Before we set out to talk about Affair
Yesterday’s post prompted a small discussion about how I write about BL/yaoi (among other things) with my best friend, who has read a lot more BL and yaoi that I have over the years.
She asserted that women don’t read yaoi to be turned on (sexually) and that she doesn’t see yaoi as porn, though others might. She also asserted that some fujoshi don’t mind coerced relations because many women think that the victims could easily overpower their attackers. Therefore, most of the victims aren’t helpless, just disgruntled that they’re being propositioned in ways they don’t like, with the exception of times where it’s very obvious that the person does not want to have sex at all.
If fujoshi don’t mind coerced sex because they think the instigators can easily be overpowered… Well, I find that disturbing. Perhaps because I’ve read enough yaoi manga where the victim wasn’t given the opportunity to protest and the attacker wasn’t listening if he was. There’s a lot of “JUST SHUT UP, ACCEPT MY FEELINGS AND HAVE SEX WITH ME.” And that’s not including the times when the victim is tied up, slammed against a wall or otherwise shocked into submission. And then at the end, it’s all fine and the victim wants to have buttsex with his attacker forever! I just cannot ignore that as I’m reading. My brain mentally halts and cringes, then gets a little mad at the ending.
Which brings me to how I view BL and yaoi. I’ve clearly misled a little bit with my language by using terms like “turn on,” but I find that it’s apt for this purpose. I see BL and yaoi as avenues for fan girls to fantasize and/or gawk at boys they find attractive. Obviously, there is something about the story, the plot or the characters that excites them. So if something about the BL/yaoi manga I’m reading doesn’t excite me at all, then it feels like a huge waste of my time and money. I am very aware that I have high standards for BL/yaoi manga, but I’d rather have fewer high quality BL/yaoi manga than a large quantity of trashy, poorly written BL/yaoi manga. It’s no surprise to me; all my favorite manga are very well-written works. I definitely prefer est em and Fumi Yoshinaga to anything else out in the yaoi-sphere right now. Onto the review portion…
Affair by Shiuko Kano
By my standards so far, you’d think that I’d absolutely hate Affair. There’s a lot of coerced sex going on, if not rape or other kinds of assault. But I don’t. It’s not my favorite yaoi ever, but I don’t hate it.
Affair is clear that every relationship contained in its stories is twisted from the start. Then these relationships are further bent by what happens inside the stories, then a revelation occurs and everything begins to unravel into something happier.
Take the worst (in terms of rape-y elements) story of the bunch: A young yakuza heir takes advantage of his half-brother in all sorts of ways, including sexually. The heir then decides to get back at his half-brother, who is the only person who cares about catering to the heir’s whims, by sleeping with the family’s lawyer. Unfortunately, the lawyer rapes and then tries to choke the young heir, all while revealing that the brothers were switched at birth, explaining their bad relationships with their mothers, and that he killed the heir’s real mother. The half-brother bursts in and saves him, then the two reconcile with each other and the heir realizes his love for his half-brother.
It’s all kind of gross, even when you don’t think about the incest factor, but at least all the forced sex and the rape served to set up the story and move the plot forward. It was gratuitous and unpleasant, but also purposeful. The characters had back story and depth. You could see the main character questioning himself for doing something that was wrong. The lawyer’s confession spurred a change of heart in the young heir, not the assault that had occurred during that confession. I can get behind storytelling like this far more than when a character is rushed or forced into the sex, then decides he’s happy with assailant, with very little explanation as to why.
The rest of the stories in Affair are like the one I just described, but with fewer icky parts. A relationship is started and is complicated by something, until there is some kind of revelation that un-complicates things and the relationship becomes a happier one. I also liked the art style, which did have a lot of varying hairstyles and facial structures, even though there was a lot of pointy-chin syndrome going down.
In the end, I’m satisfied with Affair. It’s the kind of yaoi I’d like to see a bit more of, where even the icky parts were used as something to give the characters faculty and to move the story forward. It’s not my favorite, but it hit the right notes.
