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Junsui Adolescence is a pretty fair look at being in an age gap relationship. It skeevs me a little because of the specific ages of the protagonists, but as someone who's been in age gap stuff before... I can't complain, it just creeps me out now. It honestly has a lot to say about the relationship insecurity that a gap in maturity can breed in a person, and the kinds of things we feel we need to leave behind in order to grow up. Things we'd be considered 'childish' for doing as an adult, etc. Adults can legitimately be like big children sometimes, depending on ... the topic, and we all have some kind of inner child that never really goes away, as much as we may try to ignore or repress it as adults. What separates us from children is our breadth of experience, in the end. That's why I honestly avoid the hell out of age gap romance stories these days, but while I initially disliked Junsui Adolescence, I have to give it a fair shake for doing the thing justice.

The art of Junsui Adolescence is reminiscent of middling BL, and the author's background in drawing men was something that didn't surprise me at all, as I kind of had an inkling that that was the case. It's not bad, and the characters do look like women, but the style is a blend of shoujo and BL that hasn't aged amazingly well, in my opinion, compared to older art styles (Utena, Kaze to Ki no Uta).

The principle conflict of the manga is the forbidden romance between a student and the school nurse. That's... fine, whatever. Not pedophilic in the slightest /s. It does happen. It usually doesn't end well. This manga acknowledges that to some extent. Nanao is maybe 16 at the start of the manga, I think? She becomes a senior later, and then has to worry about graduation, so... 16-17 based on Japan's school system? It's kinda creepy, tbh, but on some level I also feel it's important to portray things like this, because it does happen. It happened to me, though I was a year or two older. So when I say the feelings portrayed in Junsui Adolescence are pretty accurate, I really do mean it. You can love someone ten years older when you're at the end of your teen years, and it can work long term, but it's also often a scary and deeply confusing experience, as you have less knowledge of how relationships work at that age. It's very much a 'in at the deep end' kind of experience, and Nanao's confusion and erratic behavior in the early chapters were very relatable. On the other hand, looking at it as someone who's no longer that confused young adult, I see that and my insides shrivel up in anxiety, wanting to tell her 'no, no honey, that's a bad idea'. It can work out. But it can easily not, and that older person can take advantage of you much more easily due to usually having experience in relationships that you will not have at the time. Even if they don't intend to, it can have some toxic effects on your relationship unless both of you are very careful. At least this manga isn't presenting it as an absolute walk in the park, but at the same time, it also presents those problems as far easier to deal with, and far less risky, than real life.

Essentially, this is a thing that happens, and it's not wrong for this manga to depict it, but even with its attempts at realism, it presents these kinds of age gap relationships as a bit too safe for my tastes. It's kind of like when YA novels acknowledge a risky relationship dynamic as dangerous, but then show it pretty much working out mostly okay. Like, that's fine, but over time also normalizes the idea that the base relationship dynamic was fine to begin with, especially if it gets popular and other authors start copying the trend. And that breeds complacency towards those risks the story originally brushed off. You can kind of see this in action in how romance fiction shapes our early perceptions of real life romance as teens, which is when someone might read this manga and conclude that their irl crush on a teacher will work out.

Overall, I'd say Junsui Adolescence is worth a read if you're starving for content, or you otherwise have no problem with large age gaps in the main pairing. Just... be prepared for some skeevy content at times.

I give up. Why is this still considered acceptable? I admit, I'm not familiar with the light novel, so maybe it wasn't as creepy, or maybe it just has a big following, but why did this have to be one of the few BL works to be adapted into animation recently? Why did they choose this one?

Yes ka (shortened for the sake of my fingers) is, according to this adaptation, a very traditional BL that follows along the lines of Sekaiichi Hatsukoi and the like. Literally everything about this production screams of a work that's right at home in that mid 2000s to around the ... 2011 mark, and the animation quality and lineart will back me up on that one. I legitimately think that the Black Butler anime, which debuted in 2008 (and which I also dislike heavily) had better looking art than this film in every sense. There must have been budget issues going on behind the scenes, or else this movie got shafted in terms of funding. The musical score also screamed 'royalty free', I must say, in that the vast majority of it is comprised of plinky piano tracks that kind of sound like someone listened to a shitload of Ludovico Einaudi's ambient piano themes and decided, with no composition experience whatsoever, that they could 'do it better'.

The story is... humdrum. Not bad, not good. It's tropey for anyone who's squinted at BL in the last quarter century, but not unbearable. Its themes are pretty obvious, and in some cases literally spelled out to viewers, and while they're quite nice themes most of the time, I can't call this well written. This is writing that comes at you in a back alley with a hammer. No shade on the LN, because I can't rightly say whether that was any good, particularly since translations can be a bit shaky. But this film, at least, was very blunt with its overall themes of duality of self and such. (Edit: in hindsight, the reason for this is likely that the scenes and dialogue are lacking in subtext. Scenes do exactly what they need to do to showcase the movie's themes, and no more. They don't really serve to enrich the characterisation, or actually dissect the subtextual themes, or present interesting ideas. There's no hidden or double or nuanced meaning to think about in Tsuzuki's stop motion animation, or in his dialogue with Kunieda, just a very bluntly delivered message that serves to highlight how nakedly artificial that message is in the context of the film. If the film had purposefully set up Tsuzuki's dual nature, through foreshadowing in his dialogue and interests, and thereby made the rape at the end make sense, this could have been a brilliant Hannibal-esque toxic romance, where Kunieda's pride prevents him from speaking out in the end, thereby solidly delivering on his own characterisation as someone who internalises his problems.) If you want a film that actually discusses that theme properly, maybe try Perfect Blue instead. If there hadn't been rape, I'd probably be calling this a tropey but cute BL film to watch when you want to shut your brain off, and given it a 6/10. But really, the thing everyone's really here to discuss is the rape, so let's get onto that, because it's a doozy.

Now, BL has some interesting roots that I won't go into too heavily here, but needless to say, it was important in allowing women to enter the manga industry. Look up 'Year 24 group' or 'the 49-ers', or the works of Mori Mari if you're curious. Long story short, this gave us works with very androgynous, almost 'third gender' characters that could be projected onto by just about anyone, such as Gilbert from Kaze to Ki no Uta. In terms of female empowerment, it removed the woman from a sexual scenario, so that they could enjoy romance without placing themselves in situations they found threatening, due to the power dynamic between men and women at the time. Despite doing a fair amount of research for a layman, I'm honestly not sure how this ideal metamorphosed into the creepy, toxic BL tropes we see today, but I suspect a little film called 'Death in Venice' might have some answers. DiV is, at its core, a pedophile fantasy that the author, Thomas Mann, drew from his obsession with a Polish tween he met while on vacation in Venice. This work was, arguably, very influential on some members of the 49ers back in the seventies, and it's not surprising that the idea of a bigger, older man forcing sexual scenarios onto a younger, protesting, boyish character would enter the BL scene, although DiV ends with the obsessed man dying of cholera the moment he decides to actually do something. I can't prove it, but I know DiV was influential on those people, and it seemed plausible as to where this trope could have originated.

Anyway, we got the Seme-Uke thing somewhere along the line, either from works like Death in Venice, or possibly from the 'grow your own spouse' elements of the Tale of Genji, or possibly even through cross-contamination with the shoujo industry's complicated relationship with writing women. And it's bad, at least for gay men's general health and wellbeing. Because BL isn't about androgynes like Gilbert anymore, but much more recognizably about men, with male physiques and rippling muscles, and when you factor in the DiV angle... urgh. Yeah, gay men have been grappling with the rapist/pedophile accusations for longer than I've been alive, and this work does absolutely nothing to change that perception. We're in 2021 now. Gay marriage has been legalized in a lot of countries. And last month, Japan pushed out a dated-looking fifty minute 'film' that features one of the worst 'rape as love' moments I've seen in years.

It's not uncommon for a character to moan 'yamero...' in Japanese erotica (women would probably say 'yamete...' instead), which can literally be translated as 'stop...', but Japanese is a pretty thorny language when sex is involved, as far as I can tell as a non-native semi-speaker. 'Iyada', meaning 'don't' isn't unheard of, but often the reason for all of this is essentially 'we shouldn't do this, it's embarrassing for me', because of Japan's very reserved attitude towards sex. Hence the preponderance of characters declaring 'I can't control myself anymore!' while their love interest essentially screams 'we can't!'. This whole self control vs loss of control thing makes some amount of sense to me, given the cultural background. Now, what I can't get my head around is Tsuzuki's absolutely cursed sounding ways of essentially denying Kunieda's right to say no to him. I get that Kunieda isn't averse to the idea of having sex with Tsuzuki, but he was definitely saying 'not right now', even in the cursed world of BL translation. And then Tsuzuki held him down and screwed him anyway. Look, if that whole pre-sex business was meant to come across as tsundere flirting, then maybe it shouldn't have been shot at dutch angles, and maybe the VAs shouldn't have made it sound quite so realistically panicked.

Either way, it's presented as a solidly 'rape as love' angle, and it was horrible to witness. It felt out of character for Tsuzuki to be so inconsiderate and pushy over sex. Maybe this work was meant to make me wonder if Tsuzuki also had another side, but that wasn't established at all, and his 'other side' is so repulsive yet treated as loveable with no explanation that I can't not call it bad writing. It felt out of character for Kunieda to be fine with things after that, considering his bitchy personality. If Kunieda had a rape fetish in the story, or this had been presented as a legitimate BDSM relationship with safewords, I might have been cool with this. Rape presented as a sign of true love is way too accepted in the BL industry, and despite the help BL has given women in becoming mangaka historically, this needs to stop. I don't give a damn how wet the uke's screams made you. This kind of depiction is quantifiably harmful for gay men in real life.

We can all do better than this crap by now.

I still don't know exactly why I don't like Still Sick. It's a manga about being a mangaka, and maybe part of me finds that kind of self indulgent? Maybe it's the characters, who despite feeling pretty realistic, are also deeply annoying to me? Maybe it's that the story feels light and fast, but also slow as fuck where it matters? This is going to be a little different to my usual review style, because I'm still having difficulty articulating exactly what's going on here, so you'll be seeing a lot of how this manga made me feel, and some tentative guesses as to why, ... but fewer analytical conclusions. Sorry about that.

Still Sick feels contradictory to me. I should like it. It has all the hallmarks of the kind of story I would normally enjoy, as a serious, slowburn gay romance, but every second I spent reading it I ended up comparing it unfavorably to the Korean work 'It Would Be Great If You Didn't Exist'. It's essentially an OL romance about being a mangaka, and that's a great premise, but it kind of feels like Still Sick meanders around that topic for hours. Maybe it's because I'm not a very artistic person (I prefer prose tbh) but the way Still Sick approaches talking about the act of drawing feels very shallow and lukewarm, in the same way that 'power of friendship' shonen are a shallow and lukewarm view of what friendship is. It reminds me of Your Lie In April's take on what music is, and I do not intend that as a compliment.

Considering how much of the manga focuses around this one idea of what it means to draw manga, it rang incredibly hollow as a result. Was the author trying to inspire themselves to draw, or was this in some way autobiographical? I don't know. It asks me to think about why people draw, and the problem is, for me that was like asking me 'why do you play croquet?', to which my answer is 'I don't. I'm bad at it and have little interest in improving'. This probably also explains why I don't particularly enjoy sports anime. I have little to no passion with regards to drawing, and while I can in some way understand this manga's points intellectually, it doesn't make me FEEL anything, and the language it uses to discuss these points are very plain, often lacking in evocative scenes or dialogue to describe why I should care about what happens in Still Sick. It probably works for some people, but I personally did not find it compelling or relatable when Still Sick says that drawings inspire people, and that people inspire others to draw. That's a very surface level observation about the nature of art, and the manga lacks the artistry to get that point across outside of simply telling us that that is the case. If Still Sick showed me some inspiring art and how it inspired the characters it might run the risk of coming off as pretentious, but at least then it might be using evocative language and storytelling so that I can empathize with the characters, rather than telling me what they feel.

That lack of evocative language and presentation extends into the characters, who are well rounded and multi-faceted, and technically sound. But I just don't like them. Sometimes, like with Shimizu's nerd speeches, I found them vaguely funny in that she sounds kind of like people on Tumblr or AO3, but at the same time, there's just a lack of emotion behind the characters that's difficult to pinpoint. Like with the 'I draw manga to inspire people' thing, the characters are very on the nose a lot of the time. They specifically namedrop the will-they-or-won't-they trope and say 'screw that', but it's like the honestly kind of vapid mangaka stuff eats into the romance angle so much that the romantic tension falls flat. They have arguments that felt very forced, and the manga doesn't avoid the tropes it namedrops enough to make that melodrama feel like it has actual stakes, at least for me. And that made them irritating, which made me like them even less. Maekawa is tsundere, Shimizu is in the closet, but their reasons for being so don't get enough focus, which undermined the romance for me. If the manga showed me more about why they behave as they do, as LGBT people, and spent less on telling(not showing) me why making manga is important, I would probably find their manga-inspired romance far more compelling. I could maybe see a through line between what Maekawa draws at different points in the story and her romantic feelings for Shimizu. We could even see her tsundere nature reflected in her rejection of the unconscious themes of her drawings, thereby getting a more nuanced view of the relation between art and artist, in that themes are not necessarily a conscious choice by the artist. But we don't get any of that. The romance, as a result, felt pretty bland and lacking in tension to me, despite clearly trying.

Essentially, I don't really care about working in the manga industry, and this manga didn't really give me enough reasons to feel passionately about it, despite that clearly being its angle. This coming from someone who finds grannies having cut throat drama over knitting patterns on web 1.0 sites interesting in the right contexts. Essentially, it's like showing me a sports anime. Unless it's really exceptional in how it frames why the players care, I'm not going to care. If I had any definite criticism, it's that I feel the manga stuff starts out getting an acceptable amount of focus, then becomes an absolute tumor that crushes the life out of this series. Everything becomes about the manga, even the protagonists' relationship is framed around wanting to draw, and I just can't get behind it because of the way that wanting to make manga is framed in this manga.

If you like the process of making manga, or are an artist going through writer's block, maybe this series will hit home for you. It didn't reflect my feelings of writer's block, but maybe you're different. Still Sick is technically sound, but if you're interested in it for the romance, it might not be your thing.

So I dared my partner to watch this, and we ended up suffering through it together. As someone who actually likes monster girls, that suffering took me off guard. I played MGQ like any upstanding pervert should. Now, I'll admit, Ecchi is a genre I have never understood. A good 80% or more of the genre just seems to be an exercise in cucking yourself when you could just watch hentai instead, with a few genuinely hilarious standouts like Izushoku Reviewers that know how to blur the lines. I guess some guys just really like to edge, or are too young to google 'henti' or ... something, idk.

Monster Musume is a largely plotless adventure in which protagonist-kun gets molested by a slowly growing crowd of deeply irritating monster girls. Fanservice ensues. If you've seen Love Hina, or anything similar to it, you know the drill. Unlike Love Hina, which eventually meandered its way into a canon pairing by way of a torturously dragged out romance arc, Monster Musume seems unlikely to ever reach that point, as new girls join the ever growing harem every week. It's not like any of them have anything approaching a romance arc, anyway, as that would require them to be something other than a loosely connected series of breasts and asses. Look, I appreciate breasts and asses as much as the next person, but could we have a little more conversation here? Or, failing that, a little more action please?

In all seriousness, the lack of either just makes this series a big, fat nothingburger in regards to both story and characterization. Characters are basically archetype + fetish combinations, and the main members of the harem are mostly just there for their boobs, so this even manages to somehow fail as a fetish anime. Forget Ishuzoku Reviewers, even the pervs who made Miru Tights would be laughing at this series for its absurd inability to commit to a niche. Is it a comedy? Not really, since it's all incredibly lame sex 'jokes' for people who think boobs are funny. Is it erotic? Not really, since the protagonist isn't interested in their incessant, clumsy flirting, so the sexual side of things goes absolutely nowhere. Are the characters interesting? No, they have boobs instead of personality. Does it at least have good worldbuilding? No, we learn the absolute bare basics of monsters, and other shows manage more worldbuilding in their sex scenes alone (which this show does not have btw), and the monsters still strain credibility for how they would fit in to a modern society. Also, I swear none of them have anything approaching an interesting culture that fits with their biology. They're basically sex-obsessed humans. As an unabashed xenophile, I shed a tear for the monster girl culture clash that could have been.

The art is decent enough for when it came out, and the music is... technically sound, but irritatingly saccharine, as befitting a certain type of Japanese comedy that I find intensely annoying.

Basically, if you're not watching this with someone else to laugh at its ineptitude, this series is an absolute waste of your time. Even then, it'll still waste your time, but at least you can see someone else grimacing next to you. If you're twelve and have yet to experience the wonder of free internet pornography, this series may help you pop your first boner, and that's fine, but please also try to recognize that that doesn't make this series a 10/10 for doing so. Also, go watch Ishuzoku Reviewers, because you'll have a much better time.

Hey, guess it's time for another BL review. I'll say it up front: I freaking loved Star x Fanboy. It's what I love in romance, particularly queer romance, where there's an almost conscious lack of toxic tropes. It does have a lot of 'hot mess' character tropes, like what might be seen in fanfiction, but that's a much more comfortable arena to contend in for me, at least.

Art: Unusually for a BL, SxFB has an art style that is, above all else, unrelentingly cute. Faces are drawn in a soft, rounded way that makes them incredibly expressive, which is great when a lot of BL ... characters have the facial range of a half brick, and it's particularly good for a BL that is about acting. Traditional masculinity can be left at the door. I understand that some people, particularly the bara crowd, maybe won't like this one for that reason. We talkin some smol beans here.

Characters: Star x Fanboy is a two idiots, one braincell romance with some light examination of the nature of acting, and the weird relationship between fans and the stars they idolize. It's actually very well paced, with there rarely being a lull in the development of the characters. There's a slow, but definite build in intensity between the two leads, and it manages to have shy characters without them being an annoying wall that the other romantic lead has to climb for a hundred chapters, like they're trying to scale Everest. Fanboy is shy around Star for understandable reasons, but not a complete pushover, and Star knows when to be assertive, without taking advantage of the potentially unhealthy power dynamic. If anything, Star is hyperaware of that potential.

Yes, their names are literally Star and Fanboy. On the one hand, that might be mildly immersion breaking for some. On the other hand, it helps people who suck at remembering names remember them just fine. It didn't particularly bother me, personally. If you're looking for spice, this is the wrong place. That's not to say nothing bad ever happens, but this is the kind of story where one character says something cute/flirty, and the other one's brain implodes because they can't handle the situation. It's very funny, if you're socially awkward like me, and I find the whole 'hot mess around your crush' angle sadly relatable. I could see some people finding them too boring or vanilla, but I'm not one of them, in that I've long decried the lack of expressive gay men in manga/manhua. This one just shows you can be an assertive gay theatre kid and not be afraid of violating your masculinity by liking panda plushies. Traditionally feminine traits are present on both ends, without comment, but I also feel that the presence of decent female characters helps underline how that balance is what makes the characters feel like people compared to the seme-uke dynamic of traditional BL.

Story: It's mostly focused on the nature of fandom and the relationship between an actor and one's fans, and its similarities and overlap with romantic attraction. The relationships between characters are the story, and I've mostly covered that above. There's some ruminations on being college age, on knowing what to do with your life, which some might find useful, but they're not super deep or anything.

Overall: SxFB lives and dies on its cute factor. The characters are fairly solidly written, and unrelentingly wholesome, while still having a romance that progresses beyond 'friends holding hands'. It's not a completely vapid 'cute boys do cute things' series, but neither is it trying to be a tense, gripping, dramatic work. And for something so cute, the cuteness doesn't feel forced, in that the characters are cute as a byproduct of their interactions, not because the author decided to write them into the role of moeblob. It's just... a nice, nontoxic romance, a bit like a BL equivalent to the GL series, Handsome Girl and Sheltered Girl. It may not be for everyone, but this trend of showing men who are unafraid to be emotionally sensitive, or facially expressive, is one I wholeheartedly support. Give it a read if you like fluffy gay romance, or otherwise enjoy BL stories that go somewhere without anyone getting raped or coerced.

Taking a break from my usual BL/GL binge habits to review some borderline BL content. Which this show definitely qualifies as, to my unending disgust. Now, some background information on Black Butler. The manga is not, and never was, intended to be a yaoi. I don't know where this rumor started, but it needs to die. The BL elements in this series can be laid squarely at the feet of this adaptation, with no input from the original mangaka.

Now, it's no secret that Kuro season 1 was adapted from maybe four chapters of manga initially. This has... interesting knock on effects on characterization, but more ... on that in a minute. It's a fair looking show for 2008, cgi horses notwithstanding, with fairly crisp animation, and an art style reminiscent of shoujo series for the time. This does, unfortunately, mean that the art is essentially frozen in that awkward sample of what the characters looked like in the first volume of the series, but that's not uncommon for anime. Just compare the art of Stardust Crusaders with its manga counterpart. The art changes a LOT over the course of a manga. The music is fitting for the setting, but I can't say I found it particularly memorable, either.

Anyway, characters. And the butchering thereof. Ciel Phantomhive feels... off, in this adaptation, mainly in that his layered personality was almost entirely stripped away, and his bratty elements flanderized to the point where I initially joked that he was Sasuke in a blue wig. He's edgy, where I felt he should have more weight and poignance to his words, probably because he's based entirely on four chapters of manga before A1 Pictures went off to increasingly do their own random filler material.

Sebastian is a complete mess, his sinister elements downplayed to the point of actually seeming to deeply care for his charge, which misses the point of his character in the source material entirely, while also casting him in the unfortunate role of 'seme' to Ciel's 'uke' in the subtext of the show. More on that little pile of gross in a minute. Essentially, he's a loosely bound eldritch abomination in human skin, a monster hiding behind a mask of servility, who would eat Ciel in a heartbeat should he falter in his agreed-upon task, but this anime turns him into a near-perfect ubermensch character who endlessly quips about how he's 'simply one hell of a butler'. You see my problem. He's an exceptionally flat, boring character in the anime (if you're not blinded by the hawt bishonen mans), and that impression it left of him on me actually really impacted my enjoyment of him in other material. He should never have been cast as a hero, and any producer worth their salt would have understood this.

Grell Sutcliff was flanderized to a ridiculous degree, becoming an annoying fangirl for Sebastian rather than a rather saddening look at the struggles of 1800s transpeople by way of Bayonetta. A1 ironed her character flat.

Elizabeth's writing is a true disservice to fans in this adaptation, treated as an annoyance at best, with a godawful screeching voice in both dub and sub, with none of the subtle touches she had, even early on. Some of her lines are simply rewritten or cut, making her sound uncharacteristically selfish for a character who is(spoilers) actually giving up a lot in a misguided attempt to make Ciel happy. Given the open shipping of Sebastian and Ciel in the anime, this almost feels intentional, to discredit an actually interesting straight ship for Ciel that is also not pedophile bait. I could go on, but the characters all have the same problem for the most part. They are shallow, annoying, and poorly developed, with A1 Pictures clearly having only a surface level understanding of the source material at best.

So, pedo bait, you say? Oh, yes. Sebastian's predatory (literally, he's a demon), mentally scarring behavior is completely downplayed in this anime, and Ciel's PTSD is cut, despite appearing prominently very early in the manga, all in the interest of having shots of Sebastian crouched suggestively over a thirteen year old boy, while statue wings behind him make him look like an angel. As embers from fireworks fall down around the unfortunate pair, I have to wonder, who at A1 pictures was masturbating frantically to shota porn before penning this storyboard. Sebastian and Ciel's relationship is complex, yes, but this series strips all nuance of their mutually antagonistic, predator-prey dynamic and replaces it with gay fanservice. I'm all for gay, just look at my list, but thirteen year old/immortal demon who looks at least thirty is a yikes from me. Apparently PTSD is too dark for this soft, PG production, but man/boy love is A-Ok. To make matters worse, somehow, it's very apparent from Ciel's original characterization that he's a CSA survivor, something that later became cold fact in the manga. Tween CSA survivor x Grown Man. Bad pedo, no biscuit. And speaking of biscuits...

Pluto. Pluto harpoons the atmosphere of the series. It's so bad, he gets his own section. The whole point of Black Butler is that it's 1800s realism with a smattering of supernatural elements based on Victorian beliefs about medicine. Nobody knows Sebastian is a demon, aside from other supernatural entities. The supernatural is hidden from the mundane humans of the setting, barring extreme, often deeply traumatic circumstances. The intrigue of the series relies on this. Pluto is a naked man who acts like a dog, and can transform into a giant, reality-defying, fire-breathing, obviously supernatural dog at will. All this, while also being fodder for the worst filler episodes in Black Butler. Uh... Pluto bad. Next.

Essentially, this adaptation of Black Butler is ground zero for everything wrong with the anime series as a whole. The ongoing confusion amidst fans over how the Book Of series connects to this anime is a great starting point. The mess they made of adapting the Curry Arc, cutting large segments of Agni and Soma's characterization in favor of wacky, non-canon stuff about curry buns curing possession, makes its connection to Book of Circus nebulous at best and jarring at worst. Everything following the curry arc is non-canon, and written like a cookie cutter supernatural shoujo from 2008. It's pretty bad. The villain's motivations don't make sense, Sebastian is treated as the second coming of Christ, and everyone is horribly out of character, even for this show. To make matters worse/even more confusing those who don't read the manga and go straight into Book of Circus, even the first three short arcs are not adapted even slightly faithfully, despite being published at the time, for... reasons? Why, A1? Why did you do this?

In short, A1 Pictures made the Black Butler fandom explode into prominence on the internet, and for that it should be praised, but it also is solely to blame for the most enduringly awful elements of that fandom. If you like shoujo from the 00s with underage gay baiting, you might find it tolerable, if a bit bland. If you want the dark tale of intrigue and sacrifice, heaped upon the shoulders of a small, traumatized boy, and have a pedo-apology free, cohesive, well-written experience, go read the manga, because you won't find it here.

Edit: After watching a video essay on the work that went into adapting the Nabokov book, Lolita, to film, something struck me as applicable to Kuroshitsuji's adaptation to anime. Lolita features a predatory older man abusing a young girl while occupying a parental role, sexualizing her actions, and is told entirely from his warped perspective as an unreliable narrator. A camera is a far more objective lens, and in Lolita's adaptations, Humbert (the narrator in the book) is often portrayed as suave and cultured, almost perfect, as if his description of himself in the book were objective reality. In Kuroshitsuji, there is a predatory eldritch abomination, abusing and traumatizing a young boy while occupying a parental role, portraying himself as the perfect butler on the outside. He shields Ciel from the light, anyone who would think to help him, and intends to devour him. He blinds others with his seeming perfection, so that they don't question his intention, or notice his lies. He jokes that he is 'simply one hell of a butler' as a way of poking fun from behind his facade, of signposting that he has pulled the wool over the onlookers' eyes to the point of being able to joke about it with none the wiser. The anime, likewise, takes this mask of quasi-angelic perfection that Sebastian uses to disguise his intent as a predator, entirely at face value, just like what happened with Humbert Humbert, the pedophile in Lolita. Both cases feature an adaptation of works staunchly condemning child sexual assault that end up sexualizing children instead. Regardless of A1 pictures intent in making this adaptation, they've warped and distorted the intended message of the series beyond recognition by buying into Sebastian's act, in the same way Kubrick did when he made the Lolita film adaptation.

Why did I read this? I mean, I knew it'd feature a lot of cheating. I didn't go into this blind. What I wasn't expecting, except perhaps by its persistently middling ranking here on MAL, was for it to be so boring and contrived.

Story: 3/10
The story of Netsuzou TRap is pretty familiar, if you've read manga or watched anime in the past two decades. High schoolers dealing with relationships, love, university prep and The Gay(tm). Only, because it's Japan, they're completely clueless to the idea that they're even in love half the time. Therefore, the 'plot' is essentially 85-90% misunderstandings and 'convenient interruptions'. This ... manga has little time for quiet moments, preferring to jump into awkward cheesecake at the drop of a hat, then 'conveniently' interrupt it before the mangaka might have to write something too spicy or emotionally touching. And speaking of awkward cheesecake...

Art: 5/10
The art is... serviceable. It's not amazingly consistent, or particularly noteworthy, but it generally gets across what's going on without being confusing. Some have mentioned the water balloon tiddies, which are pretty bad, but I think the main reason people tend to bring those up is that they're the only thing that stands out (badly) in the art style. Everything else about it is very 'generic shoujo/yuri art'. It basically exists to give the straights reading this something to drool over without requiring much effort on the author's part.

Characters: 3/10
Yuma is your innocent nice girl character, much like Yuzu from Citrus, who gets dragged into a largely unnecessary mess of badly written drama and manipulation. Confident on the outside, but emotionally vulnerable, and prone to trying to please others. Basically, she's a big part of my problems with this series, in that she spends ages fucking around and ignoring her feelings to drag out an otherwise uninspired romance arc, in that same shoujo style that felt tired when Bloom Into You appeared on the scene. She loves Hotaru, but won't spit it out because homophobia, and while that's somewhat valid at first, it's pretty tiring when nothing else is going on.

Hotaru is Yuma's manipulative childhood best friend, who spends most of the series coming onto her awkwardly before being interrupted. She's pretty opaque as a character, and while I kinda understand her circumstances, I didn't like her. She felt like an excuse to insert lesbian ecchi material into every other chapter, moreso than a character with consistent motivations. Again, it's that 'will-they-or-won't-they' tango that was popularized in shoujo manga. Whenever one half of a pairing seems like they have it together, the other one flakes out or does something dumb, all in the name of selling another volume of manga. Your bog standard character who's looking for validation in empty, unfulfilling sex.

Takeda is an actual cinnamon roll, and all round nicest person in this series. He's a nice dude, Yuma's boyfriend, and while his idea of foreplay leaves a lot to be desired (awkwardly pin her to a bed), he doesn't really seem to have a bad bone in his body. He's quite dull, too, but considering what 'interesting' characters look like in this series, he's the best of a bad lot.

Fujiwara is the nominal villain of the piece, and if you've ever seen a villainous man in a GL manga, you already know him. He's physically and emotionally abusive towards women, an aromantic fuckboy, and only really seems to care about Takeda. His whole internalized homophobia deal might have been interesting in a less toxic manga, but gay or not, he's here to play the part of 'asshole #2', and he does it with flair. If you don't hate Hotaru or Yuma, he's here to be your hate sink, and as a result, is a pretty poorly developed character otherwise. Still, at least you're meant to hate him.

Enjoyment 3/10
What can I say? It's like reading Citrus all over again, but worse in every way. Pointless, convoluted misunderstandings plot based entirely on romantic leads not talking? Check. Emotional abuse and sexual assault for edge factor? Check. Opaque, emotionally dense characters who nevertheless end up taking their clothes off a lot on panel? Check. Honestly, the more I look at it, it feels like a knockoff of Citrus with a cheating gimmick, although I'll admit I can't be bothered to check which came first. Given that I didn't like Citrus for similar reasons, it's not like I'm some fangirl here to chastise it for 'ripping off' my 'beloved manga'. NTR is everything I've come to loathe about GL writing in one neat package, in other words. Just... talk to each other. Dear gods, it's not hard. If NTR pissed you off, like it did me, go read Tsukiatte Agetemo Ii kana to detox. It's pretty much the polar opposite of this in terms of writing.

Overall: 3/10
I came into this review thinking I was going to be like 'meh, that was kinda bad, 4/10', but on the flipside it's coming out how much I hated reading this manga. If emotional intelligence is a worthwhile concept, then this manga contains the smoothest of smoothbrains. If you like gay girls loving each other, it's a frustrating waste of time spent watching poorly written hormonal teens make bad life choices. If you like seeing 'gay' girls do the sex at each other in improbable ways, which I know is a hit with dudes in the audience, then NTR will leave you blueballed due to constant interruptions. If you like cheesecake, but not smut, the 'plot' will make you spend plenty of time that could've been better spent looking at your pinup collection reading about angsty, boring teens abusing each other. Everyone loses. Now, pardon me, I have to go see if Ikemen Girl to Hakoiri Musume has any new chapters, and calm the hell down. I invite anyone who bothered to read this rant to join me.

So I saw the cover art and was like, 'sure, why not?' because it looked kinda cute. I swear it's like occasionally the gods see me partaking in the GL dumpster fire and decide to personally dump some shit on my head just to spite me. Ayame to Amane was one particularly fragrant nugget.

The cover is a goddamn lie. The art is nowhere near that good, not that the art being bad is really that important in the grand scheme of things. The OPM webcomic can attest to that. You can have bad art and still write a good manga, is my point. And it ... does improve noticeably over the 21 chapters I was able to stomach before tapping out. Honestly, at that point, if it wasn't this series, I'd probably be like 'yeah, art was bad but got better, 6/10', but it's not enough to make up for other flaws. I hope the author is at least getting that out of writing this series, because I can't fathom what other value they could be finding in it.

No, my main problem with this thing is just how abysmal it manages to be as a gag manga. It's basically a 'haha, gay people grope' manga. That's the joke. OPM arguably had one joke, too, but this is just so... so cringe. Like, maybe I don't get it because I'm LGBT myself, but why is this considered funny? It's not really poking fun at gropers (genuine problem, could be funny in an edgy kinda way), it's not really poking fun at oblivious gay schoolgirls (a staple of GL), it's just kinda 'gay people funny'. I have to wonder if Japanese people find this kinda stuff funny, or if they react to this in the same way we react to those old newspaper comics our parents might skim over on a Monday morning. You know that vague smile of 'hmm, I can see a joke was attempted here somewhere'?

As such, there's really nothing to say about the characters. The whole thing is one long 'joke' of Kamijou being thirsty for her friend Chiho, who doesn't feel that way about her, but for some reason tolerates her gropey, creepy bullshit. It's not really even creepy in the same way that stuff would be in bad romantic works, where I might react with genuine anger, because that's just normalizing toxic relationships. This is just stonefaced 'that's creepy', without the accompanying rage at the mangaka. I don't really feel anything for Ayame to Amane but vague disgust, as it's not really trying to be anything but a vaguely offensive stereotype.

Honestly, if you think gay people are intrinsically funny, and people reacting to gropey physical comedy is right up your alley, hey, whatever, I don't judge. You might get some enjoyment out of this manga. As it was, I wanted to get to current chapter, just so I felt I could review it fairly, but 21 chapters was enough to make me tap out in sheer boredom. I don't usually rate things this low unless I genuinely hate everything about them, but there's almost nothing for me to like here. There's no fluff, no angst, no funny jokes, no good art, no genuine feeling behind any of it that I can discern, and it's amazing/baffling to me that the author has managed to keep this level of 'quality' going for over thirty chapters.

If you like this, I'm not trying to judge, let's just say this one wasn't for me.

This one had a decent premise, but an absolutely horrible execution. Dear gods, where to begin? Y'know how BL from a certain era just had to make every little interaction vaguely noncon? That's this manga in spades.

Art 5/10
The art is honestly the easiest thing to critique, as it's disconnected from everything else for the most part. The characters are cute-ish, and the lineart's clean enough I suppose, but it's dreadfully generic. There's really not much about it to differentiate it from literally any other work from 2015 with regards to the art. I could probably look past it, if it weren't for the...

Story 3/10
For something ... about a literal alien coming to Earth to find his mate, they sure did make it boring. Like, you have free reign to make this some weird, trippy romance, with language barriers, cultural misunderstandings, or just plain biology, but no, we can't have any of that. There's some really halfhearted glimmers of the above, but for the most part it's just not very well written. Like, I'm honestly not sure what either of these characters see in each other, because our glimpses into their psyches are very minimal, and they lack really basic romantic chemistry barring a few vaguely cute moments. Other than a badly paced and executed romantic arc, there's nothing else going on, and that suuucks based on the premise. Like, call me dumb and optimistic, but I was picturing some sickeningly cute romance between an astronaut and an alien visitor based on the cover, which I'd consider an absolute goldmine of romantic potential, and apparently ignored the red flags.

Character 3/10
Did I mention that they made the alien really boring? In another work, he could have basically been a foreigner from Belgium for all the difference it made to his character. He and Minoru are very two-dimensional, they don't really talk about much, and it's hard to really get a feel for who they are as characters. Minoru doesn't have cute character moments, like... idk, showing his alien bf his model train collection. He's a lump. The alien, Sora, doesn't really have any cool anecdotes about his planet, or seemingly any culture of his own, because that would require the author to display some form of imagination. In a work about aliens. Speculative romantic fiction. With no culture clash. Simply boggling. If that was too much to ask, they could have at least made the alien sexy, with like... idk, a three foot tongue, or a vibrating butt, or god, anything alien about him. Nope, basically a human, no, make the nasty imaginations go away. What a fuckin' waste.

Enjoyment 2/10
The above elements combine in a way I just really don't care for. But what's worse is the sexual elements. BL still struggles as a genre with a long history of sexual assault played for comedy or drama, or even worse, played for romance. Afaik, this is inherited from its roots in the shoujo genre, which has similar problems. Uchuu has some problems with making every interaction vaguely noncon, generally due to what the characters say, and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, as it was completely unnecessary. Really, it undermines the characters even worse than their 2d nature. I have little to say beyond that. The story and characters bored me when they weren't being dickheads, and maybe some of it was the translation, but translators only work with what's already there, so the underlying writing was still way below par.

Overall 3/10
If you're a fan of rapey, old-style BL, then there might be some glimmers of that sweet, sweet noncon you're craving, but not much tbh. If you don't like rapey, old-style BL, then there's just a big pile o' nothing here. Like, maybe if you were trapped in an airplane bathroom, and this was the only reading material on hand, it'd be passable. But you might want to save the pages for other uses, if you catch my drift.

Lonely Girl ni Sakaraenai is a difficult one to pin down for me. The blackmail premise is spicy, but the pacing and tropey nature of some of the interactions kinda hamstring my enjoyment of it at the same time. Like, it's good enough, but it could've been great, and that's actually almost worse than it being mediocre.

See, I like it when GL works don't beat around the bush too much. It was my problem with Citrus, my problem with Bloom Into You, my problem with a lot of Korean works (Partition still keeps me awake at night), and why I love works like How Do ... We Relationship for not doing that. Now, I felt the blackmail premise was spicy enough to keep things slowburn for a while, so the pacing didn't initially bother me with Lonely Girl ni Sakaraenai, but as things progressed, it got slower and slower. Honestly, I'm worried at this point that if this manga ever gets to the point of them confessing, I'll be so frustrated from all the interruptions and plain fucking around that I won't care.

Some GL stories seem to have this weird issue where they feel the need to 'flesh out' the side characters by giving them a lot of panel time, yet never actually developing them in interesting ways. There's about three characters in this who I cannot remember the name of, or differentiate beyond basic appearance, and it kinda feels like any time they're on panel is dead air. Their reactions to the budding GL in their midst are pretty cute, and their attempts to wingman are fine, but good god do things feel slow at where the manga is up to so far, and their presence eating up panels often feels like it's only making that worse.

It's made bearable by the likeable main characters, who do genuinely care for one another, even if Sakurai really needs to get a clue, and Honda is too shy to actually spell it out to her. In another, better paced work, these two would probably be grappling with their inner demons together by now, and making out in broom closets, but it's entirely possible that the mangaka has no idea what to do with them once they hook up, and thus is intentionally dragging out the pre-relationship fluff/angst. Convenient interruptions are a trope I've come to despise, because it artificially drags out romantic arcs, often for little gain. My interest in said arcs comes from the process of character development, not dealing with a constant sense of 'if you would just fucking talk to each other for five goddamn minutes...' They're teenagers, so whatever, and it's still better so far than whatever the hell Citrus was doing in its middle volumes, so I can tolerate it for now.

Despite all this, I'd say I generally liked Lonely Girl ni Sakaraenai, even if I find it mildly frustrating. The art is cute and clean, and the characterization of the leads is handled pretty well for GL, particularly Honda's desperate loneliness, and Sakurai's difficulties with disappointing authority figures. When they interact, it's awkward and cute in the right general way for me, and when the story moves, it's genuinely fun to read, which showcases to me that it has potential. It's a little mediocre in places, a little frustrating in others, but generally a fun experience, in my opinion.