There is so many things that i want to say about this manga but there is so little words that i can say too.

This manga is one of the best manga i have ever read. Never thought the story will be deep like this. Come for the shounen-ai, leave with the tears. Not your usual drama manga.

This is not a yaoi manga, so if you read it because the shounen-ai tag, you will discover more than that. It covers about all type of love, where people need love in their life. It include topic about religion too, about God, good and bad, angels, wings, etc.

The emotion is too good.

Art, story, character 10/10
John lennon 1/10 (1 point for the silk hair)

I don't usually rate things as 10, but this was so beautiful...
The art style was really soft and fitted really well with the almost melancholic air of the story.
The plot was very interesting, I love how as the reader your perception is manipulated by the author as she slowly reveals more information, you're given enough to change your mind about something but you're left wanting more and wondering why. The pace was quite nice, it didn't feel rushed. The characters were also very interesting, they had depth and different sides to them. They had motivations and feelings. I really just want to take the story apart and really analyse it because I feel like there's more depth to it that I haven't found.

for everyone that actually liked this manga, it's inspired by a book called : « Les amités particulières », there is even a movie it's in french but you can find eng subs. i think that's why the story is really unusually religious, it's based on the book. i recommended it to everyone !!!

I was deeply moved by this manga. The depth of its characters, especially the care and love they have for each other, is beyond lovely.

I agree with lilliful below that this manga is oddly religious especially near the end. It is why this manga by the end, to me , isn't really about romantic love (especially in the sense of modern yaoi and shounen ai), but about growing up. It's why chapter 7 is slightly disappointing to me and chapter 8 is my favorite. Also by the end I actually couldn't help but enjoy the religious imagery a bit because it is so reminiscent of imagery in western literary works. (There can be so much literary analysis done on this work! That kinda makes me happy.)

The art for this work is really well suited to the story. The softer lines provide the manga with this ethereal quality that portray not just the time (youth), but the feelings of the characters quite well. It also went well with all the imagery, not just religious ones, but also the fantastical ones (there was a unicorn there somewhere).

TL;DR This was a lovely mesh of art and story. If you're looking for romance like in modern yaoi and shounen ai, don't look here.

... Last updated on March 13th, 2015, 12:55pm

I thoroughly enjoyed this manga. I actually liked all the biblical and literary references it made. I also liked how it wasn't "naughty" like pretty much all the recent manga I can find with gay characters are.

What I disliked was how the boys behaved. I've never met any boys -- heck, any human beings, actually -- that act quite like the people in this manga do. It made them incredibly hard to relate to. Also, the setting is really unusual. It's set in a Catholic school, so I'd expect someone to care that boys were acting "gay", but no one does. That's not realistic at all. I'm not sure how to feel about it, though. On the one hand, yes, it does make it seem less lifelike and if the manga's goal was to show how life can be, it failed. On the other, it's actually nice to read about a world where people can love eachother and not be judged for it.

Also, this is just a pet peeve, but the protagonist has an unusual name and we never get to learn how it's pronounced. In desperation, I looked his name up on Google... But all I got were people with the same question I did! How do I pronounce Juli's full name? Apparently, I'll never know.

Thomas no Shinzou was, by any record anyone can find, the first shounen-ai serial manga. Every BL ever published grew out of its legacy. But what a world of difference there is between this fiercely emotional work and the yaoi readers know today.

What really strikes me about Thomas no Shinzou is how literary it is, in a very European sense of the word. There are allusions to Goethe and Hesse and Rilke and the Bible. It's hard to imagine that Hagio's audience of Japanese teenage girls understood most of the references, but they really elevate the piece. Not that the piece needs the allusions to be literary - not at all. It's its elegance and psychological depth and, ultimately, Hagio's talent that raises this series to a level most novelists can only wish for.

I didn't appreciate this manga at all. I'm an avid reader of both shounen-ai and yaoi, but to me, this manga was unusually religious. The story really isn't about love so much as about the agony of perceived damnation and possible salvation. The main character Juli has a traumatic event in his past that he can't get over which we know was related to physical abuse from early on in the manga, but apparently that wasn't the issue at all -- the issue is that he feels he is damned and can't believe in god anymore. So, this manga is really about how love (I'm not sure if anything in this manga was romantic love rather than platonic love) can restore faith in god. Personally, I just felt like the ending was a let-down, and preachy. If you're into a seriously religious work (as opposed to something like Vassalord, which is standard religious crack) then I think you'll like this. If you find religion lulzy, you probably won't be able to take this manga seriously.

"Heart of Thomas" is believed by many to be the first shounen-ai manga, and while that may or may not be true, it certainly is the finest example of shounen-ai that I've ever found. The art may be stylized and some may say dated, but it's lovely and it fits with the ethereal and timeless nature of the story. The story embodies the idea of a love strong enough to cause pain, a love that's common to those on the verge of adulthood. It also deals with the sense of self, and how painful it can be to come to terms with who we are. I absolutely love this manga, and I'm extremely grateful to the anonymous scanlation team responsible for bringing it to the English-reading community. It would be incredible to see this story licensed so that I could own it in my own language.

... Last updated on December 19th, 2009, 5:35pm