Reviews in Brief: Jun Mayama's Live for Love

I've arrived at the point in my BL manga education where new titles are starting to remind me of older ones. Jun Mayama's Live for Love, from a story by Itsuki Sato, has similarities to both Makoto Tateno's Yellow and, even more, Sanami Matoh's Fake: Two private eyes as The Oddest Couple -- with a romantic twist, of course.

Yoshiyuki Nomura is sitting in the park feeling sorry for himself when Yasuie Kiryuuin happens by and, seemingly out of the blue, invites him to join his detective agency. Yoshi was discovered in a coin locker at the train station as an infant and adopted by the Nomuras when he was twelve because, he says, his grades were good. Four years later, the Nomuras had a child of their own and Yoshi felt as though he no longer had a place in the family. What Yasuie offers him is a place where he belongs.

Yoshi is the ant to Yasuie's grasshopper: Yasuie is, as Yoshi says, "foolish, and not very smart, and has a temper, and is terrible with money." It's this last that leads to the crisis: they are broke and Yoshi's family offers a job if Yoshi will agree to an arranged marriage and return home. By this time, it's not really a surprise that Yoshi agrees if they will pay off Yasuie's debts and put some money in his bank account.

The tension between these two does remind me of that between Taki and Goh in Yellow and even more that between Dee and Ryo in Fake. Yoshi and Yasuie, however, are more believable than the latter and more volatile than the former. There's a good tension between them that drives the story, which is really about the somewhat cockeyed romance between them: Yasuie makes playful advances, but won't admit to being serious, and Yoshi never really thinks about how he feels toward Yasuie.

The graphics are manga-standard in a lot of ways -- lean, spacious, and firmly within a bishonen aesthetic -- and layouts are firmly within shoujo conventions. The character designs are fairly sylized but the two protagonists are very appealing: Mayama has managed to provide a great deal of expressiveness with a bare minimum of means. The sex scenes fall into the "unambiguous without being graphic" realm.

I found Live for Love to be thoroughly charming, although it was not what I expected. Another happy find.

From Juné.