Reviews in Brief: Shouko Hidaka's Restart

As promised, here's this week's "Review in Brief." Restart by Shouko Hidaka had been on my list of "pleasant, but not terrific" BL manga until recently, when I took it out again. There's more here than I had thought.

The main series is about the romance between Tadashi Yoshizawa and Akihiro Kudo, both models working for a large agency. Tadashi was, in fact, something of an inspiration to Aki, but they have been distant for a while, after a night that Tadashi only barely remembers, and then not in detail. Not so far beneath the surface is Tadashi's resentment that Aki has eclipsed him as the agency's number one attraction, and it's not until Aki confronts him directly that Tadashi faces his feelings. (Of course, it helps a lot that Aki says he loves Tadashi, and always has.)

The five stories in the main series -- "Restart," "Step," "Clear," "Reverse," and "Contact," the last in the volume -- move back and forth in time, so that we get a view of the growth of the relationship between Tadashi and Aki that is somewhat outside the standard linear narrative. It's an interesting concept, and it works.

The next story, "For You," focuses on another model from the same agency, Shunsuke Honma, a senior in high school, who is tapped for a portraiture project by a rising young photographer, Tomomi Kishida, who begins his work with Shunsuke by telling him he's always liked him, while simultaneously rejecting every pose and expression that Shunsuke comes up with. That bit of information preys on Shunsuke's mind as he gets more and more frustrated, until Kishida is ready to call it all off -- at which Shunsuke says "No way!"

"Overlap" strikes me as the most substantial of the group. Tomohiro Tatsumi only realized he was in love with his friend Shinozaki after Shinozaki went missing on a scuba-diving trip. On a visit to his parents, Tomohiro meets Shinozaki's younger brother, Ryo, who spends his time studying in the old clubhouse his brother used to use. The two don't hit it off so well, but that changes.

Hidaka's graphic style is very clean, minimal, and expressive. The guys are all beautiful, and the faces have much more the feel of "real people" than is so often the case -- one rapidly forgets that one is reading a comic. The cover illustration gives a good idea of the elegance of the drawing -- it's not far from the interior graphics in style and quality. Sex scenes are reticent-standard. Visual flow is very clear -- Hidaka is not one for adventurous layouts, but that serves the stories well -- they're ambiguous enough on their own.

It's the ambiguity in these stories -- of time, of place, of feelings -- that give them their interest. They're certainly worth a look, and probably more than one.

This one's from Juné.