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I really wanted to like this book, but several factors prevented me from doing so.

One: The art style. I really did not like it. I found it drab, hard to look at, and just plain bad. Keep in mind, I am critiquing it based on my own personal preferences; you may like it, even if I don't. However, it felt crudely drawn to me and there was a few instances of hair-covered eyes still showing through clearly, as if their eyes are located on their hair and not in the socket. I hate that.

Two: Jiro. He was whiny, bratty, and always needed saving. He cried ... when he didn't get his way and was extremely clingy. Doomed to be forever overprotected by his extremely weird brother, whose transformation still confuses me to this day.

Three: The plot. It felt rushed. Too rushed. Kind of like when you really, really want to play a game but you have fifteen minutes until you need to go somewhere so you just play in a hurry and then leave the mess out for future-you to clean up, much to future-you's ire. It feels like the mangaka drew with that kind of "I really want to do this but I don't have time so let's do it quickly!" mentality. Everything happened so quickly there was almost no transition between one thing and the next.

Honestly, I was so looking forward to this manga. I found the plot to be promising, I liked the front cover art, but ultimately two good things were let down by a disappointing story.

(Review taken from my Goodreads page! Link to my page can be found in my profile)

This book features two different stories. Neither of them are memorable.

The first story really seems to have an issue with 'doth thou protesteth too much' because in every chapter, at least five times in a row, one of the main characters must reiterate that he's not gay, even though he's embarking on a rather sexual relationship with a male co-worker.

No, nothing gay about that at all. Not even a little bit.

But being gay is seen as a really big issue, and seeing it's in Japan I can understand, but for ... someone who comes from a country that's a little more open-minded, hearing "somehow word that he's gay didn't spread around" and "I'm not gay" and "Shinohara is gay" gets very tiring very quickly. Hayashi clearly has some issues to work through if he's obsessing about who is gay (Shinohara) and who is not (Hayashi, apparently).

The biggest trope I've found in yaoi manga is that men are often emotionally stunted when it comes to love between two men. They tend to stress out, agonise over everything, and fuck it up a time or two. They also cling to their former status of heterosexuality like it's a lifeline, saving them from drowning to death, because they're terrified of what being gay may entail (it's really no different than heterosexual love, fyi).

Some mangaka can really make this trope work, but some (like this mangaka) almost hit the mark but at the very last second they seem to change their mind and veer off course.

What I did like was the art style; it was very clear and well-drawn, and detailed when it counted. I never felt confused at what I was looking at, nor did the faces sort of blend together to the point where you can only differentiate between characters by their hairstyle.

Either way, this book is a good way to kill time for a while, or boost your reading challenge for the year, but ultimately it really is forgettable and not something to be taken seriously.

(Review pulled from my Goodreads page! Link to my page provided in my profile.)

Unfortunately this manga felt a little disorganised to me. In both the characters' thoughts and the structure of this manga, it feels like the mangaka didn't really know what they were doing and constructed a story in roughly a day or two and went with it without really thinking if any of this made sense.

Several times the mangaka has alluded to the fact that something is wrong with one of the characters, however we don't get an introduction into what that problem is. We're brought into the story in the middle of ... the conflicting feelings and given no explanation. It's very easy to get lost and not understand.

Even the conflicts and problems that did happen didn't really seem all that huge - certainly not enough to warrant the reaction it got from the characters. Occasionally it felt as though everyone was being melodramatic and it really took away from the story.

Supposedly there is a love triangle between Kanoh, Midori and Hanabusa, but we don't get an introduction to that. Like everything else, we're thrust into their conflict with no warning, preparation or back-story. How are we really supposed to root for anyone when we don't even know them? An example of messy story-telling.

If a little more thought had gone into this manga, I believe it could've really been a good one. However it only turns out to be a good way to waste the forty to sixty minutes it takes to get through it.