This week brings another fine assortment. Connie steps up first with a look at Idol Pleasures (Aurora/Deux); Melinda checks in with volume seven of a personal favorite, One Thousand and One Nights (Yen Press); Phil looks at another oneshot from Deux Press, Say Please; Ken enjoys volume four of Takehiko Inoue’s Slam Dunk (Viz); and Michelle lauds all the pain on display in volume four of We Were There (Viz).

Idol Pleasures

By Fuhri Misasagi
Aurora Publishing, 160 pp.
Rating: M (18+)

Amagi is going through something of a rough time in his life right now. He divorced his wife two years ago, is estranged from his daughter, and has been unemployed for some time. His pushy sister, the president of a talent agency, tries to help him out with a job by appointing him manager to troubled idol Koju. Her ulterior motive is to set him up on blind dates with women in the agency, but Amagi unexpectedly clicks with Koju, and it has a positive effect on Koju’s work. Koju falls for Amagi almost immediately, but does he only see a father figure in him? And how does Amagi feel about Koju’s feelings?

This was an easy book to like since it has some of my favorite BL elements in it. Both Amagi and Koju are adults (though Koju’s age is left ambiguous) and Amagi is actually a middle-aged man, which is unusual in this type of story. Amagi also teases Koju mercilessly throughout the book, which makes for some genuinely funny scenes. The way their relationship progresses in the middle of the story is also very sweet. Unfortunately, it loses a lot of points for being very by-the-book BL in the first 50 pages. Koju magically discovers his feelings after a single conversation, poorly explained childhood trauma helps reinforce his love, and it also crams in sightly too much introductory detail in too few pages. The story falls into a few other traps in the middle too, like how both Amagi’s sister and Koju’s love interest both accept the pair without question. The last chapter also made for a somewhat unsatisfying ending, since it takes the plot beyond resolving the relationship and adds on some strange details about Amagi’s past.

It’s uneven, but it still makes for a pretty fun read if you don’t mind the BL plot traps.

Idol Pleasures is available now.

–Reviewed by Connie C.

One Thousand and One Nights, Vol. 7

By Han SeungHee and Jeon JinSeok
Yen Press, 176 pp.
Rating: OT (16+)

Volume six ended with storyteller Sehara facing English invaders alone as Sultan Shahryar was lured away from Baghdad by his brother’s calculated betrayal. This volume picks up with Shahryar who races back to Baghdad to save the city (and Sehara) even though he must reveal an important secret to an enemy to do so—one that will threaten his own life from here forward. Meanwhile, Sehara does what he can to influence the invading king by telling him a story from the future about another western power invading Muslim land to “liberate” its people from a tyrant.

Any existing pretense of a linear timeline is thrown away completely in this volume and though this is a bit jarring at first, the payoff is substantial. This is also the first overtly political volume in the series, and though the rhetoric is simplistic and far from new (“Christians and Muslims differ in language and culture,” Sehara says, leading into his story, “but we call the same God by a different name and go to war over it.”), Sehara’s true message is clear. It is not the innocent who profit when countries go to war, though it is they who bear the heaviest burden and suffer the greatest loss.

This volume’s modern story is moving and well told, just as all of Sehara’s tales have been, though with so much momentum having built up in the primary storyline it is hard not to feel impatient by the time the volume approaches its end. The end itself, however, is wonderfully heart-wrenching and perfectly crafted to make the wait for the next volume excruciating for us all.

With its gorgeous art, fantastic storytelling, and emotional (and now political) resonance, One Thousand and One Nights continues to be a manhwa series well worth recommending.

Volume seven of One Thousand and One Nights is available now.

–Reviewed by Melinda Beasi

Say Please

By Kano Miyamoto
Aurora Publishing, 192 pp.
Rating: Mature (18+)

Say Please is most definitely yaoi, featuring homoerotic pairings of sensitive, feminine ukes and aggressive, masculine semes. It belongs to that subset of the genre that’s less fantastical than the work of say, Lily Hoshino; there are no magical hijinks to be found here, and the ukes are rendered like androgynous young men, not girls’ heads transplanted onto boys’ bodies. But despite the less-cute drawing style, Say Please is no great work of art, and likely won’t appeal much to non-yaoi readers.

The main story follows the romance between a club “boy” and one of his clients. Ryoichi, the prostitute, is a hooker with a heart of gold who falls for Sakura, a repressed teacher who wants companionship as much as sex. Their relationship has its ups and downs, mostly due to Sakura’s inner turmoil: not only is he a homosexual who’s afraid of being outed, since it could cost him his job, but he’s cut off from himself emotionally. Will Ryoichi be the first person he brings himself to say “I love you” to?

An equally good question might be: should we care, given how Sakura’s repression leads to all sorts of verbal abuse and physical violence inflicted upon Ryoichi, including one scene in which Sakura forces himself onto his lover? Say Please contains subject matter that I wasn’t too crazy about, but I tried to keep things in perspective; yaoi readership is generally female, and an abusive uke/seme relationship might provide a safe means of experiencing an emotionally charged hetero- or homosexual relationship. But that doesn’t mean the characterizations aren’t thin, and the central relationship itself lacks depth.

Say Please is available now.

–Reviewed by Phil Guie

Slam Dunk, Vol. 4

By Takehiko Inoue
Viz, 200 pp
Rating: Teen (13+)

The practice game between Shohoku and Ryonan, one of the top rated high school teams in the region, gets underway! Will our hotheaded protagonist Hanamichi finally get a chance to strut his stuff on the court for the Shohuku High team, or will he remain on the bench as his teammates struggle against the ace team of Ryonan?

Inoue’s art here, despite being nearly twenty years old, is still amazing and displays his same keen eye for pacing and flow that populate his later works. In fact, the basketball game that dominates this volume is easily as exciting as your typical shonen fight sequence. The visuals do show their age when it comes to hair, though, but then again I suppose shonen manga heroes have a long history of wacky hair. Even so, Hanamhichi’s red pompadour looks a bit old and dated. Story wise, despite coming into a series with several volumes under its belt, I had no problem whatsoever at grasping the various relationships and how their dynamics affect one another. Of course, part of this might be due to the handy character cheat sheet at the beginning, but I felt Inoue was able to get across Hanamhichi’s desire to impress Haruko and the resulting jealousy towards the team’s star player, Rukawa. I also found the focus on team work and functioning as a unit to be refreshing change from the constant “I must do this on my own!” schtick that many shonen character spout.

All in all it was a fun little volume and I enjoyed it. I’m not sure if it’s something I’d follow religiously, but it was certainly a fun read despite my utter lack of interest or knowledge of basketball.

Volume four of Slam Dunk will be available on June 2nd.

–Reviewed by Ken Haley

We Were There, Vol. 4

By Yuki Obata
Viz, 192 pp.
Rating: Older Teen

Nana thought it was a dream come true when Yano, the boy she liked, told her that he returned her feelings and they became a couple. Some problems have become apparent in their relationship, however. Early on, Nana was willing to go along with Yano’s moods and demands since he had experienced so much tragedy in his past. Now, though, she realizes that simply accepting Yano’s odd behavior isn’t going to help him, so she begins to challenge some of his actions. Unfortunately for her, her attempts to get closer to Yano and draw out more information from him about his past and his feelings for his ex-girlfriend bring forth several revelations that seriously threaten their relationship.

We Were There is not unlike NANA in that it can be simultaneously very good and very painful to read. There’s a lot of raw emotion in this series, from Nana’s reaction to Yano’s devastating secrets to her realization that no matter how much she loves him, it isn’t enough to mend the wounds he suffered because of his ex-girlfriend’s betrayal. Yano comes off as the villain in a lot of what transpires, but it’s evident that he’s in a lot of pain, too, and probably somewhat mentally unstable.

With Nana and Yano seemingly so inevitably doomed by volume four, I honestly have no idea where the story could go from here. This is definitely not your average shojo high school romance.

Volume four of We Were There is available now.

–Reviewed by Michelle Smith