July's manga / #BL(125)

Art was definitely below average for this doujinshi, the characters look off. Smut scene was barely existent. I don't like the relationship between Kirei and Gilgamesh. Is he manipulating him to love him? Or does he really love him? Who knows? Tries to be poetic, but just falls flat. Can't really take this seriously for what it wants to be.

Tiny Gilgamesh is cute. Everything else about this doujinshi was bad though. Art was meh, smut was barely there. I wished Gilgamesh stayed tiny...

The smut was passable actually, I'm surprised since the art was pretty below par. The characters barely look like what they're supposed to look like, although there's a faint resemblance. I didn't care for Kirei's point of view, because it was draggy and didn't add to the story as a whole.

Typical blackmail and Stockholm syndrome after being raped, but throw some exhibitionism in there too, and that's the gist of this manga. The mangaka really loves his shotas, every single one of his works has one or two. The smut was somewhat average, but the art was not that great. I didn't really care for this at all. Nothing new, and it's not that steamy in terms of the smut either.

It's one of the better works by this mangaka, there's actual some plot development instead of his usual "shota gets raped, then gangbanged, then mindbroken" pattern. The art is also one of the better ones in his many works, but the smut is still so-so to decent. The ending is open-ended, although it's happy for once. Usually he likes to end his stories with the main character completely broken and becoming a crazy slut because of too much sex. However, it's not that great overall, I feel like something is just lacking. There's no heart in this, or any creativity with the smut or story in general. I'm just not that impressed.

So shitty. This BL is awful, with no plot and the bad art. I will never understand the appeal of furries, because they're not human and not animal, either. Why not just have one or the other, what is the charm of a animal that can talk and walk like a person? Also, animal ears is another fetish I will never understand. Anyway, the art is so mediocre, and doesn't really help with the furry obsession. Neither of the main characters look beautiful or pretty, so not sure what it's going for. The smut is barely there, it's so heavily censored, it might as well have been left out. Romance is equally non-existent. Avoid.

I guess it's near the end. Overall, it's a rather decent BL story, with some dark elements like rape and murder. I'm only saying this because most BL I've read are terrible, with zero plot and just straight smut in every chapter, so I tend to favor BL that are dark and have elements that aren't right for everyone. The art is really good, it was fine in the beginning, but gets better and better as the artist worked more on this. I thought some of the psychopath talk was heavy-handed, it doesn't seem completely legit and is more fluffy than it is in reality. I read the author's note at 60.5 and it confirms that they don't really have a firm grasp on the medical or psychological side of their story, besides what you learn in popular media. The whole psychopaths have no emotions thing is a myth. Actually, they do feel certain things, they're not robots, but it's very muted, and they feel no empathy for others. I didn't really care for either of the main characters at the end, so that's why I docked stars. The male lead Kirin is used as a prop for the second half of the story, and it just focuses on the psychopath lover, who pretends to hate the male lead so he can turn the tables on another crazy guy. So starting in the last half, the male lead becomes less and less relevant, while the psychopath is revealed as the true main character of the story. This is again confirmed in the author's note, since they stated no one would want to read a story where the main character is a psychopath from the get-go, and they had to ease readers into the perspective of the psychopath after conditioning us to like him from the perspective of Kirin. That's very sly, and I don't appreciate that at all. It becomes even more problematic because the psychopath is protected by plot armor, and not a single character here is even close to wrecking any havoc on his supposedly perfect plans of killing everyone in his path to protect his lover. And then, even more unbelievably, no one is punished for their actions in the end. I don't feel a happy ending is correct in this scenario, but that's what the author wanted. They were extremely adamant about it, too. I think the episode of Criminal Minds with Frank and Jane was far more believable than what was presented here. I will be reading the side stories that will come in the future, but I don't have high hopes for them. Besides, an author who can't even communicate everything they want to through their story alone is doing a poor job as an author, in my opinion. You shouldn't need such a lengthy author's note to explain yourself, and you shouldn't need padding chapters to finish off what you started. But I appreciate the effort to bring some quality into the BL genre, at the very least. Update: Well, thank goodness it's over. The side stories sucked and lowered my overall rating. Honestly, this is just the author shooting themselves in the foot with extra unnecessary junk.

Really shitty yaoi manga. What's even more unforgivable about this collection is that the mangaka is trying to make each story mysterious and hint at some stupid subtle crap, when it's clearly a porn without plot type series. You can't have it both ways. Also, all that wink-wink-nudge-nudge shit was awful, and I didn't get any of it. If you're going to try to be mysterious, your clues can't be so vague. There's a fine line between implicit and just making no sense. Also, the art is horrendous, and only the penises were drawn with any care at all. Figures.

This yaoi manga is slightly better than the others, but not by much. It attempts to give both of the main characters some tragic psychological problem which only the other person can solve, but it's done in such a rushed manner that I don't buy it. If this were a long series with 30ish chapters, I think it could have worked, but with only 5 chapters, all we get is sex is magic because it's so good and rainbows everywhere. So just don't bother to put it in if you're not going to write it properly. Just go with plotless sex then. The boy wants to be molested because he has a build-up of sexual desires, which somehow makes him unable to function properly. The older man can't taste anything until he has sex with the boy because magic powers. That doesn't explain why he was molesting the boy on the train in the first place, because that's illegal and immoral, even if the boy liked it. And wow, the boy is intending to leave his mother, when he full well knows she has emotional trauma and probably mental issues herself, just so he can live with his lover. It's NOT romantic, and it doesn't make things right because you've found a sex partner. Also, the art is crap.

The art is good, the characters look like themselves...but the smut? Bleh. It's too prolonged and repetitive, not to mention the grossly inaccurate anatomy. They bend in weird angles that are humanly impossible, and talk way too much. But otherwise, it's a decently drawn piece of work with lots of improbable smut, if that's up your alley.