Bronze: Zetsuai Since 1989

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Even though I've tried, I haven't been able to find a story as tragic as Bronze. Bronze is all about desperate love. I love it. Sometimes it really feels like the characters are crazy. I've read many manga with better stories, art and characters but Bronze beats them all. Bronze is just so full of feeling it can't be called anything else but a masterpiece. Bronze is better than its prequel Zetsuai but I still recommend you read Zetsuai first. Some things are pretty hard to understand if you haven't read Zetsuai. Believe me, I know, since I read Bronze first and after that found ... out about Zetsuai.

So far this is great. It is moving a little faster than "Zetsuai" did at the first part of the series, but I am only up to Volume 3 so we will have to wait and see what happens next. People have said that "Bronze" is better than "Zetsuai", but I don't agree with that assessment. "Zetsuai" was a slow agonizing pain, whereas, "Bronze" as the feel of a continuous stabing pain that is unending, faster and unyielding. They both have their merits and are both masterpieces in their own way. I do not know if this was the author's intent, but I can see ... the logic in the pace of the two stories. (Next Part very minor spoiler so don't read if you don't want to)

In "Zetsuai", Izumi soccer career and emotions are somewhat at a standstill because of his past. Therefore, the story moves at a slower pace. In "Bronze", Izumi's soccer career is speeding ahead so maybe there was the need for the story to follow in his footsteps, figuratively and literally.

This manga took my breath away. There are only a handful of manga out there, that could really touch me, and even fewer shounen-ai/yaoi.
Why is this manga so special? Why is it worth your time? The answer is: the characters. The two main characters are so human, it's touching. Both fluttering on the border between sanity and insanity, their emotions throwing them off every time.
You won't find your stereotypes here. You won't always know what's going to happen, or how far each character will go. But it will draw you in, and grip tightly, that you will be forces to feel their anger, their ... madness, their desperation, and you will appreciate the love all the more because of that.
Bronze is not a happy story, but it is an enchanting one. The tragedy will stay with you, even after you finished reading.

O, but you MUST read Zetsuai first.

Like its predecessor, there isn’t much to talk about with this one.

The most striking aspect of this manga is its art. Not in a good way. The art is absolutely awful, hurtful to look at, low effort where most of the pages look like they were drawn in 5 to 10 minutes. It is not something that is excusable by calling it a “style”, it is just flat-out bad. Of course, it suffers from the usual BL bad art symptoms too, mainly bad anatomy. Absurdly huge and sharp chins, noodle people that are unnaturally tall and thin, disproportional yaoi hands that look more like claws ... and drawings that are off model so often you don’t even know what the original model even is.

The characters don’t fell like people, but rather artificial aggressively angsty gays. Unless you’re here just for the BL, the story doesn’t attempt to draw you in with anything. If anything, it actively tries to deter you from reading it by the forementioned terrible art that just makes reading this an awful experience even if the story was good (it isn’t).

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this even to people that like yaoi.

I haven't managed to read anymore than chapter 64 because the rest has not been translated even after so many years :( but even still i have NEVER EVEEERRRRR encountered anything that evokes the same amount of emotion from me than Bronze. The desperate struggle between love and obsession throughout is something i have never found anywhere else and it is honestly so beautiful and fascinating yet tragic. There is so much pain but so much passion between the characters and it has left what feels like a life long impression on my mind. I would definitively recommend this to anyone who wants to enrich ... themselves with the drama of a passionately toxic struggle between love, desire and obsession.