Reviews in Brief: Takumi-kun 1: June Pride

Takumi Hayama has distinct problems with interpersonal relationships. He is, in the eyes of his fellow boarding-school students, “cold, apathetic, misanthropic, and an anal-retentive neat freak.” That’s pretty much the consensus, except for Giichi Saki, who is rich, charismatic, and easily the most popular boy in school - and Takumi’s second-year roommate. It takes eight pages of this story for Gui, as he is called for short, to confess that he’s in love with Takumi, which makes a tricky situation even trickier: it might be nice to discover that your tall, handsome roommate is in love with you but it’s another story when you’re afraid to touch him: what Gui calls Takumi’s “human contact phobia” really gets in the way. It stems from a childhood incident that Takumi is afraid to tell Gui about, for fear of losing his love.

The two sections of the main narrative are separated by a nice little vignette of Gui at his friend Shozou’s home for the holidays, in which the boys share gossip and Gui reassures Shozou’s sister that her brother isn’t going gay.

The story by Shinobu Gotoh is fairly standard yaoi fare: an all boys’ boarding school (and of course the various liaisons are the subject of major gossip), a protagonist with a deep, dark secret in his past, intrigue, jealousy, and a wager that never should have been made, but of course, love triumphs. Kazumi Ohya’s illustrations have an ethereal quality to them, the characters all slim and androgynous, almost elfin (especially Takumi, the uke to Gui’s seme) and a little otherworldly.

June Pride is the first of the Takumi-kun series, although it works perfectly well as a stand-alone. It’s not the most riveting yaoi I’ve run across, but it’s a nice romantic tale to while away an hour to two. It’s published by Blu Manga, and I believe I got my copy at Borders.

I’ve done a slightly lengthier review at Epinions, here.

(Note: I'm posting this today because I had it in the tank and felt like it. I'm thinking this will probably become a weekly feature, maybe Sundays. We'll see.)