Kanojo ga Suki na Mono wa Homo de Atte Boku dewa Nai
She Likes Gays, but Not Me

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Gay man here... this manga is a contemporary masterpiece, I'm just gonna say that.
This whole manga feels like is full of guilt and self constrain... because it feels like that! Is about a gay man who is "forced" to have a girlfriend, just by that the idea even for me is awful for real but that's the point, this manga is about morals. Everyone has different ways to cope about their own problems and some of them aren't healthy at all and this work, really knows how to work on that (even I struggle irl to get out of the closet). The ethics on this ... manga are just down bad, the way on how they solve their own problems don't really make them "be" good people but... who really makes the things in the right way? Usually we just by fear try to protect ourselves from our surroundings and create fields to don't get hurt (just like evangelion, lol) so... I don't think no one can judge the way to cope, really.

The way on how the narrative is telled is amazing, the characters and the struggles of them feel real (of course, more idealized). The only downside I see is that the leitmotiff of Queen kinda feels forced at times but I'm not gonna lie, when it hits well, hits like a bullet. Even the "bad" characters althought they are bad, they are humans and you can feel that all throughout the story. The most important part is the fact that KNOWS when to break up the drama and throw you a joke because... if there wasn't any just to break tension I would be lying on the floor of my room while crying. The art is... great, isn't a masterpiece of drawing like idk Vagabond or name your random manga that is amazingly drawed but is a good relax from the common shoujo/josei that you see everyday, which is nice IMHO.

Any way, I'm writing to much text but you can see what are the lights and shadows of the work and... maybe is because I'm a soft gaycel who struggles with their sexuality why I'm such a bitch with this. I find the main character an asshole but at the same time just an idiot as I (and I know if you read it, this ain't healty) but that's the charm of that jerk. Just stop reading this and go to read the manga, is amazing and made me cry, with that is enough to know that this shit hits hard.

Edit... I ended up being an egg so, take with a grain of salt my opinion

Personally i loved this I just quit something I had been doing for pretty much all my life and have been feeling like my life is useless and I’m just going through the motions with no real purpose but reading this somehow made me feel better and realise I must have something I can do. So for that reason alone this gets 1000/10 I cried for hours and am still crying whilst writing this. I understand peoples issues with the relationships in this manga but if you can
Look past that and focus on the true plot and meaning I assure you it’s worth it ... and can make you feel all types of emotions. Honestly I’m writing this not for others opinions but for myself what you choose to like if your choice to decide not mine to force upon you.This will always hold a place in my heart… thank you.

Whew, okay. Just finished reading this, and immediately felt like writing a review, because boy, lots of feelings.

First things first, I am a fujoshi and LGBT+ . I like BL because, in the good stories, there is often a relatable layer (cough, the suffering) and a fantasy layer that provides relief, makes us cry to vent or cry in happiness. I like to bask in those feelings. Generally, BL is not meant to be fully realistic but to provide fantasies - either sexually or emotionally fetichistic ones.

This manga is based on a novel. In my experience, at least when it comes to BL ... works (Japanese) novels are usually more interesting than manga for how psychologically realistic they are, comparatively, and adaptations of novels in manga format can be good or bad at translating the original work's feelings and sensations. I usually prefer novels and manga adaptations of novels for these reasons. I didn't read the novel this is based on, but I did read some excerpts made available by the manga scanlators. It does seem to feel more coherent than the manga. (As a side-note, I read a lot more BL novels and manga than I care to share in my MAL list, so you just have to trust me on this one lol.)

[CONTAINS SPOILERS FROM NOW ON]

The manga starts with a gay high school boy, Jun, who has to pretend he is straight for his bothersome classmates *cough* I mean friends (including but not limited to a fujoshi and a dick groping monster of a childhood friend) while he regularly meets up (ie. has sex) secretly with a married middle-aged man and talks to an internet friend he doesn't know much about except he should be an adult HIV positive gay man.

This rough start for such a cutesy art manga might make you think, okay, this can only go up from there or at least not much lower. But noo, forget it. It goes down, down, down and then it takes a nosedive. Eventually I had to remind myself that, fine, although the main character is a gay boy and this is about his struggles and relationships, this is a josei and I should not have expected fantasies. But even then, this was too cold/hard to the point that it ruined my enjoyment.

Don't get me wrong I love some melodrama. But melodrama has parts in which you have to stop, put the manga aside and cry because it's beautifully sad. This had none of it. It was just "fucking suffer faggot" upon "fucking suffer faggot" in a way that I kept going back and forth in my mind between "this could only have been written by a LGBT+ person" and "this could only have been written by a big homophobe" . Instead of settling on anything I chose to consider every point and write a review to vent.

Because, listen: when disgrace keeps piling up and up and the ONE "happy climax" moment in the entire series involves [HEAVY SPOILERS AHEAD] a fujoshi screaming from the top of her lungs, unprompted, in front of the entire school that she fell in love with you (a gay boy) but you couldn't get your dick up and she ended up seeing you kiss a man and then you conclude that you really like her (?!) and is encouraged to kiss her in front of the whole school, the same school from which you jumped off a window a month before because your "friends" were relentlessly bullying you over sexuality gossip so you still had a broken arm in a cast - my boy, how shitty is your life?! Of course I left out a lot more disgraceful things including but not limited to death and disease and so on - -

And what about the reliefs? Well, there are basically none. His straight dick-groping-monster friend does try his best to be considerate, and so does the annoyingly ignorant fujoshi, but honestly I would still have wanted to punch them if I was the MC and the other "aww" moments were when a gay boy from his school who had bullied him comes to ask for forgiveness, and a couple of confessions that end up in disgrace.

In short, it's almost aggressive and homophobic in the way that only bad things ever happen to the poor kid and the few good things or people don't fully acknowledge who he is (an amazingly strong fortress I must say) until he finally runs away to start anew. The handling of HIV in particular felt odd to me - not sure if it's still a disease mostly transmitted through MSM in Japan but it screamed kind of 90s-2000s to me. Even worse, boy freaks out about possibly being HIV-positive and then doesn't get tested (not because he is troubled over being stigmatized or anything he just forgets it apparently) . Anyways the very "us vs them" vibes also scream 90s-2000s to me. Now it just feels outdated because thankfully it's not the 90s-2000s anymore. In that sense I understand the reviews that call it overdramatized because that's what it is. The events themselves, though, aren't overdramatizing. The suffering is also very much realistic. But at some point I did wonder if I was reading the guy's POV even because it's amazing how NO ONE sides with him or is able to say "okay you're gay soo ...?" .

All of my observations forced me to consider four things. One, as I said - this isn't BL, it's not meant to appase or cheer up BL fans. Two, it's the reality of a country I don't live in so I don't know many things. Third, perhaps the author isn't very young so some of it may feel inadequate even to present time Japan. Lastly, it's originally a novel and not all novels translate well to manga format. And I believe that reading a lot of disgraceful moments in beautiful words, better spaced out, might have been more insteresting. Because as it is all I see is a bunch of interesting ideas, poorly or underdeveloped.

Anyway, no reliefs, just a lot of pent up anger and unformed tears on my part. I didn't manage to cry even once - the feelings and thoughts just bubbled up because: no relief - but I did punch my hand some 10 times because I wanted to punch "Ono" but couldn't. Actually scratch that I kind of wanted to punch everyone. Out of all people I probably had the most sympathy for the gay characters for at least being humane but people usually don't like them because one is "a pedo" and the other is "a middle schooler who dated his cousin" so no sympathies from most readers, probably. The fujoshi doesn't say a single wise word, girl is a total airhead and terribly ignorant of LGBT+ issues but at least is funny sometimes. Groping monster is somehow even worse and it's a pity they didn't date from the beginning, would have avoided much trouble. Oh well, life ...

In short, as I see it, the manga reads more as a guidebook on how to not treat LGBT+ people and a pool of badly executed great ideas. It should've been called "Not getting hard to girls is hard" because it would be more accurate but oh well. And so if God is a fujoshi how do you explain me wasting time reading this because there isn't enough good BL? You don't. Review over.