YAOI MANGA REVIEW: Meeting You

Jennifer LeBlanc AKA Asami's Girl — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 12:16:46 +0000

Meeting You is comprised of three stories, the last two being indirectly tied together through the characters’ work place. The first story is the title story, Meeting You and is a school drama. Himeshiro is the very popular seme and Touro, the infatuated uke. Hiimeshiro gets asked out a lot and tends to not trust new suitors due their expectations of him that he feels he can’t live up to, which subsequently causes them to leave. When Touro decides to profess his love for Himeshiro, Himeshiro decides to test his feelings for him by essentially humiliating him and treating him rather poorly. The first chapter covers these trials whereas the second chapter delves more into their budding relationship. There is also a bonus chapter at the end for this couple, which is humorous. Meeting You is the only story where the uke is very young looking, blushes excessively and cries, which tends to get old. Plus it makes it harder to understand why Himeshiro would treat him so harshly when his personality just doesn’t seem to warrant that sort of treatment.

The second story, How to Find a Gentle Kiss, is one chapter and is about two old friends reconnecting through work after a misunderstanding three years earlier. The plot of this one is also a little cliché; one friend confesses his love for the other and then runs off and goes overseas. They lose touch until accidentally seeing each other again after three years only to find out they work at the same company. The last story, Mornings at the Bus Stop, is loosely tied to this one and is about two guys who meet at the bus stop every morning and through these short encounters fall in love with each other. One of them works at the same company as the two guys from the second story and they appear in this story as well. This is probably the most graphic of all the stories for what is shown and how short the story is. Each story shows some graphic detail but I don’t feel Meeting You as a whole is as graphic as her more recent story, Don’t Rush Love.

Mio Tennohji’s stories tend to run on the cliché side when it comes to her plots and her seme and uke roles. I recently reviewed Don’t Rush Love and felt it suffered the same issue. I don’t dislike this one as much as far as plot is concerned since there are different stories going along and I thought the story about the two at the bus stop was kind of cute although the love at first site bit does tend to get a little old. Lust at first site is ok too! Her characters are tall and rather lanky and the ones in this title are cute but not overly sexy in my opinion. The sex scenes are explicit but a little toned down from other works I’ve seen but overall they were pretty good. The translation is good and speech bubbles aren’t hard to follow. The illustrations are nice and the book itself was one of the last to get a dust jacket and comic strip on the inside back cover. One thing to note is that the four panel strip in this one is not 801-chan but one that is about the two main characters from Meeting You.

Overall, I didn’t hate the book but I do think it is rather mediocre. Don’t Rush Love had a bad plot but the characters were sexy and the sex was graphic and plentiful, which made up for it. Meeting You has a slightly better plot but the sex isn’t as good. It’s not bad, it’s just not enough to make me want to recommend this book for fans of hard yaoi.

Characters = B

Plot = B

Sex = B+

Translation = A-

Illustrations/Book Design = A-

Overall Grade = B+

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YAOI MANGA REVIEW: Don’t Rush Love

Jennifer LeBlanc AKA Asami's Girl — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 10:02:31 +0000

Don’t Rush Love is a high school drama kind of story with your typical crying uke and rather unimpressive storyline. Morino is a new transfer at the school and very quickly falls in love with another student pretty much at first sight. Since he is staying in the dorms at this school, you can guess who his roommate turns out to be. Kusama, his new roommate and crush, has his sites set on one of his teachers, who of course has no idea about these romantic feelings and is seeing someone else. To deal with these frustrations, Kusama goes on the prowl at night when he should be in his dorm sleeping. Morino wants nothing more than to stop Kusama from these nightly excursions so he offers himself up as a substitute stand-in so Kusama has some way to release his frustration. The big question is… will Kusama finally confess his true feelings to the man he loves or will Morino cause him to see things in a different light?

If you can’t already tell, I was not impressed with this story’s plot. I feel like I’ve read this type of storyline a thousand times and could easily predict where this story was going to go. I found myself even getting irritated in the beginning few chapters. It did get a little better toward the end when a few new characters were introduced into the mix. This story’s one redeeming quality? There is a good deal of sex and it is VERY explicit. I’ve always said I can overlook a crappy plot if the sex is good and in this one, it definitely is.

The character design is one you’ll recognize if you’ve read The Sky Over My Spectacles. The characters tend to be a bit on the tall almost lankey side. I won’t say they’re not sexy but they could be sexier. Personality wise, I felt they were pretty typical roles for the seme and uke; lots of tears, blushing and miscommunication. The book itself has a nice cover and one color insert. 801 fans looking for the dust cover won’t find it since they stopped providing them. The illustrations are nicely done with good detail, especially the sex scenes so if you are not a fan of detail in those areas then you may want to pass. However, if that is the case then 801 Media is probably not the publisher for you since hard yaoi is their specialty. The translation was really good and I had no trouble following the speech bubbles. If anything, there were just a few times I wasn’t always sure about what was being said out loud and what was only being thought.

In the end, if you are looking for a good plot, this is a definite pass. If you are looking for great sex and a hard yaoi title, this one will not disappoint.

Plot = B-

Characters = B+

Book Design/Illustrations = A-

Sexual Content = A

Translation = A-

Overall Grade = B+

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The Yaoi Review » Mio Tennohji

YAOI MANGA REVIEW: Meeting You

YAOI MANGA REVIEW: Don’t Rush Love