insaneneko

I had to bitch, plain and simple. XP

I started reading Tatoe kinjirareta koi de attemo by Itou Yuki and illustrated by Monchi Kaori with low expectations...And got worse than crap. God, what an awful book. It's the sequel to a book I had read and wrote about a while back (in this post), in which the uke suffers and despairs a lot at boarding school. That was a bad book, but at least it was mostly enjoyable. Unfortunately, this book was full of the bad kind of "WTF? how stupid can this get?" for me.

So at the end of the first book uke and his tormentor finally manage to clear up the terrible misunderstandings that led to all the angst and pain, and join together in love. Where can the story go after putting the uke through that much crap and giving him a truly happy ending except to take some stupid turn to dump the uke back into the swamp of despair? That's why I had such low expectations...That were too high, as it turns out. Uke and his brother/BF go back to school, where they are joined by another boy the same age as uke who was a neighbor to the uke's family. He'd grown up with the uke's brothers and was like a little brother to them. Turns out he'd been in an awful accident and had been hospitalized throughout the entire last term. I was stratching my head about this new guy because I don't remember him ever being mentioned. Hello, close brother-like guy gets into awful accident and misses a lot of school but is never mentioned? What is up with that? But then, it's possible that uke's brothers had talked about the guy when uke wasn't around--which was most of the time (he was off by himself wallowing in angst). In any case, now almost-brother's back and he's stuck like glue to uke's BF. He's friendly and happy and the center of everyone's attention. Uke starts to get along with his classmates thanks to the guy. Unfortunately, the guy sees uke and BF kissing and assumes uke had seduced BF (because BF is too shiny and wonderful to ever stoop to being gay with his own brother!). When uke refuses to break up with BF, the guy declares that he'll make uke leave the school...The guy's strategy consists of faking injuries and accidents and making every incident look like the uke's fault. Of course, he never accuses the uke but his fanclub does. Uke once again is ostracized and persecuted...But this time he has an ally! His wonderful shiny BF! Too bad uke decides that he won't tell BF and will "take care of it himself." We all know that's not going to go well...And it doesn't. Uke gets more and more persecuted and starts losing weight and being miserable. He clings to a silly hope that the guy will come around and stop being so mean....Which of course doesn't happen till the end of the book. All throughout the book the BF is oh-so-concerned but respects the uke's wish to take care of things himself and is pretty damn useless. In the first book I figured all of the stupidity from the BF came from the BF "thinking" with his dick, but it seems like BF is just stupid and ineffectual in general. The most helpful and sensible person in the book was the almost-brother's roommate, who realizes that the guy is staging all of the accidents and tries his best to shield the uke. He tells the uke to talk to his big brother and get his help. He also tells almost-brother guy that he's being childish and horrid (and points out that the guy must know it deep down) and recommends that he get over whatever his problem is.

So basically the entire book is about two children who stubbornly cling to their positions and refuse to get any meaningful help (uke) or face up to the blindingly obvious truth (almost-brother). It is in no way angsty or tragic...It's just plain ridiculous. And not even remotely entertaining.


...Okay, there was one entertaining scene, in which sensible roommate (an American) and uke share laughs over the cliched "bad British food" they don't really care for. When they comment about the bad food, the British classmate with them feels obligated to defend his country's honor. They twist his defense (which I can't recall right now and don't really want to search for in the text) to make another insulting joke, that if you can stomach British food you can stomach anything. I don't think that British food is bad and thus don't find the joke very funny, but it was a bonding moment for the uke and the roommate and a refreshing moment of light-hearted fun in the midst of utter stupidity.

Downloaded and skimmed Ze volume 3....once again I am struck by how unimpressed I am by this series. It has melodrama, angst, completely cliched set-up, copious amounts of not too graphic sex...and it leaves me cold. I rather liked the kamisama uke's character design and his horribly pathetic expressions, but that was about it. Not going to bother buying this. :P

I also downloaded and read wasted my time with a number of crappy BL novels. I'm going to try for a short summary for each to warn others away (or make them interested, though...I somehow doubt it):

Sono koe de ikasete by Sakurako Kuze

Uke has low self-esteem and bad self-image thanks to be being compared to his exceptional father and older brother. He is paired with a classmate whom he has admired from afar. One day while they are working on something, he finds himself aroused by the classmate's voice. The classmate realizes this and proceeds to have sex with him. He thinks the classmate is doing this out of scorn for his unnatural reaction. He avoids him for a while and jumps at the chance to move abroad with his parents instead of staying and completing school in Japan.

Fast forward 9 years. Uke had become a doctor abroad and was now working at his uncle's clinic. His uncle receives a patient from the voice acting agency. Turns out to be the seme. Uke is shocked and dismayed. Seme is happy and says things like "I wanted to see you" and "I'm not letting you get away again." He persistently pursues uke while the uke is confused about everything. The seme clears up the whole sex out of scorn thing, saying of course he did it because he liked the uke. Otherwise why would he have sex with a guy? (Dunno, in BL land anything is possible) He keeps up his pursuit and the uke keeps being confused and down on himself. The final straw is when he's told by a kouhai in the agency who really is attached to the seme that he's not good enough for him. His minds churns and churns and ends up agreeing with the assessment. At this point I kind of stopped really reading, but I think our intrepid seme had to convince uke of his love and worth and blah blah blah, and they live happily ever after.

Problem with this story? Uke makes you wish he was bullied in school, he's so pathetic. His demons are in a way understandable, but surrounded by people who support and care for him, I wish he'd cave into them a little less easily. (But mostly I wish he was bullied more...you know, to build character and fortitude.)

Tatoe kono ai ga tsumi de attemo by Ito Yuki (illustrations by Monchi Kaori)

Uke was born to a British father and Japanese mother. His mother had split with his father and had him in Japan. He was left in the care of a rural treatment center due to the fact that he had a weak body (nothing in particular was wrong, he was just weak). He had never met his mother, but finds out she had passed away and his father had gotten custody of him. His father, an earl, wanted to send him to a school in England. Happy with the fact that his father may actually want him, he agrees to go. Once in England he finds out a) his mother was a terrible terrible bitch who seduced his married father, had him divorce his first wife, and still slept around when she married him and b) his father and his half/step brothers didn't like him. He goes through the usual boarding school bullying/teasing crap, at first with some slight help by his step brother who is one of the dorm heads. But thanks to his half-brother's evil trap even his step brother turns against him, and he is alone against the world. But worse than that, he concludes that he is a weak, pathetic person that deserves nothing. His already frail body only becomes frailer, he is buffeted by the hatred and indifference of his "family" and the cruelty of fellow students, he realizes he had despaired over his step brother turning away from him because he was in love with him. Step brother, in the meantime, is a nice guy but with an unhealthy interest in uke. At first he felt a bit sorry for uke, but thanks to evil trap he thinks that uke is just a manipulative little slut like his mother. He thinks anyone being nice to the uke must be fucking him (though I wanted to pet him on his head and tell him that he has thoughts like that because he lusts after loves the uke). The uke feels all the more crappy when they go "home" for the holidays and is completely shut out of the family. In any case, the step brother thought the uke was sleeping with the groom (when all the groom was doing was giving solace to poor poor uke by letting him commune with the horses) and this culminates in step brother forcing himself on uke, saying if he needs a man to fuck him he'll do it (go seme logic!). Last straw for uke, he tries to kill himself. But of course seme rescues him and realizes that he lusts after loves him. He also finds out that uke had never lived with his mother. So seme has uke's past researched and the whole family is astounded to find out the uke had been as much of a victim of his mother as anyone and hadn't been raised into mini-slut as they had all thought. So all is well. Uke has a family, a boyfriend, and a promise of a better school life. Yay uke! Good thing you didn't die, right?

This was in a way kind of fun to read because things only snowballed, in that things went from bad to worse to horrible to "he's so going to try to kill himself one of these days" to "yup, there he goes!" It's amazing how much crap can be done to a character in a story, and how retarded half of it. The seme was...totally thinking with his dick half the time, I swear (even though I believe the author was trying to portray him as conflicted but a nice guy....no). And the half-brother who entrapped uke? He wasn't sorry at all when what he did was...criminal. ^^;


I can't believe I spent time typing this up. *snorts*