Aoi House Omnibus Collection 1

By Adam Arnold and Shiei
Seven Seas
Rating: Older Teen (16+)

Aoi House in Love!, Vol. 1

By Adam Arnold and Shiei
Seven Seas
Rating: Older Teen (16+)

Aoi House is about two college dudes who end up living with a harem of yaoi-crazed fangirls. It’s accessible to both non-harem and non-yaoi readers, but if you’re an expert in those genres, you might enjoy this series even more.

Strangely enough, my closest exposure to harem manga has been Ouran High School Host Club, which is of the gender-reversed “male harem” sub-genre. There are similarities between the two series: through a contrivance of fate, the main characters find themselves surrounded by beautiful examples of the opposite sex, which run the gamut of character types; also, hints of romance tend to emerge between the protagonists and members of the harem.

Among the fangirls of Aoi House are an ice princess, spunky tomboy, athlete, and glasses-wearing introvert. One of the guys who drop into their world looks like a stereotypical otaku, but the girls – who range from reasonably attractive to drop-dead gorgeous – are themselves heavily into manga, video games, and cosplaying.

They’re also big fans of yaoi, and in case you were wondering about the title, it’s revealed the club was initially named “Yaoi House,” but the Y fell off. The two aforementioned college dudes, otaku Sandy and the more average-looking Alex aren’t aware of that when they join up; they assume it’s a mainstream anime club, while the harem assumes they’re gay.

When the truth is revealed, there’s one member of the harem who opposes heterosexual, non-yaoi-watching males in Aoi House. However, much of the Omnibus Collection has less to do with the battle of the sexes than the kind of sexually-charged wackiness that can only occur in a frat house-style environment: random nudity; a sexually-humiliating hazing process; even a scheme to affix a small camera to Echiboo, Sandy’s underwear-obsessed pet hamster, and sic him on the girls’ locker room.

But as the shyest of the harem says, “After he’s done…can we tune into the guys locker room also?” which illustrates what makes this series so much fun, the argument that no matter how anti-social we may think of fanboys being, they’re nowhere near as crazy and perverse as a group of their female counterparts. In the very first episode, the guys get kicked out of their dorms for watching, “videos of a pornographic nature involving tentacles,” as the dean puts it; however, they’re begging for mercy by the conclusion, bound up A Clockwork Orange-style and forced to view a yaoi entitled, My Sexual Harassment.

Alex and Sandy are also objectified quite a bit, which could be viewed as a clever inversion to the objectification of women in anime. (This is a point I am actually not an expert in, but the objectifying of women in similar art forms – e.g., American comic books – has been an enduring complaint.) They’re constantly being compared to the typical seme/uke pairing, making them self-conscious to the point where, following some news from home, their second-to-immediate reaction is: “We can’t let the girls find out. This would play right into one of their sick yaoi fantasies.”

Towards the end of the Omnibus Collection, the focus does shift towards preparing for a fictional convention, and Aoi House indulges in the kind of fan service true die-hards of comic books or video games will wish they had the resources to finance. It also acts as the necessary calm before Aoi House in Love!, which is packed full of the over-the-top drama and nuttiness readers would doubtlessly expect if their yaoi-crazed harem were to be multiplied a hundred-fold.

Aoi House Omnibus Collection and volume one of Aoi House in Love! are available now.