The art is good, the boys look pretty sexy. I'm not a fan of ukes that look like they're 8 years old though and Rio really was very naive. What I really liked though was that the characters really cared for each other and were in love. They actually worried about each other's feelings which is something that isn't always a given in yaoi manga. The 3rd Volume about the side characters was also very entertaining but now I can't wait to see how their stories continue.
All in all sweet story, handsome art, lots of sex.

Volume 1: Starts out great, really funny and akward, characters and their chemistry is very amusing. Tama's attempt to 'cure' homosexuality was very funny in particular. I enjoyed volume one alot, it was cute, funny and had the perfect ending in my opinion.

Volume 2: I think this was good but it was weaker than the first volume. The art style changes subtly, especially where Rio is concerned (i swear his eyes get bigger and he gets shorter), but its not amazingly notable and makes no real difference to the story. This is just a basic continuation with a new character thrown in here and there to give it more substance, it had good moments but generally, the same effect could have been carried off in half the time. Still good though.

Volume 3: An improvement on volume 2 for sure follows the stories concerning the side characters as well as the two main characters, and its good. It keeps you interested and thats what matters most in any manga. I enjoyed volume 3 a lot, but i really want volume four now so i know what happens between one particular pairing >:3

i just read the first volume and that was enough for me ~.~" i mean the characters were cute and all but it ended in a such a way that i didn't really want to/need to read more - not to say it was bad, it was pretty good...

i, too, like it better when ougi draws men (rather than a man and an effeminate boy), and rio seems to get younger and smaller as the story goes on, but IMO this isn't even close to shota. rio still looks like a teenage boy; it's just that tomo looks older than a teenage boy, so the discrepancy is larger than usual between class mates.

i really enjoyed the first volume; it was crackelicious. i dislike plots driven by dumb misunderstandings, as well as super-dense uke, and those tend to ruin a story for me. but ougi manages to make the misunderstandings so inane, and somehow pulls out a sweet synergy between rio and tomo, which makes the story fun. rio isn't an idiot (he's a top student), just very, very, very naive and good-natured. tomo, despite being overbearing and rough at first, and in denial for a time thereafter, shows in all his actions that he really cares for rio -- love that first date setup. i am seriously glad the original non-con didn't continue, because it would have tipped the balance of the story into crap, since rape and humour do not go together for me. even though rio is something of a standard uke (small, gentle, defenseless, needs to be rescued), at least she carries on with having him enjoy sex, and he doesn't pretend otherwise.

the second volume is more of the same and i started to get tired of the misunderstandings by the end, though there was some character growth to partially make up for that. the third volume switched the viewpoint characters to haruka and associated men, as well as jou. while we're back to actual men, the humour is gone and i don't feel there is anything much between any of those people; but while haruka / ayumi / whatshisname are mildly entertaining because there's the suspense of whom haruka will choose, jou and seira's story turns me off entirely. my rating is only for rio and tomo's story in v1 and v2; the 3rd volume would be a 5.

i like ougi's art, and her sex scenes when she steps away from the usual. but the very best thing, frankly, are her atogaki; she is hilarious -- i want to hang out with her!

Kids swept up in having hot sex just about anywhere, without really understanding anything about love. The jaded, too-experienced Tomo-chan falls hard for a classmate, the sweet, studious and sexually-ambiguous Rio. Tomo's whole Anti-Homo Intensive Training regime -- ridiculously funny -- is his underhanded way of seducing and indoctrinating Rio ... while claiming to be trying to 'rescue' Rio from his gay tendencies. But the scheme completely backfires when Rio, realizing to his dismay that he is, in fact, gay, fears that Tomo-chan must despise him. Many comic miss-communications ensue. Not everything gets resolved perfectly ... their mutual inability to communicate real thoughts and feelings is somewhat maddening at times. But what I liked most about this story is how Tomomi and Rio -- initially carried along by raging teenage hormones and emotions -- come to realize that 'trust' is the necessary framework of love.

what part of this is shota?? the uke looks nothing like a young boy, they both look like teenage boys. but the uke is very naive, but that makes him charming to me. i like his honest and sweet personality and i love how the seme tries to cure his gayness! its a very funny and sweet manga.

I wish I could like this series, but I just don't. The main characters are shoujo cliches and Rio, the uke, looks and acts like a very young boy (or very young girl) rather than the 17-18 year old that he's supposed to be. Tomo, the seme, is so much larger than Rio that it makes the story feel that much more like shota. I'm not a shota fan, so this is a major turn-off for me.

Rio is a classic weak-willed, pathetic and supposedly unattractive "every-person" character ripped from the pages of a bad shoujo or yaoi manga. Tomo is a classic super-aggressive, uber-popular super-star type with whom the entire school is obsessed with. In real life, Tomo would never have even noticed Rio, but because this is a classic manga story written for girls, of course he becomes smitten with Rio for no good reason. You don't have to read this to know how it ends. It's been done a million times.

I am a big fan of Yuzuha Ougi's "Brother", "Star", and "Pure Love" series. My favorite thing about those series is that both men looked like men. Pretty, slender men, but men none the less. Yuzuha Ougi said that in "Brother", she drew what she liked, and would continue drawing that way. Well, she hasn't. In "Abiru Junjou", she began drawing girlish, adolescent ukes, and in "Darling", she's perfected it. I read yaoi to see men, not girls with penises, or little boys. It's sad to see that Ougi felt like she had to sell out in order to sell manga. What's popular isn't always what's good.

The plus sides to this series is are that the art is beautiful (if oddly proportioned at times, another new addition to Ougi's art), and that many of the lines are funny.

Over-all, I give this series a 3. The characters need to grow up a bit, as lovely as they are, the sex scenes are icky because Rio looks 12, and the story is unoriginal for all it's funny moments.

I completely understand why people wouldnt like this story. Usually I wish people who rated things a '1' explained themselves. With this story you dont really have to. The plot is the very definition of ridiculous. The naivete of the main character, the jealously of the other, RIDICULOUS! I normally gag at these types of stories, and clearly plenty of people have.

All the same I find it endearing anyway, and I cant really explain it. Good luck reading.

It's so ridiculous that Rio was so impossibly, so unbelievably naive. That being said, it seems I can't not enjoy this story. It's so ecchi *fu fu fu*, and Tomo-chan is so kakkoi and kawaii at the same time!! I love that he is so head-over-heels for Rio, even though he tries to be all serious and tough. On Ougi-sensei's web blog, it says that Darling 2 came out at the end of October!! I hope that a scanlation group will pick it up ASAP! Though the last page of volume 1 alluded to drama, I'd rather just see Tomo-chan and Rio get all lovey-dovey. XD

I love this story because Rio is just so cute. I felt so bad for him when he was going through his angst of thinking that Tomo was just trying to do something nice for him by curing him of his gayness, while Rio had a one-sided love for Tomo. This story had angst, humor and smut, loved it all. I can't wait for the second volume to come out.