I'll admit I haven't reviewed much yaoi manga but that's not to say that there aren't some worthwhile reads out there in boys love land. One recent arrival is Seduce Me After the Show, a collection of stylish short stories by est em. These stories are bound together by a slender thematic tie: the men in love are creative souls, dancers, artists and musicians.
The first thing that will hit you as you flip through this book is est em's elegant linework and striking use of bold black strokes against stark white backdrops. While there are artists who pile on the details, sparkles and screentone, est em takes a more measured approach, and sets a mature, thoughtful mood for her stories. Shadows and light, smoke and rumpled sheets speak of passion, intimacy and longing more profoundly than explicit sex scenes.
The other refreshing aspect of Seduce Me After the Show is that it's not so much a "boys love" manga as it is about men in love. Gone are the adolescent school boy or fairy tale fantasies instead, we have grown-up men, some that are even (gasp!) old and wrinkled who deal with the complexities of same-sex relationships in a largely hetero world.
While Seduce Me is a departure from the usual "androgynous pretty boys in love with mirror images of themselves" formula, there's a palatable chemistry between these men that makes their relationships seem plausible and touching. An actor and a flamenco dancer. A young musician and a burnt out rocker. A painter and a gallery owner. Some pairings are more interesting than others, but these stories work well together, like a suite of different songs by the same composer.
It may miss the mark for some yaoi manga aficionados, but Seduce Me After the Show's striking art and sensitive storytelling makes it appealing to a broader range of manga (and comics) readers, not just boys love fans. --Deb Aoki - About.com
So, as you may notice, I only read BL titles occasionally. For some reason, I can read high school shoujo romance until my eyes fall out of my sockets and generally forgive those genre conventions, but I can t do the same for BL. I also don t really like stories of a sexual nature that involve the underage, and a lot of BL stories are set in high school, so that cuts back on my intake too.
This, though. This is really great. I picked this up after reading some pretty positive reviews of it around, because I like finding really great BL stories, and on top of that all the characters are adults. I was really, really surprised by how much I liked it, and I would not hesitate to recommend this to anyone who likes romance comics or wants a good read. It is absolutely FANTASTIC.
I was pretty much won over from the first sequence. This is a volume of short stories, and the title story is the first one in the volume. It opens with a somewhat baffling, but extremely artistic solo dance sequence with commentary about a death superimposed over the performance. Later in the story, we find out what the significance of the death and the performance are, and I had to read it over again in order to get the full impact. It is both visually and emotionally powerful, and I m not sure how to convey how impressed I was with just that opening sequence alone, and it was only around six pages long.
The first and last stories in the volume were probably my favorites. The first story featured a slowly developed romance that had a lot of verbal play and entendre (not necessarily of a sexual nature) between the two characters. It involved the public and private lives of the two, who were both famous performers very much in the public eye. The first story ends well, but these two characters carry over into the second story, which has a much more melancholy ending. --Michelle Smith - PopCultureShock
The short stories collected in Seduce Me After the Show are a melancholy lot. There's the title story, featuring a dancer grieving for his mother and an actor who realizes he's acting even when the camera isn't running, one about a painter who finds inspiration in a gallery owner, a story of a young fan who spurs an aging rocker to play again, a pair of stories about two young men who might lose their home now that its owner has passed away, and a story about a man returning to Kyoto after a long absence. Some of them are not even yaoi, but all have the same wistful, slightly ambiguous quality.
Right up until I read the last story, I thought my favorite tale would end up being the title story about the dancer and the actor. It's wonderfully told, with an ending I adore even as I wish there were more to read about these two. The final story has a similar feel. Keiji has come back to Kyoto to attend a festival and, while there, asks about an old friend of his. Gradually, the details of their parting are revealed and, I swear, the final page makes me sniffly.
I really like the art - the use of screentone and backgrounds is minimal, resulting in a largely black and white style. Some of the character designs are quite original, too. Theo, the dancer, looks more like Severus Snape than he does a typical manga character. One of the couples includes a guy in his fifties, which is practically unheard of in this genre. Lastly, I appreciate that Est Em takes the 'artistically suggestive' route with the pair of love scenes; depicting things in exacting detail would detract from the emotional element.
Usually, I don't notice things like paper or print quality, but the production values from Deux are good enough to attract my notice. The translated dialogue seems natural and though I had trouble a couple of times working out exactly what Theo meant, I think that's just a facet of his character.
Seduce Me After the Show is a character-driven collection featuring grown-up men dealing with their feelings for each other. There's no blushing or glomping here, and though the stories may be short, they're also original, thoughtful, and memorable. If you buy one yaoi title this year, buy this one. There's another by Est Em due in [December], though, so maybe make it two. --Michelle Smith - PopCultureShock
So, as you may notice, I only read BL titles occasionally. For some reason, I can read high school shoujo romance until my eyes fall out of my sockets and generally forgive those genre conventions, but I can t do the same for BL. I also don t really like stories of a sexual nature that involve the underage, and a lot of BL stories are set in high school, so that cuts back on my intake too.
This, though. This is really great. I picked this up after reading some pretty positive reviews of it around, because I like finding really great BL stories, and on top of that all the characters are adults. I was really, really surprised by how much I liked it, and I would not hesitate to recommend this to anyone who likes romance comics or wants a good read. It is absolutely FANTASTIC.
I was pretty much won over from the first sequence. This is a volume of short stories, and the title story is the first one in the volume. It opens with a somewhat baffling, but extremely artistic solo dance sequence with commentary about a death superimposed over the performance. Later in the story, we find out what the significance of the death and the performance are, and I had to read it over again in order to get the full impact. It is both visually and emotionally powerful, and I m not sure how to convey how impressed I was with just that opening sequence alone, and it was only around six pages long.
The first and last stories in the volume were probably my favorites. The first story featured a slowly developed romance that had a lot of verbal play and entendre (not necessarily of a sexual nature) between the two characters. It involved the public and private lives of the two, who were both famous performers very much in the public eye. The first story ends well, but these two characters carry over into the second story, which has a much more melancholy ending. The emotions between the two are portrayed perfectly and indirectly, and it s one of those rare times where what isn t said is more powerful than what is. I go nuts whenever I find something like this.
The last story is good, too. It features an older man returning to his small hometown for the summer festival after being away for almost 40 years. He visits with all his old friends, but he finds a young man who tells him his best friend from childhood has passed away just a few months before. Of course the young man looks like his friend when he was young, and we find out that he is the friend s grandson. The old man then starts a flashback to a former festival, just before he leaves for the city, and then the rest of the story is pretty much told that way. Again, not much is said, but you feel the tight relationship between the two and the reluctance of the parting very keenly, and it nearly made me cry by the time it was finished. I don t think a short story like this has ever accomplished that, but there you go. For anyone keeping track, I m not sure how old the two are supposed to be in the flashback (they re likely young men, but they could possibly be high-school age), but it wasn t set in a school, and more importantly, it made me forget to think about it, which is really all that matters.
Two of the other stories in the volume were about animals in a way, but one has a surprise ending so I won t spoil it. It s easily the most bizarre story in the volume, and I found myself focusing on exactly what on earth was going on instead of the relationship, but it s a good story all the same.
I would buy any other volumes licensed by this artist in a second. I would also recommend this emphatically to anyone who was looking for something similar to Fumi Yoshinaga to read. This is very much in her style, though slighty less comedic and perhaps a little more passionate. Take that as you will. --Connie - Slightly Biased Manga
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