文月 あつよ

The first story in this volume is multi-chapter, the rest are one-shots.

The first/main story, by virtue of a surprisingly decent premise/plot, the ability to keep the characters surprisingly non-femmy despite all the squishy emotions flying around, and art that has a bit of its own flavor and is quite pretty in backgrounds and character designs and also follows the non-overly-feminine theme (sample page here doesn't really do it justice), this manga got me to read it long enough to finish and review it. But while that may sound like pretty good praise, it's actually rather disappointing overall.

It's about a guy who joins a club and becomes smitten with the president. The president also seems to have a fondness for him, however there is a person from his past who was very important to him and he does not want to stop waiting for. Again, I kind of liked the premise, as it was more than Mr.A likes Mr.B and Mr.B likes Mr.A (with varying degrees of awareness), but one or both will not admit his feelings oh noes!!! Plus, the aforementioned keeping mostly away from the ultra-girly characterizations and designs.

On the other hand, I don't feel much in the emotions or attraction between the two here. In a story as short as this, it's pretty important for each scene work well and reveal what it should about the characters and their emotions. Here, scenes between the two are mostly just introduced, hit the plot points they must, and get out, without really trying to pull the mood and feelings out of each situation. A big part of the problem was that time that could have been spent fleshing out each scene between the mains more was spent clipping those scenes off for scenes about spastic, 'humorous' club member meetings and interactions. I admit I have a bias against these scenes in any series, as they often seem to opt for high energy and randomness over actual humor. Usually I can at least somewhat overlook such scenes, though, and I usually do appreciate when a BL tries to do something else rather than scenes DIRECTLY related to the romantic plot, but here it was not only mostly as pointless as ever (besides a few plot functions), but again was gobbling up time that could have been better used.

Of the other stories, the very short second is thoroughly standard and mundane, the last two are shorter but (besides the distraction with club activities) share a lot of traits with the first. Not a bad premise, no effective handling of fleshing out emotions. On the other hand, I admit I am a little easier on these ones, as the pr0n seems to be a bigger part of these, and I think most short smut-focused stories I read a little worse than this even with the bad points (though admittedly probably also more smut-filled as well).

In the end, it's not so much that the feelings in these stories don't ring true, like I feel about a lot of BL. It's just that they are to me barely felt one way or the other. This may be the author's desire to stay away from the over-the-top melodrama of much of this genre (a pet peeve of mine as well), but if so the attempt sadly fails, as unfortunately when writing an understated romance, methinks there still needs to be some sort of better defined romantic feelings which you may then understate.

A more writing focused person, I really want to give this two stars, but I'd feel bad not giving this manga credit for the art. I'll give it a three, but my frown runs a little deeper than that. All the same, despite being completely left cold as far as emotionally connecting with the writing, with some of the things this mangaka seems to be *trying* to do, part of me glances at their other works and wonders if this is just some missteps of a normally (or sometimes?) better writer.… (mehr)