handsome shining popular arrogant seme, they fall into a sexual relationship full of uke-angst and seme-assholery which ends when the uke can't take it anymore and runs away. The seme doesn't see it coming because he's so full of himself that he thought the uke would never be able to leave him, no matter what crap he pulled. In this story it's six years after the uke ran away. The seme calls out of the blue and that brings back all the crap that the uke has desperately tried to suppress and get over...The book was really just too cliched for words, except for the end. The seme has a long, detailed confession and (sort of) groveling session where he swallows his pride and his stubbornness and admits all of his insecurities and all of his assholery from all those years ago, then asks the uke if they can try again. It was just fascinating hearing what was going through the seme's head when he did each and every shitty thing to the uke...I don't really recommend reading this book unless you really like this type of story, but the extended seme confession amazed me.

Huh, I think there'll be a lot of fangirls filled with glee when they hear that the novel "S" by Aida Saki and illustrated by Nara Chiharu has been licensed by Juné (complete list of new licenses here--There's a bunch of novels in addition to "S," none of which I've read...Hmm, are any of them any good?). I can't help but shrug in indifference. I read the first novel out of curiosity (saw a good amount of squeeing online) and was...so not impressed. I think the Deadlock series (the one about the former DEA agent who gets jailed and falls in love with his cellmate, the one illustrated by the amazing Takashina You), for all the problems I had with it, is much better.

...Though "better" is truly relative in this case. I've read at least seven books by Aida Saki and just can't quite...get into her novels. Well, except for this one series that I will someday talk about because it just cracked me up (totally unintentionally...I think it was supposed to be a serious story. Maybe the author didn't take it seriously (at least, I hope she didn't write it in all earnestness because that would be so sad), but I think it was meant to be taken seriously by the reader). In any case, it's not that I think her novels bad. I don't. I've read bad, and hers aren't. They just don't captivate me. They even more or less hit my moe points, and yet they don't make me squee. I thought about it for a while one day and I came to the conclusion that her characters just fail to engage me. They tend to be too talky about their feelings (I suppose I should feel bad about stereotyping men as unable to express their feelings, but seriously...lots of guys can't. For all that the uber-aggressive seme stereotype is stupid and over-the-top, I'm more able to believe that men will resort to violence before laying out their hearts when they've been set up as proud macho men...). Especially when the guys in question are supposed to be hard-boiled detectives/yakuza/terrorists/assassins/whatever. The author seems to love meaningful and/or heartrending deaths/deathscenes. And she adores ukes just being pwned by dominating semes, in a virgin maiden sort of way (even though the ukes are never virgins!). She also loves coincidences and contrived storylines (possibly more than usual in BL, though not the worst I've seen by far). Whatever. I could go on and on, but I won't. I suppose it all comes down to the characters. I can forgive a lot of badness in plot if I like and care about them, and I just don't with her characters. *shrugs*

The funny thing is that now that I've typed up this little rant, I kind of feel like rereading the Deadlock series....

On second thought, maybe I just want to look at the pretty pics. Check them out in all their glory thanks to rusalkaz: Volumes 1, 2, and 3. I personally prefer looking at the books.