Reviews in Brief: A Foreign Love Affair

Since the news has been so depressing, and I'm in writing mode, I thought I'd try out something a little new here. Actually, it's not all that new: if you remember, this incarnation of Hunter at Random began with a series of commentaries on Brokeback Mountain. I thought I would continue in that vein, just commenting on books, music, films, and so on that catch my interest. I've thought about doing it before -- I may even have mentioned it here -- but I've run across a couple of things that seem suited to this.

The first is Ayano Yamane's A Foreign Love Affair, which is a yaoi manga I had been looking forward to on the basis of the clip of the anime that I posted here. It is, in short, the story of a romance between Ranmaru Ohmi, son of a Yakuza boss, and Alberto Valentiano, the captain of the cruise ship on which Ranmaru and his bride (who do not get along at all) were married -- the affair actually begins on Ranmaru's wedding night, which he spends with Al. Ranmaru is eccentric -- he refuses to wear Western clothes (and he is certainly seductive enough in kimono) and has a short and nasty temper. The affair picks up again when Ranmaru and Kaoru, his wife, are on their honeymoon in Italy and Al rescues Ranmaru, who has been left behind by their bus and decides to walk to Rome from Florence. After several more-than-steamy sex scenes between Al and Ranmaru, a kidnapping, a sex-slave auction, and a daring rescue, the lovers are reunited.

Al is the agressor in this affair, the seme to Ranmaru's uke, and the story's a little beyond the standard yaoi school-boy romance: these are grown men, and while the romantic element is almost palpable, it's also fairly rough-edged.

On first reading, this one seemed somewhat unresolved, but on looking back, I may have simply not picked up on something: it ends with Kaoru on a rampage because Ranmaru is missing again. Gondoh, Ranmaru's childhood friend and current rival, doesn't quite have the courage to tell her that he's with another man.

The volume finishes with another story, "The Love Guide," about a university biology professor, Hirotaka Takaoka, who is looking for a wife and goes to a matchmaking agency, where he is taken in hand by Tohru Serizawa, a perfectly charming young man. Takaoka is devastatingly handsome but does not socialize well, and his one attempt at a mixer winds up in a brawl -- among the women -- that results in Serizawa getting a faceful of Tabasco. The first sparks are visible when Takaoka takes him in hand to get him cleaned up and his eyes cared for. Then they run into each other on the street; Serizawa has been drinking, and the inevitable happens: on the way to Serizawa's apartment, Serizawa confesses that he's in love with Takaoka, and Takaoka returns the sentiment. This one is smooth sailing, except for an additional chapter about Serizawa's doubts about their relationship -- and Takaoka's very direct way of dealing with those doubts.

Yamane's pictorial style is clean but sensual, and has what I can only describe as "body" -- figures are almost sculptural, although rendered without a great deal of detail, and of course the characters are idealized: the end result is that both pairs of protagonists are total hotties. (I should point out that the sex scenes are quite explicit, including the dialogue, and next to nothing is masked. Actually, maybe I should say that less than nothing is masked.)

A Foreign Love Affair is published by 801 Media; I got my copy through Amazon.com.

This may become a standard feature. We'll see. I'm reading a lot of yaoi lately, much of which I won't be reviewing elsewhere. If I do, I'll try to remember to come back and provide links to fuller discussions.

Feedback, of course, is welcome.

And as an added attraction, here are a couple of my reviews of yaoi at Epinions: Yaya Sakuragi's Tea for Two (which is delightful) and Makoto Tateno's Ka Shin Fu.