Yishan Li

As I'd been pleasantly surprised by some non-Japanese BL I wanted to try some more, however it seems I've gone a little too far in my attempt to expand my horizons.

The story is similar to something pulled out of a short child or young adult fantasy book. Now, those stories aren't inherently bad, but there are at least two problems with THIS story being like that. For one thing, it's not a novel. You can't fit that much story into a one volume manga and still have room for character development or world building or ANYTHING that makes those dime a dozen plots turn into something worth reading. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to read this even if it did slow down to try and develop itself more, because from what I see here, the story and characters are too vapid to warrant any development anyway. The dialogue is also painfully simplistic and uninteresting. I felt like I was reading a dumbed-down outline of a conversation rather than a version that someone would actually publish. I must say, when THAT MANY of your word bubbles are only 5-10 words long or less, you're either trying something creative and minimalistic, or just a really, really, really poor writer. And I really don't think this manga was creative much less thought out enough for the former.

As for the art, my first general impression was that it was better than a lot of people could draw, but still surprisingly amateurish for a published manga. On the other hand, there were times when I could look at a character or even a whole frame and it looked just fine. I imagine if this artist got more experience they could do pretty well eventually. There's nothing really worth watching them for, though. This isn't one of those OEL that has a slightly different style and thus people used to Japanese manga don't like it. It merely tries to stay within the style of Japanese manga and does fairly poorly.

For those getting this for the yaoi scenes, there's one 2-page long (or 3-panel long if you don't count the cuddling) scene between the main couple. Not one of the ugly moments in the art, but fairly uninspiring. Mostly everything is from the waist up. There is then a 5 page long scene between the hero and the adversary with considerably more body shots, but I think it's one of the lower points in the art. The bodies often look awkward, and when bodies are drawn that nondescript to badly, I think anyone would have a hard time finding them sexy no matter what they're doing. Penises are always covered by body parts, save in one chortle-inducing frame in which one is covered by a large star-like impact mark between the seme's thighs and the uke's ass. Seriously, it so deserved a "BAM!!" sfx.

Besides amusing choices of censorship techniques, the high point of this volume for me was the story in the end. It's 24 pages long, very different from the first, but has problems in some ways similar to the first story. Shoddy art, not long enough to flesh itself out. However, though the story was still another well-worn idea (human falling in love with android), the style generally had a little more character and a distinct mood to it. The art at times even looked like a child (a talented child, but a child) had drawn it, but the guys were less girly-looking, and both the people and the background were more expressive, and gave the story a distinct feel. The dialogue was always short, like the first story, but this time it felt more like the characters were simply less used to conversing, rather than clipped off. Some of it was still kind of hokey and made me cringe a tad, and it was a tad on the mushy side for my tastes, but I still feel like these creators have more originality and possibly intelligence. I would much rather have read a volume of THIS story. On the other hand, it's nothing spectacular, and definitely not worth buying the volume for.… (mais)