Dining Bar Akira/Tomoko Yamashita
Netcomics — 16+ Rating — 175 pages

Quick Synopsis:

Dining Bar Akira ~ Torihara confesses his love for Akira, his straight manager at the restaurant they work at called Dining Bar Akira.

Foggy Scene ~ Yatsue is in love with his best friend Takashi but doesn’t want him to know. He has a one night stand with a guy at a gay bar who ends up being his substitute teacher at his high school (he’s 17 and the teacher is 31). He has feelings for the teacher but acknowledges he’ll always be second to his first love, Takashi.

Riverside Moonlight ~ This is an extremely short story about a guy who has a wet dream about one of his chubby co-workers.

Plot/Readability:

Dining Bar Akira is the main story and the longest. It takes place in a restaurant, which I find to be a refreshing break from some of the typical settings we see. Although the premise isn’t anything new (gay guy falls for straight guy, straight guy struggles with what to do), I did enjoy this mangaka’s take on it. Akira doesn’t know quite what to do with Torihara’s confession but finds he cannot ignore the feelings he has started developing for him. Their relationship is a slow build and to me is a bit more natural than just falling into bed and professing their love for each other on the first night. I also enjoyed that Torihara, the younger of the two, is the seme. My only problem with this story is that for some reason it is not a smooth read. The narrative throughout is quite choppy and I found it took me out of the story too many times trying to understand what was being said and who was saying it.

I really enjoyed Foggy Scene much more than I thought I would. I was a much easier read and for me a much more emotional one as well. The inner monologue throughout this story was very well done and you could actually feel Yatsue’s struggle with being in love with his friend. It’s not often we read a story about unrequited love where the character actually doesn’t want the person to know.

Riverside Moonlight was such a quick read there isn’t much to say but I did enjoy that again this mangaka was thinking outside the box in terms of a plot. An entire story dedicated to a wet dream about a chubby co-worker!

Character Development:

Throughout this book this mangaka has done an excellent job with each character and their growth and struggles. Each one is so different from the other and she is very skilled at pulling the reader into the mind of the character. For instance, in Dining Bar Akira Torihara is much more cynical and insecure than Akira and at one point says to himself:

“Am I doing something wrong by dragging him into a relationship that doesn’t have a future?”

This is something we’ve seen before where the characters being in a gay relationship see no hope since they are expected to marry a woman. Sometimes it upsets me to see this but then I remind myself that how things are viewed in Japan is not the same as here so I just let it go. Still it’s nice to see the character delving into deeper issues than just “does he love me?”

Illustrations:

This mangaka has more of a sketchy rough style similar to Est Em but a bit more refined. It gives her characters a sexier edge and I find it very appealing.

Sexual Explicitness:

This book is rated 16+ but don’t let that fool you. There are sex scenes throughout and although not overly explicit, I’m surprised by the 16+ rating (not to mention the enormous number of expletives peppered throughout). One thing about her sex scenes, they’re not all just a bunch of oh’s and ah’s, the first one the characters actually talk and argue through. I think this fit with the more natural way the relationships were depicted throughout.

Final thoughts:

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I liked the different characters, refreshing plots and the ways the characters pulled me in. The only issue would be the readability of the main story.

Plot/Readability: B+
Character Development: A
Illustrations: A-
Sexual Explicitness: B

Overall Grade: B+