Naduki Koujima

After his parents died in a car accident 5 years ago, Akira Nonaka was raised by his grandmother. However, she, too, has now died, and it's at her funeral that he learns that his father's family name used to be Takatou and that he isn't the only member of his family left. He agrees to go see them and learns that the Takatou family is rich and influential.

His grandmother on his father's side declares that he and Rei, the cousin he never knew he had, are now the Takatou family heirs. Akira show more wants no part of this and attempts to go home but is stopped by Rei, who for some reason badly wants him to stay. Akira reluctantly agrees and finds himself swamped in tutoring sessions designed to help him not be an embarrassment to the Takatou family. As if that weren't enough, Rei's behavior is bewildering - he's weirdly physically affectionate, and Akira wonders if this is just how foreigners act (Rei is half Japanese). He couldn't possibly be serious, after all.

This was...not good. It had a stupid main character, sexual assault, and incestuous relationships, and the art isn't anywhere near good enough to make up for all of that.

The excuses "he's half foreign" and "he must be joking" did a lot of heavy lifting here. Cousins, particularly ones who just met each other, don't generally snuggle and kiss, and once Rei went from kissing Akira on the cheek to kissing him full on the mouth, those excuses came across more like stupidity than anything.

Am I supposed to be rooting for Akira and Rei? I really don't see how Rei's behavior was any different than Raoul's. Both forced themselves on Akira, albeit in different ways - Rei kissed Akira on the mouth and Raoul gave Akira a hickey and grabbed his crotch. I'm not convinced that Rei wouldn't have gone further if Akira hadn't kicked him in the gut.

Anyway, this was a train wreck. I have no idea why Akira ended up falling for Rei. Also, the two of them are cousins. And I'm pretty sure Rei's interest in Akira is rooted in an unrequited crush on Akira's dad, so it gets even weirder and ickier.

I have three more volumes of this in my collection. Oh boy.

Extras:

"Akira's Observation Diary," a small collection of four-panel comics about supporting characters in the series. Also, there's a short message from the author that basically boils down to "thank you for reading this and I will continue to try my best."

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

Akira and Rei are now a couple, although Akira still seems to think Rei's frequent kisses are more due to his being half-foreign than anything. There's still no indication that the adults around them realize what's going on between them, or maybe they just don't care.

Yuji, Akira's father's younger brother, arrives at the beginning of this volume and immediately takes to Akira, much to Rei's annoyance. Akira understandably wants to spend time with his uncle, and Rei is massively jealous. When show more Yuji has a chance to spend some time alone with Akira, he offers to take Akira home with him, thereby leaving Rei the sole Takatou family heir. Akira refuses - although he firmly believes that Rei will (and should) be chosen to take over the family name, all he wants is to be together with Rei.

Later in the volume, there's more drama as Raoul makes another appearance and Akira starts to doubt Rei's feelings, wondering if he's only around because Akira reminds him of Akira's father.

This series has now become entertaining in its badness. There is (maybe) more incest, and it's starting to look like everyone is gay. Well, Yuji might more accurately be called bisexual (or pansexual? not enough info), since he openly admits that the gender of the person he likes doesn't matter to him.

I prefer to think that Yuji was genuinely just an over-the-top fawning uncle where Akira was concerned, but there were strong indications that he might have had incestuous feelings for Akira's father, since he saw similarities between his feelings for his brother and Rei's feelings for Akira. And Raoul is back and seems to now be in love with Akira, although I'd have to do some diagramming to figure out if that pairing would be incestuous - if it weren't for the sexual assault in Volume 1, that'd almost make it worth rooting for Raoul over Rei. There are no good options for Akira in this series.

While reading Volume 1, I speculated that Rei's immediate interest in Akira was likely due to a childhood crush on Akira's father. In this volume, Akira finally starts to have the same suspicions. If you accept Rei's response at face value, this issue gets resolved in this volume. Personally, it didn't ring true to me in the slightest considering how quickly Rei threw himself at Akira, but I can't tell whether that's due to bad writing or whether Rei really was lying and the author plans to have this issue crop up again later.

It's in this volume that we get the series' first sex scene, which reads like another sexual assault - Rei initiates things by forcing himself on Akira to "prove" that it's Akira he wants and not the ghost of Akira's father, while Akira tries to push him away and is understandably upset. He opts to believe Rei a few pages in, but I still wasn't wild about this part. For those wondering, the sex isn't explicit - both characters are mostly clothed, and more was suggested than shown. That didn't really make things much better. Again, they're cousins, and Rei almost certainly had a crush on Akira's father, his uncle. Akira, go find yourself someone who isn't related to you and who hasn't previously sexually assaulted you. You may be stupid, but you can still do better.

The volume ends with "Okumiya-san and Shigure-kun," a 17-page bonus comic in which Shigure tries to prove himself to Okumiya as a capable bodyguard to Rei. Any readers who were wondering why none of the adults around Rei and Akira seemed to notice what was going on between them, well, maybe here's the answer: they're too busy having their own sexually-charged moments.

Extras:

In addition to the bonus comic, there are several four-panel (and one three-panel) comics at the end, as well as a note from the author.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

This manga includes three stories, the first is slightly longer than the other two (and I believe continued in a second volume) and is about a not-rich uke going to a rich school where the president of the honors society insists upon uke becoming his vice president because he loves him. This comes out of the blue to the uke, though he does find out later they do have some history together. The last two stories are basically just all about the rape. Er, I mean non-consensual sex.

But while show more there's not sex in the first story, it's heart's in basically the same place. Characters are entirely one-note, with the aggressive, creepy semes and the belligerent-but-allowing-it-to-happen ukes. Even less attempt is made than usual here to make it seem as if the ukes enjoy the sex or the attention. In the first story the uke spends the entire time despising the seme. Though at one point he does observe that the seme makes him feel “insecure,” and concludes from this that he may be in love with seme. So, yeah. Your insecurity is not cause the guy is clearly on the road to raping you and just hasn't quite gotten there yet. It's cause you're in love.

If you like your fluffy rape/non-con, you might like this. But much as I dislike non-con stuff, I still think I've seen enough to say with at least a little authority that it gets better than this. Falling in love with a guy who's practically raping you may not speak well for your psychological health, but it CAN be done at least somewhat more convincingly, or if not that, romantically. The semes here have practically no reason for liking the ukes and are just stalkers. The ukes barely like them back. The characters are flat, the writing uncreative, the dialogue could easily be copy/pasted lines from a plethora of other stories like it. Still, I guess it's pretty average for yaoi. If non-con is your cup of tea and you're not too picky, it could be entertaining. show less

Raoul first travels to his home in America and then to Arabia in an attempt to escape his memories of losing Akira to Rei. Instead of finding solace Raoul is almost immediately kidnapped by the young Prince Ashif who has plans of matchmaking for his sister. But, Raoul is not one to give into captivity with any ease or grace and as he goes from prisoner to friend and gets closer to the earnest oil mogul royalty Raoul discovers something he never thought to have, an ability to find peace show more within his own dark emotions.

This is a very sweet take off of the Our Kingdom series and it is nice to see Raoul with someone who cares about him. At first Prince Ashif seemed to be an international version of Akira, but when push came to shove it was obvious that the Prince has a lot more self-confidence going for him. In spite of Raoul's aggressiveness it felt to me as though the feelings between the main characters were reciprocal. I emphasize this because if you're familiar with the series it is pretty clear that Raoul tends to get a little forceful and for me, I do not like non-con scenes.

As always the art is wonderful and in this volume the characters all stood out on their own which I've had problems with before with this manga-ka's work. Although there is a marked similarity between Ashif and Akira, it was okay because Akira isn't in this one. I also enjoyed the fact that this focused primarily on Raoul and Ashif, despite the fact that I enjoyed the multiple storylines in the preceding series, it did get a little confusing in places and the focus here took care of this problem.

Overall very enjoyable although I will say I'm not entirely sure about the 16+ rating as there is a scene near the end which would inspire me to rate this as "Mature" instead. show less