Feb 13, 2016
Bukiyou dakedo Daisuki sa is a one-volume boys love story in which the majority of the chapters follow Iida and Torigoe who end up working together for the culture committee at their school. Iida has never been a fan of Torigoe because of his arrogant personality, but as time goes by, he discovers new sides of his classmate that he never expected.
The art is the highlight of the manga and one of the few positive things I have to say about it. It's slightly above average when it comes to BL, and all the characters are attractive and have distinctive designs. However, the story and
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the characters' personalities don't meet the same standard.
The first chapter of the manga follows Iida and Torigoe as their feelings develop. I can't remember the last time I read a manga in which I felt the relationship was as poorly developed as here. We see almost no worthwhile interaction between them before Iida is already angsting about why Torigoe means so much to him, and when he points out that he has learned to know unexpected sides of him, I had to wonder if I'd accidentaly missed a bunch of pages because I certainly hadn't seen those unexpected sides anywhere. Then again, the manga spends zero time establishing the characters in the beginning, so we never get to see much of Torigoe's normal sides either.
There's no real chemistry between the main characters, only forced clichés such as mistakenly thinking that the other is interested in a woman (who is of course only a friend), being afraid to be honest about their physical desires because the other might find it disgusting, and having a jealous fit when the other interacts with other people. There are a couple of explicit sex scenes to spice up the story, but I never enjoy sex scenes if I'm not emotionally attached to the characters, so they left me pretty cold here.
One detail I really liked was the brief glimpses we got of Iida's parents. Even though they only showed up twice or so, they felt much more interesting and funnier than any of the main characters. There were also some amusing scenes in the bonus story. I wish the manga had focused more on humour as the romantic and dramatic scenes didn't really work for me.
All in all, grab this manga if you want a paint-by-the-numbers BL story with nice art and some steamy sex scenes, but don't expect any real depth in the charactes or story. If you like the kind of BL where the main conflict is one character feeling insecure and thinking the other could never love him, only to be reassured otherwise in a dramatic fashion, you might enjoy this.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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