The cover copy says that this is a story of childhood lovers who later learn that their respective stations will keep them apart. Oooooo, a bunch of stuff Lyda loves! Forbidden love with explicit class conflict! Master/servant vibes! Sign me up!
But, this one didn’t work for me.
There’s a bunch of implied sex and some explicit stuff in the final chapters, but, for me, it somehow failed the dynamic(s) that I love so much. Also, the art in this one was very pretty, but, again, for me, fell into that ‘wispy’ category that I tend to dislike.
Also, you are welcome to disagree, but I’ve never been fond of the whole tsudere thing when presented as a given without a lot of context. I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t like being asked to PRESUME that someone who yells and snarls and rages has a tender heart underneath, without being given some evidence early on in the text to suggest that besides some smoldering glances.
The problem being that if you don’t get a true sense of the tender before the temper, it kind of just seems like abuse.
Obviously, if you read any of my fanfic, you know that I can personally get a lot of mileage out of a master/servant dynamic paired with a tsudere/blue oni top. And, I think I just answered my own question, which is: given this, why didn’t this work for me?
I want fire against ice. When the dynamic is imbalanced, I want to feel the chafe, the anguish, the shame, or whatever it is that twists up the lower-born when they are forced to submit to the whims of the higher-born. I want to know that the lower-born resists bondage, in a way, because that gives them power to match the power-over, if that makes sense?
A person could make the argument that in this story Laurent is the ice against Arthur’s fire, but this simple reverse screws up what’s hot (for me) about a power imbalance. If the guy with all the power uses it to throw himself against an ice princess who appears to only submit because it is what is required of him, I’m… feeling cringy? A little uncomfortable? Because, like, ice isn’t a very powerful weapon if it’s wielded against fire. If the fire is stronger than the ice, then ice just gets vaporized. Literally.
A small fire against a larger ice? That still does visible damage. The tiniest spark melts ice. That’s why I prefer it if there is fire on the bottom of the social rung, if you will. If there’s ice on top (not just sexually in this case, but also socio-economically,) even if it’s like in this manga, a somewhat an unbreakable barrier, the more the fire pushes against that wall, the closer they are to equal.
Does that make sense? Maybe I should talk about it in terms of the actual story of Flower Shadow’s Memory. Laurent is the ice; he’s also the low-born one who is essentially owned by Arthur the hot-headed tsundere of the English gentleman class. At some point, in their youth, Arthur supposedly fell in love with Laurent and has remained in love ever since. We get a tiny scene at the start that doesn’t entirely convey this love? It’s a bit metaphorical about admiring Laurent’s skill… as a gardener. But, then, flash to the now and Arthur is storming off after a fight with Laurent and the other servants sighing and saying, “Oh, fighting again, I see?” So, we know that Arthur verbally abuses Laurent all time and Laurent is all, “We must be kind to our lord…” and other beaten wife kinds of excuses. Later, too, in our first “sex scene,” we see Arthur forcing himself against a not-exactly-resisting, but head-turning-away Doing It for England-seeming Laurent.
Not a great first impression.
So when a handsome top-hat wearing gentleman, Carl, rides up and is all, “I like your flowers,” I immediately start rooting for Laurent to dump Arthur for this guy who seems to appreciate his passions.
Do you ever have friends where you look at their love life choices and think, “I give it a year, tops.” That’s kind of how I felt at the end of this manga, even though Arthur has done the unthinkable and sold or otherwise disposed of his family fortune in order to be a “lowly” peasant like Arthur.
Yeah, sure. Because class is just money, right? Get rid of the money and the property and I’m SURE Arthur is just a simple man with simple wants underneath! Surely, he rejects all those old-fangled ideas of the right of kings and royal blood being better than peasant stock!! Love will get them through!
I guess I don’t trust like that? How long until Arthur is all, “fetch me this!” and “My royal person! You dare!?”?
I give them a year, tops.
But, if you read this and think, “What? Is Lyda on crack again?? This sounds amazing!” Have at it with my full blessings! I did read to the end, so I can’t point fingers if you do too! To be fair, I was rooting for Carl, even though I knew that most of the time, manga doesn’t work like that, and there was some hope… alas. Listen, it’s fantasy. If you want to fall into the dream where the broody, vaguely wicked, Bad Boy English gentleman really is just a poor soul at heart who will give up his wealth and privilege just to be with you, his only love, who am I to deny you that! Sounds delightful!
I would have sworn that I read and reviewed another manga by nmura called Turns Out My Online Friend is My Real-Life Boss! (Online Game Nakama to Sashi Off shitara Shokuba no Onijoushi ga Kita), but I can’t seem to find it. This bugs me because I know I read a lot of it.
Anyway, I’m not here to talk about nmura-sensei’s other work. I’m here to tell you about four-tailed foxes and love in the 1920s, aka The Yearning Fox Lies in Wait.
SPOILERS . . . .
Our hero, Kiyo, is a nerd. He’s, of course, described as weird, but basically he’s the kind of kid who will spend hours watching the natural world and will study during his free time for fun. Eventually he wins a spot at the Imperial University in Tokyo.
On his way to student housing, he gets lost. Or maybe fate draws him down the wrong road. Regardless, he ends up at the door of Ozaki, a strange and beautiful man with white-gold hair. At first, Kiyo assumes Ozaki must be foreign, but it turns out he’s just a yokai. A fact that Kiyo discovers after he agrees to live in Ozaki’s mansion as a servant.
If you’re thinking, “Whoa, wait, how did we get here so fast!?” The truth is Kiyo is just that trusting. A total stranger says, “Hey, you want to live here instead of at the terrible student housing? You can do the cooking and cleaning?” Kiyo is just like, “Yeah, hell yeah.”
So, I kind of love Kiyo.
He’s the perfect candidate for a house boy too, since he really likes caring for Ozaki. In fact, he’s a bit fussy, always insisting that Kiyo take better care of himself–especially to stop wandering around the house, naked, and dripping from the bath.
At any rate, over time the two fall in love.
It’s a little time-skippy for me? You know I like my romances to be romance-y and this one really isn’t? There’s a couple of hurt/comfort scenes and one moment of misunderstanding/jealousy, but we’re left to fill in a lot of the gaps.
It works? But, it’s a little light on the ground.
My favorite running gag is that Kiyo is so curious about the world that he’s far more fascinated by cataloging the lifestyle of the yokai than being all that shocked to discover Ozaki with his tails out.
Kiyo spends a lot of the story worried that Ozaki was more in love with his grandfather than he is with him, but that was clearly “the misunderstanding” that they had to get past.
Would I recommend it? I don’t know. I found it at my library, (where I would have sworn I picked up the first volume of the other manga!), and sometimes I read what I read because it’s available and in front of me. This one is solidly okay. The art is fine. The romance is fine. The smut is non-existent (even though it’s shelved in the adult area of the library,) but not every yaoi needs to be extra smutty and sexy for me to enjoy it. I guess if you’re in the mood for something lightly fantasy and lightly historical this might fit the bill.
This review is a lie. Or, at the very least, a bit of a fake out.
I didn’t really read the manga. Instead, I recently watched the first 9 episodes of the anime Mirage of Blaze at a friend’s house. There’s not much manga out there and scanlators gave up on it over four years ago. You can look at it, if you like (embedded in the title above), but I’ll be honest….
I just need to talk to someone about this thing.
SPOILERS
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IIf you lookMirage of Blaze up on Wikipedia, you will see that it is much lauded as a breakout Boys’ Love/yaoi, even though it was originally a 41 volume light novel by Kuwabara Mizuna that wasn’t strictly published under that category (since it wasn’t manga.) Apparently, it also really boosted the practice of fannish tourism (called seichi junrei) because, as I’ll get into in a minute, a lot of the places in the light novel and anime are real locations and/or historical sites.
So far, so good, yes?
The plot is also really fascinating. Very basically, Mirage of Blaze is about some warlords from the Sengoku Period who have the magical ability to reincarnate themselves with their memories/personalities intact. There is more nuance to this, but, again, BASICALLY, they then use this ability to continue to wage war on each other, mostly through manipulating ghost armies, undead spirits, talismans, shinigami superpowers, etc., etc. All of this is invisible to regular humans, naturally, but, as in a lot of these kinds of anime, all their shenanigans have real world effects and consequences in whatever era they’re in.
The actual scene by scene plot is a bit of a mess.
I suspect the problem is that the light novels likely relied heavily on an author’s ability to slide in interesting infodumps, which work less well in anime, even with Aizen’s seiyū doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Add to this, that while several characters are mostly known by their historical names–some go back and forth. The main character is either called by his modern name, Ougi Tayama, or his historical one, Uesugi Kagetora, and sometimes as both in the same scene, depending on who is talking to or about him. And, of course, depending on intimacy-level the same person might be Ougi-kun, Tayama, The Uesugi, or Kagetora-sama.
So, just keeping track of who is being talked about can be a challenge.
Despite all this and missing out on at least 90% of the historical references, I really enjoyed a lot of the first half dozen or so of this anime.
Our main character is a high schooler, the aforementioned, Ougi Tayama, who initially resists his reawakening. We don’t know why at first, but there are early hints that there is a betrayal at the heart of it. It’s unusual that Tayama hasn’t fully matured into/accepted his historical self, since most of the other magical warlord-types seem to be born knowing they’re from 400 years ago. Tayama is just humming along being a high schooler until some bad actors try to possess his best friend and this older guy, Naoe Nobutsuna, shows up.
Naoe is fully presented as the hotty. He’s smooth. He’s cool. He’s shown embracing Tayama, half-naked, in all the opening and closing credits. So, the viewers have been waiting for this guy to make an appearance.
Then there are the typical plots that throw our heroes together for REASONS. This evil thing is infecting Tayama’s school, that evil thing has possessed his bestie, and all that other stuff that kind of just needs to be done because someone is up to no good. During all this, Tayama learns to use his from-the-past superpowers to defeat ghost armies and we meet up with some of the other exorcists from the past (including one who has chosen to be reborn as a woman. Nice.)
All of this is fine and we have this undercurrent of a hint that while Naoe seems like a loyal servant, maybe something went down in the past that is the reason Tayama doesn’t want to be his full other self.
What we discover is pretty awful.
Before I reveal what it is, I need to preface this with the fact that I felt zero sexual tension between the two mains, despite the fact that Naoe is voiced by Aizen whose voice is, IMHO, inherently sexy. Naoe is sexy because his voice is sexy and he looks good and has three cars. But, like he doesn’t behave particularly other than as kind of a mentor to Tayama, at least at first…
There is, by chance (though we later figure out why), a massive age gap between the ostensible love interests: Naoe and the rest of the cohorts all being 25-30-ish and Tayama being classically early, mid-highschool so like 15-17.
For many of you out there I understand this is a full stop, record scratch.
I’m with you? But, not necessarily due to the age gap. These are reincarnated 400 year old spirits. The age of the bodies don’t really matter so much to me. But, then again, maybe I would have been more squicked if there was any–and I mean ANY–flirtation or romance or even a sense of sparks between the two. They don’t like each other’s jokes. There’s no exasperated sigh and fond rustling of hair, even.
Nothing. Nada.
I wouldn’t even know I was supposed to root for these two except for those opening/ending songs.
Okay… then.
Somewhere around episode nine, we finally find out what happened in the past. Tayama (I am only using his modern name to avoid confusion) was, in another incarnation, murdered by Naoe who was apparently always obsessed with him in a “If I can’t have you, no one shall” way.
In fact, it’s not clear that Tayama ever reciprocated these feelings during ANY of the previous incarnations.
In the most recent previous lifetime (so a generation ago?) Naoe was driven to actual madness for some reason and strangled Tayama to death. Then, Naoe forcibly transferred Tayama’s soul into the body of Tayama’s lover/fiancee (ostensibly killing her in the transfer process) and then Naoe raped Tayama in her body, essentially raping both Tayama and Tayama’s lover simultaneously.
So. Yep.
That sucks.
Once he gets his full memories back, Tayama says, “I will never forgive you for this.”
Which, frankly, I agree with, despite the fact that previously, in a different scene, two of Tayama’s reincarnated buddies look at Naoe and Tayama, roll their eyes and jokingly imply, “Ha. Ha. These two! When are they going to get it together?”
Like, hopefully never?
Not after that sh*t.
I can imagine that in the remaining episodes and the OVAs there will be some attempt to show things from Naoe’s point of view and try to make sense of this horrific revelation. But I am here to tell you that it will take an actual miracle for me to forgive Naoe. Redemption arcs are only interesting to me if redemption is actually plausible. There are acts so heinous that they’re actually not forgivable. This one might be one of those.
And, I think, maybe, even despite how heinous the crime is, I’d feel more open to the idea of redemption if there had been any kind of affection shown between Naoe and Tayama in any other scene, ever, previous to this revelation. They have exactly one scene where they talk about something other than mission-related things and it ends with Naoe trying to force a kiss on an unwilling Tayama. I guess I’m supposed to be impressed that Naoe saw real fear in Tayama’s eye and let him go, but dude is still a rapist at heart.
And that’s kinda mission critical.
Tayama has a very weird sideways pseudo-love confession to a guy who picks him up off the street (actually his historical adoptive brother, but don’t even try to make sense of it all) in which Tayama seems to try to rearrange his own memories of everything that happened with Naoe into something he wants. Frankly, nothing Tayama said to his past foster-brother made any sense to me because, yes, Naoe is protective of him, but Naoe was LITERALLY his servant in a past life and also Tayama has the best superpowers, so… like you can’t let a guy like that get killed. I guess you could mistake protectiveness for love, but–news flash, gentle beings–it isn’t.
Okay, he took a couple of glass shards in the back for you, boyo. That does not love make.
Some folks seem to really love to fall for the guy who puts his body in front of yours or offers a hand when you fall. Knights in shining armor are hot, I get it. Plus, I guess when you’re not used to kindness, simple things do seem huge. And, like, let’s be real: in the right moment kindness and love are the same, BUT THAT’S NOT ENOUGH IF HE KILLS YOU AND THEN IS APPARENTLY IS NOT SATISFIED CHOKING YOU TO DEATH SO HE THEN RAPES YOU IN THE BODY OF YOUR DEAD LOVER.
Which, by the way, I presume is the reason for that age gap. She lived just that much longer before the next rebirth cycle. We do know she committed suicide, but it’s not clear how much longer after the rape (it’s sort of implied that it was long enough that she knew she’d been impregnated?)
Again, I might be up for redemption but Naoe has clearly learned nothing. He keeps saying things like “I will find a way so that you are bound to me forever. I will never let another have you,” and, you all? This is not romantic! It’s an obsession. At one point in this lifetime, Naoe fakes a betrayal in order to trap both of their souls in an evil mirror and then plans to love suicide the two of them into the lake, only without the love part of love suicide–or consent from an unconscious Tayama. He basically says something like “You’ll be mine for eternity, like it or not.”
Is this hot?
Maybe without the murder and rape, but with it? It’s NOT HOT.
Also, it’s clear that the historical version of Tayama (Uesugi Kagetora) is not as impressed. He remembers. He has not forgiven.
I’m with Uesugi-dono.
The double-standard is so fascinating to me. Some of y’all are still mad that Orihime kissed a sleeping Ichigo in Bleach (two years after Mirage of Blaze came out,) but like this is touted as SUPER (if tragically) ROMANTIC. Romance does not actually mean something different when written in gay.
At least it doesn’t to me.
And, yeah, I am aware of the fic I have written. I will admit to enjoying a rape fantasy as much as the next person. If it’s sexy for you, it’s sexy–no shame. But, it shouldn’t be tagged love or romance because it’s important to remember that gay men, historically, are seen as sexual predators and if we believe that this is what love is for men… well, y’all know the drill. It’s not cool.
Plus, it’s just not all that gay. It’s more toxic masculinity dialed up to 11. Tayama says things like “I will never be submissive to you!” and “Are you trying to make me your woman?” I think that sucks away some of the potential hotness for me, because it’s clearly violence that just happens to be sexual.
I know this is all very harsh critique, but I am still very much up for watching to the end. I’ll be really, really interested how this gets sold. If any of you have seen this and want to argue, convince, or otherwise try to console me, please DO! I am here for it. I like to complain, but, especially with my fannish media, that’s one of my love languages, you know right?
Any thoughts? Any arguments?
As a manga, I can’t really recommend it because there’s not enough out there. As an anime? I guess, despite my massive feelings, the jury *is,* technically, still out.
The back of this manga describes itself as a “poetic memoir,” though I feel like the term semi-autobiographical might also apply. It’s basically the lightly fictionalized story of Mizuki-sensei‘s early life in the remote coastal city of Sakaiminato and the woman, whom he nicknames Nonnonba, who tells him many of the stories of yokai that would become fundamental to his later works. One of the obviously fictional bits is that Mizuki-sensei has conversations with and interactions with yokai and that sort of spooky, but lighthearted tone left me unprepared for some of the more serious turns in this 408-page manga.
SPOILERS
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Let’s go right into it, shall we?
Even though one of the early color spreads mentions a character that we’re introduced to much later in the volume, Miwa, as having been “sold,” I was fully unprepared for a primary school age girl to be very matter-of-factly sent into a geisha house in Kobe. It is both explicit that Miwa, whom Shigeru has befriended, is just old enough to consider sending to school, but also that this is slavery. They refer to the man who at first appears to be her father as a “slaver,” and there is a scene where he is clearly in the business of selling other women and girls into sex slavery.
And, the story gets more hardcore because Shigeru doesn’t want this life for his friend, but he’s basically talked out of trying to rescue her by saying that it would be too “troublesome” for both himself and Miwa. He is counseled to hold his peace and let her go.
And so he does.
Miwa, like, I dunno, ten?
And, that’s the story the book ends with–this absolutely horrific story that’s told with a gentle sort of melancholy of a friendship lost to fate. Like, I dunno, the inevitability of a favorite pet’s death or something.
God it sucks to be a woman in Japan. Because the only other girl near Shigeru’s age that we meet is his cousin, Chigusa, who is dying (and eventually succumbs) to tuberculosis.
Oof.
The only thing about Chigusa’s story that is nice is that it inspires an incredible spread of Shigeru’s imaginative flight with her into the ‘hundred thousand worlds,’ a Buddhist afterlife.
Meanwhile, Shigeru and all the young men in his life are having these wonderfully raucous lives where they’re playing at being soldiers, taunting each other into haunted houses, and generally skipping school to get up to no good while interacting with the local yokai. All of which, while violent in places, seems delightfully wild and free.
Ah, a boy’s life is the life for me.
Alas, the book reads a whole lot differently as a woman. It’s still well worth the read–the art, while very stylized, is very detailed and fantastic–but I think female readers should be cautioned to be braced for impact. Just don’t attach to any of the young female characters and you’ll be all right. Nonnonba, herself, is fantastic character and, I can spoil for you, makes it the final reel, as it were. So, if you want to invest in her story, you absolutely can.
The monster art is pretty fantastic, and, if you like autobiographical manga, I absolutely recommend this one–unlike a lot of manga artist’s autobiographies, this one really doesn’t tell the story of Shigeru’s art, more his foundational childhood memories, particularly of yokai.
Unfortunately, no one has scanlated this one, so if you want to read it, I recommend checking your local library or taking the plunge and buying the MASSIVE official English-language volume. I will say that if you’re on the fence, there are several lovely stories in here including one in which thanks to Shigeru’s highly-educated, but weirdly incompetent father, the family ends up harboring a knife-wielding bank robber that I would say is fully worth the price. Amazon has it listed around $12 US, which is a good deal considering how many pages this volume is.
This manga is a classic and an award-winner for good reason…. I just wasn’t prepped for life as a young girl in Japan in the 1930s.
As I continue to plow through my TBR pile uncovered while cleaning, I finally came across two manga in a row! I even have number 1.
Will miracles never cease?
Thus, continuing the China theme, Qwan is a supernatural manga set during the fall of the Han Dynasty, apparently drawing heavily on The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (something, like Journey to the West, that I feel like I should really know more about than I do.)
I have mixed feelings about this one, if I’m honest.
SPOILERS
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I really want to like Qwan, both as a manga and a character. First of all, the character is right up my alley–he’s a fully supernatural being, having fallen directly from heaven in the opening panels, who eats demons. He’s kind of naïve in an adorable way andinstantly falls in with a delinquent type named Chikai. Chikai is everything I want in my fictional men.
Which is to say, Chikai is kind of a moron, definitely up to no good, and fully in it for the money. Not worth the space he occupies. Literally, immediately the person I most identify with.
After Chikai nearly get strung up for eating the offerings left at the shrine of the local god, Qwan and he start making a living as wandering exorcists. Chikai does the talking and Qwan does the demon eating. Things go along like this for awhile until they run afoul of a magical girl who can control insects, Daki.
Daki comes with a lot of complication, including a snake-demon mother and a sociopathic spider-demon father. She’s a good kid, though? Like, part of her whole schtick is that she’s a very dutiful daughter, except her parents fully suck (at least dad, mom is actually very loving despite being a snake.) She is also critical to the plot. It turns out that her spidery-father is trying to get his hands on a macguffin, the Scroll of Essential Arts of Peace, which is also critical to unraveling–or perhaps, tying back together–the secret of Qwan’s existence and purpose. So, for a good part of volumes one and two, Qwan and Daki do a dance around each other that culminates in sneaking into the Imperial Palace to steal the scroll. Unbeknownst to either Qwan or Daki, an imperial scholar, Jou Kai (courtesy name Kuko) has already secreted it away, having predicted through the stars that the heavenly mandate for the Han Empire has already faded.
I really liked this particular plot.
I was very into all the political twists and turns, in particular when in volume two the grandson of Eunuch Cao Jie, Aman (courtesy name Sousou or Cao Cao) shows up.
In fact, I was strongly enough invested in this storyline that I was like, okay, looks like the scanlations continue elsewhere, I will read on to see what happens next.
What happens next is… really f*cking weird.
All of a sudden, the story takes a full left turn into a fantasy land. The politics are forgotten and we spend a lot of time in a place called The Golden Turtle Island. As the chapter title says: “Wherein Qwan, Shaga, and Teikou are spirited away.”
And… precisely where I lost interest.
I skimmed a bunch of pages waiting to see if this was a very short interlude to heal Qwan, who had suffered a lot of injuries in the previous battles, but it seems to go on and on. Summaries of the rest tell me that when we do finally return to the plot and the people I like, seventeen years have passed.
So, I am left with very mixed feelings. I was super into this for the first two volumes. It’s possible that if I can figure out where the story returns to the people and the world I love, I might enjoy the ending? I want to like this, but I have zero interest in the events on Golden Turtle Island. If other people reading this review have finished this series, please advise!
This is always a problem when reading anything that has multiple characters. As an author myself, I try to be cognizant of the fact that sometimes people only tolerate the main character because they love the people that they’ve attracted into their Scooby Gang. I’d been feeling pretty confident while reading Qwan, because I liked more that one of Qwan’s friend group. I was into Chakai, Aman, and the imperial scholar guy Jou Kai. I figured that with this many side character that I liked, I wouldn’t hit that point where if someone I like dies or leaves the story I just sort of limp towards the ending joylessly (or quit entirely.) But, then they literally a disappeared in a puff of smoke and I was left with Qwan, who I liked okay, but is literally a supernatural being and, thus, isn’t exactly RELATABLE, his weird mom-like prostitute goddess friend, Shaga, and the manga’s mascot demon, Teikou.
…
Because this whole story is available online, I have a lot less hesitation recommending it to you. If this sounds at all interesting or if you just want to see how WRONG I am about all of this, go for it.
The art will not disappoint.
In fact, I liked Shimizu-sensei’s art so much that I’m thinking about tracking down some of her other work to see if there’s something there I might enjoy even more than I did the first two volumes of this.
Will I keep it? I mean, by chance, the stuff I like best takes place in the volumes I bought, so… maybe? Yes?
Even though apparently I’m still a very haphazard collector of manga, it turns out that all of the stories in the Korean manhwa series Time and Again are loosely connected short stories that follow the exorcist Baek-On and his bodyguard Ho-Yeon (who welds the ghost blade, Shin-Wal). So, even though I couldn’t find a pirated scan of these volumes anywhere online, I was able to read volume 3 without having read any of the previous stories.
And… I really liked it.
Weirdly, this may be my first keeper.
SPOILERS
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Knowing that each story was only vaguely connected to the next was really helpful for me when reading this.
The other bit of information that might make a reader appreciate the chapters in Time and Again a bit better is that the manhwaga uses wide range of Asian ghost stories and folklore as a basis for her own interpretations. For instance, the first chapter, called “Karma,” is loosely based on a story in a Chinese book that she references in the author’s notes at the end. Similarly, she draws on the traditional Korean story “The Story of Sim Cheong,” in a later chapter. There was nothing Japanese, so far as I can tell, but Baek-On and Ho-Yeon are clearly traveling around the entire contiguous Asian continent. So if the cultural vibe is also hard to pin down, this is why.
Likewise, the narrative will do that sudden and abrupt end that is not at all common in Western folklore/ghost stories. Being more Puritan in nature, many Westerners, particularly Americans, expect our ghosts stories to end with a kind of moral. Many of the ones here and those which I have encountered in Japanese horror are just like, “and her eyes were plucked out, the end” with no further denouement or explanation of why she “deserved” this horrible fate. (This example does NOT appear in the manhwa.) It can be very disconcerting, however, if you’ve never read or watched anything like this before.
Also being ghost stories, some of the events portrayed are really grim.
I had been prepped for all of this, since, in my search for a scanned version, I ended up reading a lot of complaints and counter-arguments on Goodreads about this series. And, I will say, it did help.
So, without further ado, let’s get to the shorts themselves.
The story that opens this volume is called “Karma.” It begins with our exorcist hero, Baek-On, complaining to the ghost of Wan-Wan that she really just needs to move on because he’s bored with her constant hauntings. Wan-Wan, however, feels pretty darned stubborn about the wrong done to her, which, frankly, seems reasonable to me. The story she tells Baek-On is that, after having been sold as a concubine, her father sent her a tear-stained letter begging for her forgiveness for his poverty and inability to protect her. When her master came in and found her reading, she swallowed the letter. Thinking it was a love letter from a rival, the jealous master RIPPED HER STOMACH OPEN to retrieve it.
Something he apparently feels a little bad about in retrospect.
Given the gruesomeness of the crime, you’d think this story would end very tragically or seriously, but instead Baek-On reveals his clever/mischievous personality by convincing Wan-Wan that making her former master perform a royal feast on her gravesite once every three years should be payment enough. It’s clear by his reaction at the addition of “every three years” that the the master feels he will be bankrupted by this.
So. Justice?
Who knows.
“A Forked Road,” is the next chapter title, but it seems to actually weave together several different stories. First, our exorcist is asked to help a man who has clearly married a sociopath. She keeps killing his maids and concubines, which turns him off a bit, but they are only slaves, after all.
This problem stumps Baek-On a bit, so he and Ho-Yeon head over to a soothsayer they know, who suggests that the problem is actually due to a mistake made in a previous life. The curse has to play out. So, Baek-On goes back to the guy and tells him to let his wife keep killing, because she only need to kill one more person, After that the curse will be lifted for all generations. Dude is initially like… uh, okay, but then it turns out that the last death is their own daughter.
This makes the guy hop on a horse and rush to his wife’s side, only to find her standing over their nearly dead daughter with a whip in hand.
He flies into a rage and kills his wife. The daughter recovers.
The story seems to stop there, but it really doesn’t. There isn’t a great visual break to show the time lapse, but some time later we pick up with Baek-On and Ho-Yeon speaking to a woman in a nearby village about her infertility problems and the guy with the sociopathic wife shows up and demands his money back. To be fair to him, he found Baek-On’s advice to just let the killing continue to be kind of bullshit. Tragedy still happened and that was what he’d been paying Baek-On to AVOID. So, Baek-On has Ho-Yeon fetch the guy’s money back and they refund him and, because it happened in front of a current customer, also offer her a refund.
Baek-On and Ho-Yeon go to bed on an empty stomach, which would be bad enough, but Ho-Yeon informs his master that he wants five days off to go visit an old friend who is a low-level magistrate in this province. Baek-On is clearly heartbroken at the idea of his incredibly handsome bodyguard swaning off anywhere without him. Eventually, he grumpily agrees and looks very miserable to be left alone in bed.
Ho-Yeon then gives us a bit of his backstory and, in another scene, the story of his magistrate friend’s marriage. The magistrate, you see, was once a man full of love, until that fateful day he came home unexpectedly early and found his wife and her lover hiding in the armoire. Since he just came from the battlefield, he proceeds to pepper the closet with enough arrows to make sure they’re both dead.
FUN TIMES!
The only place in this volume where I felt like I was missing not having read anything previously was in this chapter. The story of the magistrate’s double-murder is framed by Ho-Yeon’s backstory. The only thing I can glean from the images and dialogue we get is that Ho-Yeon is somehow responsible for murdering his own sister, possibly after breaking a vow to his former martial arts instructor never to become a warrior, because, counterintuitively, his skill even as a small child was so great as to be otherworldly dangerous–which is kind of a cool problem to have?
I will say that Ho-Yeon in particular grew on me in these stories. In the next chapter “Bound,” we also get the first indication that Ho-Yeon is in possession of a magical ghost killing sword with a name, Shin-Wal.
Apparently, if anyone but Ho-Yeon touches her, she bites.
“Bound” is actually a story that mostly ignores our heroes–we only see them briefly at the beginning when Baek-On cross dresses in order to poison a monster who has been luring the local kinyu (back matter says this is the Korean equivalent of geisha) to their deaths. Otherwise, it’s the story of filial duty based on the Tale of Sim Chong.
The final chapter in this story tells the story of Shin-Wal.
I should probably see a psychologist to determine why I found such deeply disturbing and vaguely sociopathic stories so amusing and entertaining, but there you have it. You know, it doesn’t hurt that Baek-On is pretty obviously bisexual in the flamboyant manner of Wei Wuxian from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation and that Ho-Yeon, who is deeply bored by this visit to the brothel, is very likely a stoic closet queen. But, you know, none of that is explicit in any way, but it goes a long way towards my personal enjoyment of this strange little collection.
Can I recommend it to you? Maybe? Maybe not.
The thing is, all six volumes are available at Yen Press for $10.99 (US)/ $12.99 (CAN) each, and, once again, I find myself stymied by the answer to the question, “Is this series worth $66 and some change?” Given that the copy I own was dumped from my library, it’s possible that you can find other, less expensive means of procuring these stories if the art and the idea appeals to you.
Speaking of art, I will say that I agree with the one Goodreads commenter who had trouble with this series because they couldn’t always tell if the manhwaga had drawn a man or a woman. Normally, I find this kind of critique to be easily blown off because, wasn’t that all of us when we first started reading manga to some extent? It’s a classic complaint, at any rate. However, I actually hit this, myself? It was particularly problematic for me when we were in Ho-Yeon’s flashback and I wasn’t sure if he was the young Master Wee, or if that was his sister? For a brief moment, I entertained that what we were going to learn in this flashback was that Ho-Yeon was actually his own sister in disguise this whole time. But, I… don’t think so? So, I mean, the art really does get a bit in the way of the story in this case.
The whole thing is also in what I call the “wispy” style that I’m, personally, not overly fond of.
But, you know, as I always say: mileage may vary.
I do think this volume is one I will keep. I may actually attempt to collect the rest as well (though probably not at $11 a pop!)
If you enjoyed all the political maneuverings of Untamed/Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, but wished it was set in a fantasy, historical Korea and there was a lot more explicit sex, The King’s Bodyguard/Share a Bed might be the manhwa for you. (Though, please note: the linked version is censored.)
SPOILERS
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The meet-cute happens when Huen, a spy for the Queen and the finest swordsman in the entire country, is assigned to watch over a frivolous king, who’s first orders are utterly smutty. Basically, to test him, he has Huen strip… and a bit more. The politics are already afoot, however, since the Queen is well aware that Huen is utterly obedient and, thus, a perfect distraction for a king who she can undermine by simply keeping him busy f*cking off, literally.
The rest of the manhwa is basically the two of them falling in love as an after effect of a lot of hot sex, and Huen slowly shifting his loyalty. All of which are tested by ex-lover spymasters, political intrigue, faked plagues, the Queen’s pregnancy, and coups.
It seems to me that this manhwa exists specifically for Untamed fans looking for something different, but similar. There’s no magic in this world, but there’s a lot of “but can they really be together?” tension due to social class, gender, and… of course, politics. Like Untamed, this manhwa works best if you care about some of the side characters, like the scheming queen and her brother whose politics seem to shift with the wind, but who has a lot of unrequired affection for the king.
I’ll be honest. I was there mostly for the smut, which is plentiful. The politics, however, isn’t half bad either.
I liked the art quite a bit. In places it’s actually very detailed and pretty.
The scanlations that I found ran out before the story was over (which is complete at 60 chapters, according to Baka-Updates), but it is licensed in English. If you like your smut with a decent amount of plot, you might enjoy this. I initially wasn’t sure I would care much for the king, but he grew on me. By the end (of what is available so far, at any rate,) I was rooting for this Lancelot/Arthur romance (to put it in Western terms!) I don’t know enough about Korean politics even what time period this was suppose to take place in or to know what, if any parts of this, are based on historical fact. I doubt it matters? It’s meant to be a very smutty period drama with pretty sets and costumes.
This is the first time I’ve read straight smut and I really don’t even know how to feel.
But, okay, I picked up Oiran Chirashi / Scattered Courtesan because I was looking through a list of manga that featured oiran, and this was the first one that someone had scanlated.
SPOILERS
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Apparently, it’s pretty common in Japanese fantasy to literally fall into another world. It’s like you’re just walking down an ordinary stairs, trip, and end up in the past. There doesn’t have to be anything magical about the steps, you just have to seriously injure yourself. Honestly, if you get hit by a bus in Japan, you can also travel through time. I mean, I sort of get the connection–it’s a near death experience, and we all agree in whatever culture that being at the doorway between life and death is a very magical space.
Even so, I find this… an odd conceit? But, once you know this is just a thing, it’s easy enough to roll with.
So, the heroine of this manga, Hanamori Haru, is an ordinary office lady, until one day she is hit by a bus. Her accident catapults her back in time, specifically to the Edo period’s Toguwara Shogunate’s Yoshiwara District–which was basically a state sponsored red light district.
I guess you did!
She runs into a very helpful guy, Shouhei, who turns her into the madam of a house he’s associated with as the hair dresser. Yeah, I thought he’d be gay, too, but it turns out not only is he straight–which is only one of a number of unbelievable surprises about him.
But, back to the story.
Haru ends up panickly confessing to Shouhei that she isn’t ready to be a prostitute because she’s a virgin. He’s really sympathetic, but says, “Yeah, well, you have to do what you have to do to survive. We all do.” To be far to Haru at this point, she’s seen how hard core the madam can be and there don’t seem to be a lot of options.
But, she likes Shouhei, so the next time they’re alone, she asks him if he will be her first.
He’s surprisingly gentle and Haru falls for him.
This being a smut, a large portion of the plot revolves around Haru adjusting to life as an orian. We discover it’s not lawless. While she can’t refuse any customers, she can refuse certain acts. As the madam explains to a guy looking for rough trade(bondage, etc.), this is for playing a marriage only (which, I mean, excuse me, some people’s marriages do include BDSM, but okay, whatever.)
Through out all of this, Haru and Shouhei find secret times to be together and get it on. At one point, while they end up in the bath together, Haru discovers that Shouhei has a modern watch. So, he’s a time traveler, too.
When she confronts him, they make plans to try to escape back to their own time together. But, HOW they’re going to accomplish this remains unclear until the establishment is on fire. Then, they have to try to leap out a high window to make their escape… the act of near-death falling propels them back into the now…. where Haru realizes she never ask Shouhei his surname.
Or what year he came from.
While she was back in the Edo period, however, her phone had picked up a message from our time. She was able to open it and there were kind words of encouragement. So, thinking on this, she decides to reply now that she has a signal again.
Turns out, Shouhei was from four years earlier and he’d been searching for her this whole time.
That’s… I mean, pretty romantic, Mr. Hairdresser! The story ends with them happily-ever-aftering in the now.
I ended up enjoying the story, but I am still fairly traumatized by the straight sex. This is labeled as ‘smut’ on many sites, so the sex was fairly graphic, although more “R” rated, than “X.” We got a lot of her boobs and a lot of positioning from him, but none of his salient bits. I have no idea if it was sexy, I kind of boggled at a lot of it, honestly. However, I suspect 90% of you might find it to be your sort of thing. In which case, I would recommend it, I think?
Your mileage may vary due to passing interest in sex work. As has been discussed here before, I am almost always up for any story involving sex workers. I don’t know why. It’s just a fascination I have, I suppose. That was, in fact, why I started looking to see if there were any stories I might enjoy with oiran.
The art is on the wispy side? I never found our heroine, Haru, to be terribly cute, though Shouhei isn’t bad–though very blandly bishi, IMHO.
For me, it was more of an experimental read. I’m not sure how the experiment worked. I’ll get back to you on that.
The lashes alone on these eyes… it’s prime 1997, right there, my friends.
So, once again, I am coming to Cetvs: The Roman Fighter having found it first as an anime on Crunchyroll. I’m going to surprise myself by saying that I am a little disappointed that the scanlators either ran out of steam or material some time in 2019, because from the looks of things the manga is a lot more racy than the anime is going to be…. maybe not in a good way? But, I’ll get to that under the spoiler warning.
SPOILERS
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It is possible, in this case that this manga is actually somewhat difficult to find. The original series was published in Hakusensha’s Young Animal from 1997 to 2010, according to Wikipedia. There are apparently 15 volumes of tankoban out there somewhere, but these things are, at their youngest, over a decade old. The first volume came out 30 odd years ago.
And it kind of shows?
What can I even say about this that will leave you with even a sliver of respect left for me? To my credit, the mangaka, Wazurai-sensei went to school with Kentaro Miura, the author of Berserk, who recently passed away. Their style and sensibilities seem similar? Like Cestvs reads like it is going to be tragic… and, you know, chapter one already is? There is forced fighting of the best friend, who then is killed by the Roman guards for losing.
Basically, the story follows our hapless hero, Cestvs, a slave in Roman times. He is super skinny, but hella fast, and that’s like his superpower? We see him in the first few panels being able to pluck flies from the air with his fists. Probably because he is so fast, Cestvs is being trained by a former gladiator legend, Zafar, the “Numidian Wolf,” in the intricacies of boxing. People die. Even Cestvs himself vows at one point that it’s probably NOT A GOOD IDEA to make friends, since he’d just going to end up having to kill them.
There’s not a huge amount else to what I read… I mean, there’s a LOT of angst? But, ultimately, it’s fighting manga, so people fight. There is a lot of of blood and people’s faces getting smashed…. and I should not have found it as compelling as I did. It helps, as I said, that all that was available to me was the first volume.
I will be curious to know what they do in the anime about the mother/child incest that seems to be happening between the Emperor Nero and his mother at the end of the manga… I was actually kind of shocked when the last page of the volume showed Nero’s mom full-on naked in bed with her son. Just like, staring at the camera, boobs out, naked. So! I mean… is this where this was going? Should I be disappointed that there was no sexual abuse of the slaves yet??? (I mean, I’m not? It’s brutal enough!)
Anyway, do with this review what you will. I don’t imagine this manga is anyone else’s cup of tea, since I’m not even sure it’s mine?
However, this mangaka must just like historical boxing? There is a more recent sequel to this, and he is also the author or Blaster Knuckle, which, I’m not gonna lie, looks kind of cool because its about a Black boxer who takes on the Klu Klux Klan in 1883. Who is not into that?
