An excellent guilty pleasure in the escapist fantasy genre.
The author manages to deliciously draw out the typical "in denial" trope, and have the story progress slowly and ~naturally enough, with the help of clichés all right, but somehow making it work, and spicing things up with lovely tension and some of the hottest sex I've ever read. It runs out of steam somewhat towards the end around the time they go to Canada, and the ending was totally predictable and anticlimactic. It totally took me by surprise that I'd reached the end since so little emphasis was put on the "first time they made love". Sure it ended the way I expected it to, but I was waiting for something more remarkable to finish those 8 volumes.
Still I really liked that while one "dominated" (not in a D/s or SM way) in bed, the other had the upper hand in their "public life", that the seme was the kind-hearted one, open with his sentiments, while the uke was the tyrant. I appreciated the bid for originality and tentative to break the seme/uke mold if anything else, it helped maintain a sense of balance that is completely lacking from lots of yaoi and which always makes me uncomfortable.
There were many heart-breaking and heart-warming moments when Souichi let the façade crumble and allowed himself to get close to Morinaga (I'm thinking after the fire for example) which made the whole experience really enjoyable as you got attached to the characters. The first yaoi I read when I started in the genre, and I'll keep a good memory of it.
It's a matter of taste but I understand how this manga might skeeve people, and with reason. If you're not ready or can't consider this as something related to sexual fantasies and that rape/forceful sex/dubcon isn't one of your kinks (I personally discovered that it was when first reading this ^^') then it'd be best indeed for your to pass your way.
That being said, this is no dark cesspit of morality with rape everywhere either. That the first sexual encounter is a rape is sadly a fact, and a really unnecessary one where I think the author bowed to the ~expectations of the genre
Morinaga could have perfectly decided to withdraw from uni after drunkenly confessing and being rejected for example, which would have set the story just as well
and it could be a deterrent for many, but thankfully it wasn't for me, because the story only got better from there. I'd encourage people who can to suspend their disbelief and put their escapist-fantasy goggles on for a short while, as the evolution of the relationship and of Souichi's feelings and behaviour is pretty good and true to character after that.
I don't consider any of the sex that happens afterwards as rape, because a) we're in yaoi-land, I'd be all for emasculating Morinaga if it were RL, but realism is not the point here b) in the "logic" of the story, as Morinaga points out, Souichi only seems to be looking for an excuse and c) he even admits that there's no one else he'd do that with, no one else the "emotional blackmail" would work for anyway. And also, because the sex was hot so I didn't mind so much :3 I am a pervy fangirl after all.