insaneneko

Kisaragi Hirotaka, how I adore thee. *_* The woman is so casually seductive yet powerful, and the guy...Tattoos are love.

In any case, the January 2007 issue contained a special feature on Inariya Fusanosuke and the manga "Hyakujitsu no bara" (Maiden Rose), which I discovered not too long ago. I was very happy to hear that the story is being continued and that volume 2 is almost finished. I'm not sure if the story ends at volume 2 or will be continued...Damn them for not being clear. In any case, the end of the first manga could've been construed as the end of the story, but I can totally see so much more in this world. XD

Regarding the manga, Inariya-sensei shares that Taki's country is a mix of the culture of mid-Heian, the social system is a mix of the zuryo (de facto provincial governors) system of around the Sengoku period and that from the beginning of the twentieth century. The flowers in full bloom when Klaus and Taki met were apparently wisteria.The rest of her comments on the manga weren't that illuminating.

Inariya-sensei apparently first "awakened" to BL through Holmes and Watson. She also had a very frustrating beginning in doujinshi because yaoi was not considered good, so she had to work around her moe points and what she really wanted to draw.

The issue also included a report on Yaoi-Con by two staffers of "J.Garden"
(seems like it puts on doujinshi events with original BL works as opposed to fandom-based stuff?). Mostly it was cute and fun to read, but it was interesting to see what the Japanese thought of the event. First off, they apparently have almost no English skills. They tried using some kind of machine translation on the website and got "deceive yaoi" for "YAOI CON." *laughs* I suppose it would make more sense to think "con" is the verb and not an abbreviation of another word. They also explained at the very start that "yaoi" was the equivalent to "June" or "BL." They explained the set-up of the con, noting that it was very different from doujinshi events in Japan. One of them commented that "it was like a SF convention." They found it trippy that the cosplayers looked so different because most of them were Caucasian. "Oh, Naruto's eyes are really blue!" The one phrase used often in the article was 「さすがアメリカ」 (as one would expect from America) whenever they saw/experienced something very different (different mostly being things that were bold or audacious).

And completely unrelated to Pafu: Otonage, a 50 page one shot featuring Mejiro and Nakano from Kawaige, was posted on yaoi_daily (parts 1, 2, 3, and 4) made me very happy. I really like those two from Kawaige. I was so not a fan of the other pairing, mainly because the uke just did nothing for me. In any case, the story was interesting because it really highlighted just how much of a slut Nakano is. Nakano had sex with Arisaka, a guy helping them out, while Mejiro was out sick. Arisaka knew of Nakano's past, and kept calling him a slut and being mean to him. Of course, this was all because he actually cared for Nakano (I hesitate to say he liked/loved him). In the meantime, Nakano and Mejiro are the same as always. Nakano breaks things off with Arisaka. Arisaka tells Mejiro that Nakano had been sleeping with him and they almost have an accident (though why Arisaka wasn't wearing safety gear is totally baffling--the idiot). Mejiro later tells Nakano that he couldn't bring himself to beat the shit out of Arisaka because he had done the same thing to Nakano, for the same reasons. Nakano tells him that he forgets everything inconvenient and is okay with things as long as it feels good. It made me really sad because this attitude must have developed to cope with all the crap that happened to him. I love how he tells Mejiro that even though he's worthless, he doesn't want Mejiro to hate him and cries. I love how Mejiro asks Nakano later to promise him to take better care of himself, because he is precious to him. I love the last panel because it's so them, with Mejiro being a dork and Nakano wanting more sex. XD