Reviews in Brief: Hinako Takanaga's You Will Fall In Love

A word about cover art versus interior art: in yaoi, it can be highly misleading. Cover illustrations are usually more finished, in color, and as often as not do not reflect accurately the interior graphics. I've mentioned a few notable examples -- Dog Style and Yakuza in Love come immediately to mind. The reason I bring this up is that yaoi are usually shrink-wrapped, so that you can't actually see the interior illustrations before you buy the damned thing. Not that that has ever stopped me, although thinking on it, it's more likely to make me pass over a book than buy it. The reason this comes up now is that the cover art for Hinako Takanaga's You Will Fall in Love is just beautiful, and, although the interior stuff is fine, it's not quite as eye-catching.

Haru Mochizuki was once a star archer. In high school, he and his best friend Reiichiro Shudo shared top honors in every tournament. And then Haru's game began falling off, and he left the sport. Of course, the fact that he was in love with Reiichiro may have had something to do with it -- that's what Haru thinks, anyway. At any rate, he's now a substitute teacher at a private school which has, among other amenities, an archery range. The first person he sees there is Tsukasa, Reiichiro's younger brother, captain of the archery club, whom Haru doesn't recognize at first. The Shudos are, in fact, proprietors and teachers of an archery dojo where Haru used to practice with Reiichiro. In spite of his resistance, and in spite of his wholly fictitious wrecked elbow, Haru is talked into becoming an advisor and coach for the archery club, and it doesn't take long for Tsukasa to confess his love. Haru is attracted to him, but regards his same-sex attractions as shameful and the reason for his archery going bad. Tsukasa sets out to prove to him that he's wrong. And then Reiichiro reappears and things go straight to hell.

If it weren't for jealousy and insecurity, I don't think anyone would be able to create yaoi. Those are the driving forces behind this story, along with Haru's own confusion in regard to his feelings, and I have to say they provide a good set of motivations: the story's a solid one, and I am once again favorably impressed by the psychological realism that Takanaga has brought to this one.

And, my opening salvo aside, the graphics are excellent, if not as ethereally beautiful as the cover, although the character designs are all slanted very much toward the youthful, which makes sense for Tsukasa, not so much for Haru and Reiichiro. (And while I have to admit that both Tsukasa and Haru are cute, Reiichiro is a total fox.) Visual flow is excellent, and there's a wonderful sense of motion in many of the scenes.

Another one from BLU, and, although I'm not as immediately taken with it as I have been with some others I have a feeling it's going to grow on me. (A note: Since I wrote this, I've looked at it a couple more times, and it's grown on me, enough that I went out and got volume 1 of Takanaga's previous work, Little Butterfly. Tsukasa, in particular, is a strongly defined character whose youth and intensity provide full justification for the somewhat melodramatic story line.)