Nyaaghn, I'm just going to go ahead and say it, naysayers can buck-off: Reading this is a guilty pleasure of mine. Even if this is most likely never going to get updated anytime soon(curse my inability to read Japanese or any other language other than English! I'm stuck with scanlations). This is like, what, my fourth re-read?
First time I started way back when, read one chapter then fell in love. Went for a re-read when the updates weren't coming fast enough. Re-read what we have so far a third time after my heart got broken upon hearing the news that there weren't any scanlators willing to do this anymore. Reading it for the fourth time and it still has me loving it with a whopping huge-ass serving of nostalgia. Maybe someday I'll finally have the time to learn how to read Japanese. For now, I'm at the mercy of awesome scanlators.
The art in the beginning is still as, er, not-exactly-bad, just the way I remember it, now being more aware of the art and how it gets better by the chapter and volume is a pleasant experience, oh, and the premise is still as interesting as ever.
It's one of the few manga that I love to bits, teaching me the art and exercise of suspension of disbelief, despite knowing that if I were any saner, I wouldn't be reading or re-reading this at all. I think that this is one of a dozen or so favorites that if I'd never read, I wouldn't be as tolerant of the manga I've read to this date, be it ridiculous plot lines, dub-con or outright non-con, or plain and utter WTF-types. Now, I'm proud to say, I rarely get BSed out of finishing a story no matter how fugly the art or ridiculous the plot.
There are so many LOL moments, countless ©giggle-fart inducing scenarios. I can't even count the number of times I went "Omigawd! WTH!? Bwahahaha!!" and I'm not even sure that all those times did the scene aim for that sort of reaction from a reader.
I still get a tingly feeling when I empathize with Norio, when he gets hurt or turned on or whatever. Kunimasa is just hawt, I can't even. The other pairings like Yonekuni/Shiro was also great.
This isn't like, whoa, groundbreaking meaningful hoopla that reveals secrets to life type but there is emotion, there is humor, there is a lot of things about this manga that can make you LOL in one moment and feel touched enough to sob in another.
Another thing I love is that the physiques of the characters actually have relevance and we have variety here, people. There's no 'all the girly looking dudes are ukes' and 'all the bara/semi-bara dudes are semes' here, though the semes are generally larger than their counterparts.
As in any manga, there are characters who make me want to beat them into a pulp, scenes that make me want to tear my hair out while screaming for bloody murder. Yeah. A drug isn't all good, right? I still love this and hope against hope that I'll be able to finish it.
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