July's manga / #Yaoi(113)

I didn't expect much from this BL webtoon, but it's actually better than most BL I've read. The art is very nice, especially the character designs and the backgrounds. I am not fond of the color palette that was used though. A man living in the mountains meets an animal that transformed into a man, and plans to get him to fall for him through his stomach, feeding him delicious food everyday. But the only thing he doesn't know is that the animal man was the deer he hated so much for eating his crops, and he had thought that it was a tiger because of the fangs. It's impossible for a deer to have fangs though, so I'm scratching my head on that as well.

I think this is one of Watase-sensei's best works. It captures all the complexity of a twisted family dynamic with a tragic star-crossed love that isn't meant to be. There's a lot of dark and disturbing things that happen here, so it might not be right for everyone. The art is beautiful, as expected from Watase-sensei.

This manga is utter junk. Does it even need such a ridiculously long, and even misleading, title? The male lead is definitely not straight. Just because he was married to a female doesn't make him straight. Labeling as straight in the title alone is ridiculous, because he almost immediately falls for his former school friend in the span of a couple chapters or days. That would classify him as bisexual. So screw the latter part of the title. Now, the first part. The male love interest is neither handsome and nor is he a gangster. He must be the most peaceful gangster I know. He doesn't do anything related to his yakuza activities at all, and even the dumb male lead had no clue what he did most of the time when he left the "office". Just cause you label him as a gangster, it does not make him one. They don't even beat people up or do anything remotely shady enough to be considered part of "the wrong crowd" . Sigh. The smut is crap. There is no plot. They have sex a lot. Boring sex. The rival that randomly appeared later is the gangster's cousin, and it's obvious that isn't going to go anywhere, because he's a BAD person who does drugs. Seriously, my blood pressure just kept going up when I was reading this horrendous shit. The art is also awful. It has zero saving grace.

Seems like the run-of-the-mill mediocre BL webtoon with some omegaverse sprinkled in. I have no idea who the characters are, because it jumps in too quickly without properly introducing the characters. One is a dominant omega, whatever that means. His love interest is an alpha and a CEO, seriously? Unbelievable. I thought they were college students or something. I don't know who the shady blond man is supposed to be, and why the evil woman is trying tear the couple apart. Maybe it's also because the translation is a little off. Art is below average, lacking any details and no one is good-looking. Update: Thank god this was short, because it sucked completely. The blond guy tried to rape the omega guy, but magically everything works out, and the blond guy isn't arrested for the attempted rape. It even ends with him smiling gently at the reader, like we're supposed to forgive him? Wow, disgusting.

The prologue seems to be hinting at a comedic relationship between the convenience store clerk and his gangster boss customer. Giving it 2 stars for now, since it doesn't quite pull me in, but there's nothing to find faults with yet. The art is alright, clean and easy to read. Update: New chapters are progressing too fast, and it skips straight to smut instead of developing proper romance. The first smut scene is blah, just the gangster guy has a big thing, since that's all it focuses on in the previous chapters, with him buying XXL condoms. Sigh. Lameeeeeeee.

Mediocre BL, with zero character introduction, just jumping straight to sex in probably the next chapter. It's pretty obvious where this is going. The male lead is going to be the sex slave of the king of the country that conquered his. It's an overused and common plotline, and although it could potentially be interesting, just from the execution in the first chapter alone, I can tell it's not going to be a detailed nor an engaging story. There's no set up, and I don't care why the male lead is being captured, etc. since there's zero emotional weight given. Also, what is it with webtoons and coming up with the longest ass names for their characters? There's no way they expect readers to memorize such ridiculous crap, when most of the time, all their characters look similar and we can't even tell who is who. The art is shockingly below average, using extremely simple colors and line work. But maybe the author will prove me wrong. So far, not impressed. Update: What the heck? He escaped the abusive king and ends up sleeping with the same guy but is completely different looking? That makes no sense whatsoever. What is the author tripping on? Update 2: Okay, so this was dropped by the artist. I don't blame them. The story made no sense whatsoever, and the pacing was out of whack. Just skip this trash.

Wow, this manga is even worse than the anime. At least the anime had some set up with how the older guy was inappropriately falling in love with someone underaged, but this manga just went nope and jumped straight to sex. It's not even well-drawn. The panels are sloppy and the art is simplistic. There's absolutely no plot of course.

I liked the analogy of England trying to fool America by telling him that growing up and becoming independent was a severe illness, a bad thing. So that America would have to rely on England forever to shave his pubic hairs and remain under his control. But then France told America that it was not a disease, and he should fight for his own way. And thus, led to the Revolutionary War for America's independence. But that analogy stops there because America and England both go batshit crazy here and all the buildup from earlier just collapses. It seems that America never really let go of England, and wants him to do whatever he wants in exchange for signing a contract to let him go. But that message went way over my head, since it focuses too much on the smut and too little on the meaning that belied their previous relationship. There was a poem at the end, which suggests a sort of significance, but it was broken uo between too many sex panels to have any real impact. That's too bad, since it seems all the prior effort of establishing the character's past history was wasted.

I don't know these characters because I've never read or watched Tiger & Bunny, but it was not too difficult to follow the story and figure out who was who, aside from the first chapter. I didn't care for the art, it varied greatly in quality between scenes and chapters. Like Chapter 3 is the best drawn, and Chapter 1 is the worst, with lack of screentones and backgrounds. The smut scenes were alright, but the story was completely dull. There's a semi-love triangle going on between Tiger, Bunny, and Keith, as well as Tiger, Bunny, and the dead wife. It's all very contrived and people need to freaking communicate, and then it wouldn't need to be 4 chapters long.

Art was below par. Smut scenes were also lackluster. Fails to achieve its intended goal of having a steamy pairing between Kirei and Gilgamesh, with a bonus of tentacles.