What happens when two control freaks fall in love?Kei Yamashiro is a talented interior designer. Takashi Okumura is an important client who, on their first meeting, made a brazen and totally unexpected pass at Yamashiro, although it was passed off as banter. Yamashiro takes this as Okumura toying with him and decides to turn the tables on Okumura and make Okumura fall in love with him. Okumura sees Yamashiro's contrariness and curtness as a challenge, while Yamashiro, in turn, falls under the spell of Okumura's rakish good looks and bluntness. When Yamashiro realizes his feelings for Okumura, he is afraid that if he reveals himself, his beloved will lose interest.
Ultimately, the question of who fell for who is moot: the bonus chapter at the end of the book shows the two as confirmed lovers, Yamashiro still spiky and difficult, Okumura loving every minute of it.
The side story, "Near the Rainbow, and You," is an odd piece about memories of the past and future dreams: Shiro Seno is an up-and-coming young executive who one day gets a spam message on his cell phone. Responding out of curiosity, he discovers a teenaged boy sitting idly at a lighted fountain, sending spam messages just for something to do. The boy is Yuu Koubara, and the message reads: "Please find me. I'm at the end of the rainbow." Drawn to each other in spite of the boy's apparent antagonism to Seno, they spend time together, Yuu even seeking Seno out. At an amusement park, Seno forces Yuu to ride the ferris wheel, which terrifies him, and Yuu gives Seno some candy, which leads to a reminscence of his own childhood as an orphan.
It turns out that Yuu's stepfather is president of Seno's company's main bank. Seno escorts the boy home, and realizes that his home life is not a happy one: Yuu feels like an orphan himself. But now he has someone who cares, which makes all the difference.
Hasukawa has managed to take difficult personalities and use them in stories that turn out to be quite different in feel: "Love Control" is a straightforward contest between Yamashiro and Okumura, who repeatedly butt heads until they both surrender. "Near the Rainbow" is a poetic revery that treads the blurry boundary between friendship and love.
Hasukawa's graphics are clear and rich -- there's a good use of shading and tones to give density without clutter. (I should point out that one thing I've noticed about these comics in general is the spareness of the renderings: they are spacious in a way that's hard to describe, but essential components are the lack of busy-ness, a fault of many Western comics, which sometimes offer too much information that has little to do with the story, and a greater comfort with abstract design as an integral part of the page.) The faces are strong-featured and expressive, and of course the men are all terminally handsome.
This is a good one, and another from Juné.
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