About the Mangaka

Sadly not a lot of Hashida Yukari, he has done several other series and one shots, but that’s all I could find sadly.

About the Manga

This was my first book from the June publisher, and I have to admit I did like it. It has everything a good manga should have, and had my chuckling more than a few times.

I don’t usually do yaoi, mainly because I find male rape (rather rape in general) abhorrent. I don’t mind it being used as a hook, but graphic rape is just wrong IMO. But I’ve been picking up more and more diverse titles of late since I felt I was in a rut with my reviews. So I went back to yaoi, some have been good, and some frankly left me retching in the toilet.

This was one of the better ones, and I have to say, availability issues aside, I really liked it.

The cover is amazingly well drawn, despite the out of place pink banner at the bottom (which is definitely puke worthy). I love covers like this, which give off a great feeling and look amazing, not to mention having excellent colours.

The art of the manga itself was really well drawn, for the most part. Though I have to admit in general yaoi mangaka do tend to be excellent artists in their own rights.

The only thing I don’t like about this volumes art were the support characters, who are all pretty much abandoned, with next to no effort put into them. This does make them look even worse than they are because they’re almost always next to the main characters who are all drawn very well.

I was also disappointed as to the way the scenery was done. Sometimes it was okay, but other times it was like the support characters, with a haphazard feel to it.

However I will admit that I like the art style, and the art did have a great consistency to it. Not to mention some bloody funny sides as well.

The story wasn’t bad, and for a single volume it’s as good as can be expected. For what it was it flowed well, and it worked well with the art. Unfortunately though it has the ultimate failing all manga have of this type, it’s to short.

There’s no time for the story to set it’s roots and come about naturally, so it gets forced out to fast, the result is the ending feels way to rushed. Though I have to admit, the story has it’s funny elements which mixed well with the funny art.

While there’s no actual sex in this volume, towards the end the innuendo gets pretty blatant, but it gets bonus points from me for knowing just when to stop. Yukari’s writing and art really mix well together, and I feel if this had been given a few more volumes to grow it would have been an even better read than it already is.

As I said earlier, this was my first ever June title (June is one of Digital Manga Publishing’s Yaoi imprints). And I have to admit I was surprised by the quality, especially after reading another Yaoi title I’ll be reviewing next (on of those that had me wanting to puke). The translation was great, and while there are no honorific’s (always a downside with me) it flows really well and was a smooth read. The editing was done really well with a good choice for fonts.

Overall a good release, and one I enjoyed reading, but not one to go on my Essential Read list.

Where to Buy

Availability is where June really fails with this release, since it’s practically unavailable these days. Most of June’s releases in the UK have a 4-8week delay, and even the US releases seem hard to find, with the exception of brand new releases.

• Brits: Play.com (6-8 week shipping delay) or Amazon UK (£34-75)
• Yanks: Borders or Amazon US (Available on the Kindle or Amazon Marketplace)
• Canadians: Chapters (3-5week shipping delay) or Amazon CA (only the 1 copy available and that’s $62!!)

All told the best place to get this title is through the DMP eManga website, where you can buy it for around the $4.50 mark