I thought this story was pretty cute. The story is basically about an 18 year old country kid who goes to Tokyo and ends up in a 28 year old corporate worker's condo as his roommate and possibly more.
What I like about this is the whole volume is dedicated to this couple (too often random chapters go on tangents with other side characters), the relationship is relatively slow-moving (for BL land), and for BL land it's very low on the rape scale.
It's kind of hard to classify whether or not there IS non-con in this because there's a scene that seems possibly dub-con to me, but at the same time the character reacts right away in a manner that makes total sense and doesn't just ignore it as if nothing out of the ordinary happened. Between that and the context of the seme's personality who we learn has some kind of skewed views of things, it actually makes sense why it happened the way it did. Also, when the uke is clearly scared about things, the seme completely backs off. For those reasons, overall it didn't bother me the way it might have otherwise.
I almost didn't even say anything about the possible dub-con because I feel like I'm blowing it out of proportion by mentioning it at all, but I also felt that I should mention it since it initially stuck out to me and because some people might want to know.
Other than that, the story did for some reason feel a little bit off to me but I haven't been able to identify why. I think it might be that I didn't get a super great read on Iori for some reason, mostly in relation to whether or not he already knew he was gay/bi or whether the very idea of men together previously never even occurred to him. It doesn't really explain that part of it and because he's portrayed as an otherwise uncomplicated country boy, it made me wonder about that.
One of the things that's really cute about it is the way they each act like a little kid in different ways. Iori is a sweet guy whose reactions are exactly how he feels... so when he's happy, he's really obviously happy, smiling and laughing and showing his excitement-- and when he's embarrassed, he gets defensive. Meanwhile, Todo acts like a kid mostly when he's sulking or in the way he doesn't take very good care of himself or his place, or how he doesn't want to sleep alone at night so he cuddles up to Iori. They end up being childlike in different ways so that the other balances him out.
Overall, the characters are cute, especially Iori, and Todo is amusingly brusque. They make a really cute couple because their personalities mix in an interesting way. Iori is much younger/smaller looking than Todo so keep that in mind if that might bother you, however he DOESN'T look like he's a wide-eyed ten year old like the super young ukes can look. He does look about his age, I think, and he's actually kind of plain looking for BL land, but I like that about him. The art style is a bit different than a lot of BL as well, but I thought it was cute. There were parts that made me laugh out loud and for most of the volume I'm pretty sure I was reading it smiling like a doof.
I'm glad I bought the volume because I think it's a cute story about two people who end up together by happenstance but who end up fitting each other well.
(By the way, if you like this, you should check out Brilliant Blue by YORITA Saemi which I have to admit I do like more than Caramel, but has a similar vibe and unique-to-itself art style)
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