Review: Makoto Tateno: Yellow

Makoto Tateno is a mangaka doing yaoi whose work I've learned to keep an eye out for. The first series I happened across by her was Yellow, an action-adventure series involving two "snatchers," free-lancers who recover illegal drugs for various clients, usually the police. Inside the larger story line, there are several substories of the more-or-less standard cops-and-robbers variety. Because this is one of those series that won't really support separate reviews for each volume, I am going to talk about the whole series here rather than just volume 1.

Yellow is slightly outside the normal run of BL or "bishonen-ai" manga. Both protagonists are older, in their early twenties, and one is avowedly gay (a device that Tateno makes use of in other stories). And it is definitely an action-adventure series, although yaoi in general tend to be more oriented toward shoujo ("manga for girls") than shounen ("manga for boys"). (But it's worth pointing out that even in this one the emphasis is on the relationship between the lovers.)

Taki and Goh are partners: they are snatchers and get their assignments from Tsunuga, the somewhat mysterious owner of the cafe below the apartment they share and where they take their meals. If you search this series online, you will meet a repeated blurb that claims Taki is masculine and straight, and Goh is feminine and gay. Nothing could be farther from the truth: yes, Taki is straight and Goh is gay, but both are tough, aggressive men, and Goh is not at all reticent about what he wants -- he is, in fact, the seme to Taki's uke in this story -- and what he wants more and more is Taki. Goh’s attempts to seduce Taki form an ongoing motif throughout the series. We see Taki’s resistance start to erode in Volume 2, as we also see Goh’s feelings shift from playful jokes to little more than lust to deep and very real love. This "main" story finally becomes the focus in the third volume: Taki, as might be expected, has a dark secret in his past, and when he realizes how that secret has come back into his present, in the guise of two assassins who have come to claim him, he is devastated. He also realizes that he loves Goh, whom the assassins see as an impediment to their goal, and will do anything to protect him. All the threads come together in the last two volumes -- Taki's past, Tsunuga's past, the assassins who call themselves the "Sandfish," and Taki's growing love for Goh.

It’s a treat to see in this series the interplay of character between these two, particularly as the final crisis comes and we realize just how deeply their feelings for each other run. Tateno hits a level in Yellow rare in yaoi. The long-awaited love scene, perhaps because it has been so long in coming, achieves an amazing intensity, almost poetry, made even more evocative by Taki's thoughts as he and Goh make love for the first time. The fact that Taki believes this is the last time he will be with Goh provides another layer of poignancy.

Do keep in mind that this is directed toward teenage girls (in this case, one suspects later teens rather than earlier), so it is overwhelmingly romantic and more than a little melodramatic. I also suspect there are a number of teenage boys who would find it appealing as well.

Tateno's visual style falls well within the range of typical manga styles, in her case tending toward slender young men with somewhat elfin features; one drawback is that it can be difficult to tell characters apart. She also adheres to what seems to be a manga convention of interspersing highly "cartoony" frames among the more realistic ones as humorous asides or throwaways -- meant, I suppose, to be cute, but sometimes merely annoying.

I do recommend this series highly: it’s a cut above most in this genre in the complexity of characters, and there’s a refreshingly low incidence of big-eyed waifs.

(June [Digital Manga Publishing, 2009, 2010)