I shouldn’t have prayed for the yaoi gods to smile upon me yesterday. It only incurred their sense of schadenfraude…
Ambiguous Relationship by Masara Minase
Ambiguous? More like ABUSIVE! Half the stories in this collection begin the relationships with rape or coerced sex. Seriously, this manga was a montage of terrible ways to begin a romantic or sexual relationship: Outright rape, coercion, a boss demanding that his secretary sleep with him and financial pressure to become a kept man. There’s even an adult who winds up sleeping with a minor, and that’s one of the cuter stories in this book. (More on that later.)
I don’t know what to say about the writing other than I still don’t understand how any manga with this kind of romance or sex sells this much. It just doesn’t turn me on and I can’t understand how it could possibly turn anyone else on. I can kind of understand in the story where an older man puts financial pressure on a younger friend to become his adopted son/heir/lover (which is apparently common among gay couples so that they can be legally attached to each other when gay marriage isn’t an option.) The fantasies at play there are “he’ll do anything to be with me”, “he’ll take care of me for life” and “He wants me to be his forever.” Those are all fantasies that depend on the context of the story to determine whether or not they’re creepy. In this case, they were really hateful, especially since they were paired with rape. But somehow it’s okay because the victim also had feelings for the guy? Hell no. This is not real life, and were I the creator of manga like this, I wouldn’t write stories where unhealthy relationships are acceptable because I’d be too afraid that one of my readers would be dumb enough to believe it.
There are two stories that I found cute in this manga collection though. Unsurprisingly, both are on the verge of abusive. The first one revolves around a pediatric doctor and one of his older (but still under 18) patients. It’s really obvious that the teen has feelings for his doctor, but the doctor is really conflicted about his feelings for the teen. With good reason! Being in a relationship with one of his patients would be a breach of his ethics for many reasons. He talks about it with a guy friend of his, and as the guy friend drops the doctor off at his house, he kisses him because the smitten teen is watching. This forces the smitten teen to confess, which makes the doctor pretty happy, and they begin their relationship with some hot sex in the clinic. Not too bad (for this author) aside from the underage component. While the kid could be almost 18, it’s made clear that he’s still in high school.
The second is about a college kid and his boss at his part-time job becoming sexually involved. While they enjoy each other’s company, the student gets miffed because the boss gives him money after sex. Still, he decides to continue the relationship until he graduates because he really is in love with his boss. After graduation, he quietly slips away and starts his new life… Until one day his boss shows up at his front door. They argue about the nature of their relationship until the boss reveals that he gave the student money because he knew the kid was strapped for cash and didn’t want him to worry about money while spending time with his lover, not because he was paying him for sex. All is good and they couple progresses to the point where they exchange keys. Very cute. Almost makes up for the mostly terrible rest of the book… Not really.
The artwork is just fine, although everyone’s got long, swishy, bishounen hair, but I wouldn’t have paid full price for this book had I known it was so rape-tastic. I’m not so happy I spent $4 for it because now I don’t really want to keep it. I try to read the back covers carefully to avoid manga like these, but they can only tell you so much and they’re often misleading. (Having written back cover copy for manga before, you definitely try hard not to give to much away.)
