Morthos

Lord, I need to find more B/GL like this. The way it's written you can tell that they focused on character building first rather than sex and the characters themselves are very enjoyable to read. That beginning where I literally had about 2 heart attacks I was in for a ride. This story is all about one person trying to get the other to fall back in love with him after an accident that left him with a moderate case of amnesia and it's both one of the cutest and saddest manga I've read. I cried a couple of times towards and at the end because of how bittersweet this story was. I'm also just a sucker for any B/GL story where they have a child, a pet, and/or get married. That 100% fucks me up.

I need this to officially be licensed so bad.

This story really minds me of Kowagaranai de, Soba ni Ite in the way the couple in this story had to deal with keeping their love alive after a tragedy that centers around one of the characters. It's a very bittersweet story that made me cry more than once just like Kowagaranai de, Soba ni Ite. My only problem is that it had the chance to be even sadder with some and it kind of missed the ball on that. I wanted that "really sad" ending and those "I gotta sit my book down for a fucking moment because, fuck dude..." that I did not get. There are a couple of moments where you feel they either tried or just didn't want to push that far into anything too traumatic so they end up picking the least emotional outcome that felt flat to me. The build-ups are amazingly emotional while the outcomes are fanfic-y at best. But that doesn't change my mind on how much I love this manga. It's a great hurt/comfort book.

I honestly really enjoyed this. I thought some of the translation was weird but the overall story was nice. It focused more on one's past and characters' development rather than something like sex and I welcome that in BL manga.

Now that I read this prologue, I definitely recommend reading the first book first even though this comes before it in the story. Having read the first book put in so much context that having all that backstory and foreshadowing made me feel even more for everything that happened in this backstory.

... You ever just want to scream because you feel so emotionally attached to some fucking fictional characters? A part of me feels like I should have read this first before getting into Itou-san because it would have made it easier to read through kid!Itou and kid!Kyosuke's abuse. BUT the 1st book feels like an easier read compared to this that I think reading this in order of release gets you more invested in these characters. Like, by now, I found myself really emotional about the both of them... I wanted to die. What got me the most was reading through Kyosuke as a baby-baby, 5 YEARS OLD, having to go through what happened. It really reminded me of chapter 4 of Ore, Higaisha and, um... Yeah. I really just want to scream right now.

Sorry, this one was a lot shorter than my feelings on the 1st book. Everything I felt there I still felt here.

If I could scream to convey how much I loved this "main" story, I fucking would... But I don't think that would get my point across very well in text. Firstly, I love the main story. I cared a lot about both Itou and Kyousuke to the point where I could feel myself almost about to cry at some points. I have yet to read the prologue story (as of writing this) but, from what I read from one comment, both Itou and Kyousuke had hellish upbringings that (at least for Kyousuke) made me really want to see them be together. I was also ready to drop this title because I thought the problems I have with most bl manga were gonna be in this, but they wrote Ito to love Kyousuke so GOD DAMN MUCH and it made me really love him as a character. It made me love their relationship and how they showed that they needed each other. I was afraid that the rape and murder would be glorified like 90% of this landscape, but it is shown in a horrible light, being a story about how two people are trying to get out of these situations together. Fucking thank you! I also want to talk about the last 2 chapters a little. I think they were very important to the main story and I did actually cry during both of them with how they both completed and complimented the story to show you how they were living during them being "on the run" and after all the bullshit was over. God bless.

Personally, I did not like the parallel story chapter. It is the reason I put pedophilia-ish as a tag. I am not here for older people "waiting" on an underage person to be of age because it means that they have feelings for this child even though they know they shouldn't. I don't care if you're 13 or 19, you are still a child until 20. And even then it doesn't really feel like you hit "adult" until 25+, but at least you're not a fucking teen. After falling in love with these characters, showing that Ito had feelings for the underage teenager but waiting until he was 18 is still really disgusting to me. There was even a comment he made about Kyousuke in freshman year that just fucked me up in the most disgusting of ways. Even though he waited till the bare minimum it still didn't feel ok to me and it was horrible no matter how sweet Ito was. Still horrible.

Chap 7's review in 5 seconds or less: What the fuck? No.

HOLY FUCK DO I LOVE THIS COUPLE. Ok, right off the bat, I got tired of the number of sex scenes that were in every chapter. I could really do without that. There was also some dialogue that I saw as borderline homophobia but can also be interpreted as someone who didn't see being gay as normal because of where he grew up. It definitely isn't as bad as some homophobic lines I would see in BL.

Other than that, the characters, the art style, their story and them being just an adorable ass couple made me cry. I wish there was more to type about, though. It's really just a cute story about two people getting to know each other more... while also having a lot of sex. I really hope sublime or someone publishes this in English because I will buy this in both languages. Also, thank you for that page at the end of chapter 6 where Kurokawa talks about how cute his boyfriend is. I legit cried. God bless.

Update: I’M SORRY BUT 2019 ME MUST HAVE FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE WEIRD RECORDING THING GLASSES DUDE WANTED TO DO???? So, like, the guy with the glasses wanted to film them having sex but the other guy really wasn’t comfortable with that. And instead of just going “ok, I respect that” he just kept??? bringing it up??? It was kinda the one thing that really annoyed me.

More importantly the bit at the end! Glasses dude finally got to record them doing it but it was still him pushing the other guy to agree to it. I would’ve loved it if the other guy came up to him after thinking it over, something like “our relationship is in a good spot right now and now that we’re living together I want to do something nice for him” kind of thing. It would’ve ended up being something he wanted to do because he knew it would make glasses dude happy. The whole story is really sweet and I think the both of them as a couple is really sweet, which is why the way we got the recording scene pissed me off so much because even during the recording it scene itself was really fucking sweet!

I actually want to fucking scream. I've never... Related... To a character so hard like I did with Soushi when reading this. I'm not into metal or any of its variants, but reading him talking about how the metal music and intimidating look prevented people from talking to him hit me like a train. Seeing him dealing, growing, and how his generalized anxiety, his social anxiety, and his possible AVPD kept him from conveying important shit or even living a goddamn life felt like I'd been thrown off a fucking plane. Seeing him trying to speak up made me cry more than once because I know... I know how that feels when you're on the verge of passing out because there's so much weight on you to speak. Coming from someone with AVPD and BPD and struggling with that constant tug-of-war of wanting to speak, wanting to make friends, and wanting to keep the friends you somehow made while so much of you is scared to do so at the same time fucking sucks. I've been that person starting from 5th grade that had a permeate depressing look, a permeate intimidating look just so people wouldn't come up to me. Hell, I still do! The moment I had with this book...

Anyway, the story was great, I had an existential crisis, and I'm looking to buy this physically.

Note: These were my thought back in 2019. I plan to reread and update this at some point.

I need to read more BL like this. I love how adorable and likable the characters are and the story focused more on the characters being in school and friends instead of trying to push things along and try to get to anything about sex. I've seen too many school au's where the people are a good 16-18 and there's sex involved. I get it that people do end up doing it around those ages but being in my 20's I don't really want to read that and it almost seems like that's all there is. Having just a pure love story of this dorky high school kid having a crush on his friend and the story grows around them being friends is refreshing and makes me cry. Thank God for this and thank God it got officially licensed because I was about to buy it in Japanese... I think I'll still buy it in Japanese, to be honest.

I'm very excited for Motto Ganbare! Nakamura-kun!!, I read the first chapter and it seems it's being slowly released through a magazine and I'm not sure how far they are over there... So just waiting on that is keeping me really hyped.