Reviews in Brief: Tamaki Kirishima's Ruff Love

I have to warn you right up front that I was completely captivated by this little volume, mostly because of the character of Shiba.

Taketora is a writer of historical fiction who is barely managing to get published -- his stories are pretty dull, because he is pretty dull. He makes his living working in his uncle's bar. One evening, as he is leaving offerings on the altar to his grandparents, he thinks to go out and leave something at the memorial to his grandfather's dog, Shiba, and finds Shiba lying in the back yard. It seems that Shiba has come back as a human boy -- with fuzzy ears and a tail -- to repay Taketora's grandfather for his kindness. Since grandfather has been dead for twenty years, Shiba decides that he will pay his debt by serving Taketora.

Shiba is enthusiastic but unpracticed -- which is to say, he's a complete klutz, but eager to please. And Taketora soon discovers depths of feeling in himself he had no idea existed. And as his feelings develop, his stories get better. However, things are complicated by the arrival of Akatsuki, another reincarnated dog, who is bad-tempered, always hungry, and terrifically horny. Akatsuki is a sad, embittered dog who came back to earth because of love -- his human, after promising that they would be together forever, died and left him.

It's really a slight story, and frankly veers a little over the edge of sentimentality, but offhand, I can't think of another that has charmed me so completely. The characters, while they could benefit from more development, are wonderfully drawn -- Shiba, with his bumptious enthusiasm and innocence plays off against both Taketora's emotional reticence and Akatsuki's bitterness to good effect, and even Akatsuki, as we learn his history, becomes an appealing, sympathetic character. I would just like to see more depth, because I think it's potentially there. (And I think I now have a take on the use of the term "mameshiba," which I've learned is a breed of small dog, and which I've seen used a couple of times as a descriptive term. Now I know.) The graphics are very well done, rich but clear, with excellent use of shading and tone. Be warned, however: the sex scenes are quite explicit and pretty steamy. My one objection in that area is that Kirishima falls too often into the "chibi" renderings in the comic relief frames; I think they would be funnier, and fit the story better, if more fully rendered -- she can create frames that are exceptionally beautiful, and the drawing overall is at a high level.

This one's from Deux Press, and I picked it up at Borders.