Yamila Abraham

Exactly what I like about this kind of (lgbt) fiction: One part self-discovery, seduction and sexuality, one part compelling and engaging sci-fi story. Neither part of it overshadows the other: The story doesn't seem to be put on just to fill the pages and it is not ALL about just shagging around.

It was one of my first reads in this genre and I haven't really found many that have left me as satisfied as this one, in any aspect. :)

This is hard to write a review on. On the one hand, I happily listened to the story and had a nice happy feeling at the end for our MCs. On the other hand, it isn't a situation that I would normally have any interest in. If it had been any longer, I suspect I would have tuned out. I will say though, that the sex scenes are hot!

I enjoyed the first two volumes of this OEL western yaoi enough to keep buying. The story was different and the art pretty good. However, this volume kicks it up a notch, making the series must-read. The story of a monk who must join forces with the winter demon who once raped him takes on new twists and angles in this volume. The encounter with Figaru leads to an astonishing revelation for Fuyu and the "action" is hotter than in the first two volumes. The scene between the two demons was show more particularly singe-worthy! Beyond the hot yaoi content, the story itself became richer. While the first two volumes were more a series of incidents, this one ties the bits into a full plot. Though this wasn't a cliff hanger ending, it was close and now we must wait for the final volume.

I hate waiting.

My only gripe - I hate text bubbles on the cover art. show less

I hate it when I see reviews of yaoi that say, “Don't judge this on the plot or characters! It's just about the smut!” Cause then if you actually read the book, sure enough the plot and characters are bad enough that the smut is the only redeeming factor, but on the other hand, there's only a handful of 3-page sex scenes in the entire 200 page volume. Sorry dears, but if a manga insists on spending that much time on its setup, characters, and plot, I WILL be judging it by those. And it show more will get a crappy, crappy judgment.

So now you know that, I'll say that this, conversely, is just about the smut. Really.

Whether it's the smut for you, though, still depends. Probably the first and foremost deterring factor is the art. With the somewhat-exception of one of them, it's very western style. For a lot of you that's probably a bad thing, for me it isn't necessarily, but not only is this western style, it's a fairly cartoony western style. Lines are thick, and proportions and perspective are variable and off. Now, on the positive side for the art, it's all very explicit, much more than anything that I've seen in Japanese yaoi that I can remember at the moment. Personally for me (since I was expecting this), I wasn't as disgusted as some by the shaky art, but I could barely find anything that happened sexy, what with it reminding me a little of a cheap Saturday morning cartoon. It's not cutesey, though, just a little off and inelegant, so the choice is yours.

As for the writing, the first two stories are a lot like something you'd see in a porno, with maybe a little more dialog. One with an art student and his teacher having sex in the classroom because of a disagreement over a grade, and the other with some BDSM in the locker room. Again, I was having difficulty finding them sexy because of the art, but I was also not finding them anywhere near as irritating as a lot of yaoi just because of the absence crappy attempts at plot and character.

The third story doesn't have any more plot than the first, but it does have a bit of attitude and mystery in the beginning, and a little sort of punch-line in the end that made me smile. It's a reminder that PWP doesn't necessarily mean no finesse or effort in anything but the sex. The art here also looks more practiced and has more of a stylized look to it. It's a semi-deformed sort and kind of weird for a porn scene, but it was at least interesting to see. One wonders what else this author/writer (this is the only story where those are one and the same) has done, and what besides porn, considering they did better at setting up an interesting background/world in the opening and closing pages of a sex scene than a lot of plot-focused mangaka do in entire chapters. I wouldn't bet my life they'd be great considering what little pages there are to go off of, but I am intrigued.

And then, well, there's the tentacle rape story. This is crack. Crack, crack, crack. Crack is hit or miss with me. I was thinking this was going to be miss, since it sounds like someone just took a silly idea (tentacle rape) and rather than really exploring the fun things you can do with the concept, just takes its surface novelty and runs around in circles shouting “Look at how funny tentacle rape is!!!” till we all get dizzy and tired. Of course, this isn't exactly a revelation in the field of tentacle rape stories, but still, Trach the smooth talking tentacle monster is bizarrely charming. I probably couldn't take this for too long, but for a little one-shot, it was actually very fun.

So the first two stories here are basically porno in comic form, the last two also just smut but with a little something else to make them more amusing. Besides the art difference and lack of plot/character stuff, they also have a sort of lack of focus on emotions that you usually see in yaoi, one of the things that make girls read it rather than outright gay porn I would guess, despite how much many of them yell for more smut. If you're thinking about trying this, I guess the main questions to ask are:

1.Do you like pure smut?
2.How much prowess in art are you willing to sacrifice for more explicit/longer sex scenes?
3.Do you have to have an emotional angle of some sort, or is porn still hot without (like non-yaoi porn)?

I'm having a hard time judging how 'good' this is overall, since going into it I expected it to be so incredibly, cripplingly horrible I was sort of caught with my footing off when it turned out not to be completely. There are some...well, if not redeeming factors, perhaps stuff you'll get here that you won't get from normal yaoi, and just for that, and for not irritating me with lame attempts at plot and character when that's not what it's about, I semi-like this, in a weird way. Though I must say I'm still rather bemused at the fact they get separate authors to write these complete PWP stories. (In all but one case, and that case being the one where the writing was probably the best of all of them, from what little there is to go off of. Should we be handing comic fans who say manga must be worse than American comics because author and writer are the same (and therefore must not be as expert at either) copies of Yaoi Hentai?) show less