Reviews in Brief: Makoto Tateno's Yellow

Makoto Tateno is a mangaka doing yaoi whose work I've learned to keep an eye out for. The first series I happened across by her was Yellow, an action adventure involving two "snatchers," free-lancers who recover illegal drugs for various clients, usually the police. Inside the larger story line, there are several substories of the more-or-less standard cops-and-robbers variety.

Taki and Goh are partners: they are snatchers and get their assignments from Tsunuga, the somewhat mysterious owner of the cafe below the apartment they share and where they take their meals. Goh’s attempts to seduce Taki form an ongoing motif throughout the series. We see Taki’s resistance start to erode in Volume 2, as we also see more and more that Goh is quite serious in his feelings. This "main" story finally becomes the focus in the third volume: Taki, as might be expected, has a dark secret in his past, and when he realizes how that secret has come back to occupy his present, in the guise of two assassins who have come back for him, he is devastated. He also realizes that he loves Goh, who the assassins see as an impediment to their goal. All the threads come together in the last two volumes -- Taki's past, Tsunuga's past, the assassins who call themselves the "Sandfish," and Taki's growing love for Goh.

Oddly enough, if you search this series online, you will meet a repeated blurb that claims Taki is masculine and straight, and Goh is feminine and gay. Nothing could be farther from the truth: yes, Taki is straight and Goh is gay, but both are tough, aggressive men (and, in fact, Goh is the seme to Taki's uke). It’s a treat to see in this series the interplay between these two, particularly as the final crisis comes and we realize just how deeply their feelings for each other run.

Tateno's graphic style falls well within the standard for manga; the men are slender and muscular, with elfin features. One notes that Taki's eyes are more prominent than Goh's, which I'm coming to take as a signal as to which partner will be uke and which seme in a yaoi.

The series is published by Digital Manga Press, and I do recommend it highly: it’s a cut above most in this genre in the complexity of characters, and there’s a refreshing dearth of big-eyed waifs. There is a more detailed discussion at Epinions.

A note: The covers in this series accurately reflect the black-and-white graphics inside, which doesn't always happen.