Sasaki to Miyano
Sasaki and Miyano

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Ok so, I guess the quickest TLDR is that this is my favorite BL of all time (as well as romance overall regardless of gender) and I cannot recommend it enough. The story is insanely sweet and fluffy without being too slow paced or unrealistic, and theres a lot of minor details that really add to the manga imo.

Firstly, I need to say that I read a lot of romance, and something that really sells a good romance for me is when you can /understand/ why they fall in love beyond a surface level, and thats something I think sasamiya does so, so well (though ... on some level this just comes down to writing likable characters more than anything). Its hard not to love both of them and feel giddy during the moments they have together. I'm a big fan of pining, and considering the entire first half or so of the manga is 80% Sasaki doing just that (or Miyano doing the same thing not fully realising) it just hits all the right spots for me on a personal level.

On the topic of characters, I also just really enjoy how well developed the side characters are. Of course they wont be as nuanced as the leads but they do their job well, and it just really adds to the story imo. The dialogue is very realistic, and they just act pretty much like how regular teenage boys act without there being any maliciousness present.

While this mostly applies to their classmates at the all-boys school, I honestly also really appreciate the female characters that show up as well. There arent many of them and they dont show up often, but within a genre like BL where a lot of female characters can get very heavily demonized I appreciate how sweetly characters like Kuresawa and Ogasawara's girlfriend are presented despite their main personality trait being them being a fujoshi, and same goes for Miyano's female ex-crush who gets some genuinly funny moments when she shows up without causing drama for the plot.

I probably have more to say but I guess this is the gist of it. I guess if I had anything 'negative' to say at all it'd just be that I sorta understand why this wouldnt be someones thing if you're into stories with more heavy drama/higher stakes, but thats preference. To me this is pretty much my ideal romance, and I hope I can find more like it.

A BL manga that uses BL manga as a way to connect the characters. Interesting idea I guess.

Sasaki to Miyano is among the more slow paced shounen-ai. In this case, that’s not bad, as it gives the characters more time to feel real and less like a walking fanservice. Unlike the usual procedure, the pairing doesn’t get together and to business immediately. It even takes a while to show that this is, in fact, a BL title.

As usual with such manga, the main demographic is pretty much the only demographic, as if you don’t enjoy boy’s love, there isn’t much for you to enjoy here. ... But on the contrary to usual quality of BL work, this one isn’t offensively bad and I can see why someone would enjoy it. The characters aren’t walking cliché, the plot doesn’t feel forced, the interaction are likely cute to the intended spectators and the art doesn’t look like it was drawn by a meth addicts who thinks Slenderman is the paragon of human anatomy.

The least believable part is that the manga wants us to believe that someone who’s not into boys would want to read BL just because it’s fun. Because let’s face it, overwhelming majority of BL are complete trash and you definitely aren’t reading them for the plot, as popular that excuse is. Well, it probably didn't surprise anyone that the supposedly not gay protagonist might in fact be gay at least to some extent.

Overall, if you’re a fujoshi who doesn’t require explicit slash and is fine with some more sane content, go for it.

I know that this is very popular and for some reason most people are into this bs, but I'm still putting it to "not recommended". I love BL but it's merely one reason why I hate this:

The "top" and "bottom" (or Uke and Seme in Japanese) talk. I don't know why it's so popular, but it's actually extremely disrespectful to gay people. Most gays are switches, and so are girls. Feminine guys aren't the equivalent of a woman and won't therefore be the "bottom" of the relationship.
So damn annoying. When will y'all get this.

Even worse is when people label others whether they're a top or ... bottom just by the looks. That's very similar to guessing someone's sexuality. You can't tell by the looks. And if they haven't told you, you shouldn't put labels on them anyway.
It's one thing to see fans putting the top/bottom labels on characters for headcanons (even though it's dumb and I'm really hoping this trend will stop soon), but it's a completely different thing to have it in an official manga, that even has an anime adaptation. Very disappointing.

I could've actually given this 7 stars, bc apart from that, the story is cute...