I have been reading a lot of BL lately, so I think a good chunk of my reviews will end up being on this topic this year. I am not usually a romance novel reader, but I love a gay romance comic. I’ve been into this genre since the first manga boom of the early 2000s when everything was shrinkwrapped and the majority of the titles getting translated had terrible art for some reason, so it’s been nice to survey the scene in 2023 and see lots of good art, albeit still with a ton shrinkwrapped (I have to pull up previews on my phone in the bookstore to see if I like the interior art, since the cover can be misleading). I do get why the companies do this, it just makes some extra work to see if I want to buy it.
I did enjoy Training Mister Sakurada with some qualms. Having read these books for so long, I know that the consent in them can be really iffy, but I didn’t love that Sakurada keeps getting drugged and sexually assaulted, even if the book posits that it’s fine since he ends up enjoying it and in love. For a book that’s purportedly about a BDSM kink relationship, there is never a safeword and things just basically happen without much discussion at all. The communication of the main couple is not good (Sakurada doesn’t know Mibu is a virgin until they start having sex, which seems like a big deal to both of them in the moment, but they never bothered talking about it? Mibu’s whole past is also very opaque to Sakurada and he has to find stuff out from other people.). It is a romantic comedy with a heavy emphasis on the comedy, so a lot of the scenes are very deliberately exaggerated, but it was for me sometimes uncomfortable because I didn’t really find it funny to see someone get drugged and tied up naked in front of a crowd of strangers. On the pro side, the art is great and it’s nice to see it uncensored for once. This is a very, very explicit comic so if it’s your first time dealing with this genre, I would recommend almost anything else (Antique Bakery is great!). Honestly, I don’t know if I recommend it in general because while I did like chunks of it, the communication and actions of the characters was lacking for me and there are so many other good BL books on the market right now where they actually talk to each other clearly.
Warnings for: drugged sex (sexual assault, I would argue), kidnapping, a lot of sexual acts being done with someone who is agreeing but didn’t discuss it beforehand