Sasaki and Miyano Vol. 1 Review

No.

High schooler Miyano’s desperately trying to get some help for a classmate who is being beaten up when handsome Sasaki strolls into the scene, opting to rely on his own fists rather than calling for back-up. Since this is a BL, it’s love at first sight… or, well, that’s what the author is counting on the reader to believe before jerking the whole thing back from the edge a bit when the narrative skips forward a few months to Miyano wondering how someone seemingly so cool could be so deeply annoying. And then the plot reveals itself – Miyano’s a fudanshi and he isn’t gay, while Sasaki might have a crush on him, not that the latter is sharp enough to have worked that particular fact out yet. And so their schooldays pass.

When I review manga, I’ll usually go back and page through the volume before I sit down to right about it, even if I’m reviewing it within only a few days of having read it. It’s a helpful refresh method. Usually, I’m skimming, sometimes I stop to re-read certain scenes… sometimes I mean to skim and end up re-reading the whole thing despite not meaning to because I liked it enough that I can’t resist. And, once in a while, I realize I recall just about nothing of what I’ve read. And with Miyano and Sasaki’s first volume, I really did forget everything except the broadest of outlines; I even forgot which boy was named which. And you know what? After re-reading about fifteen pages, I put the whole thing down and walked away, because even on the first read it’d been a chore to bother finishing it. It’s so drearily and unrelentingly bland, and the strongest feeling I have about it is that it sure reads like the kind of stuff that used to get primped as being BL back in the truly desperate days of the early 2000’s by anglophone yaoi fans with little to get their hands on. I don’t doubt that the two boys will eventually get together, but I for one be there to see it. The market for BL in English has gotten disappointing once again, but I just cannot work up the energy to wade through this kind of stuff anymore.