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BL Manga Rec: Acid Town
Sep. 7th, 2017 03:05 pmI am officially in love with Kyugo’s BL manga series, Acid Town, and want to spread the love to others. Many thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
imperfekti for putting me onto this wonderful series. She likened it to Mirage of Blaze (novels) in having an intricate, interesting plot with a great ensemble of characters, and that’s all quite correct.
General Review and Rec:
spoilers only for the chapter 1 setup
The story, which is currently ongoing, is set in a near future dystopia run by yakuza and opens with the tough life of a teen boy, Yuki, who has to pay the hospital bills of his chronically ill and adorable little brother, Jun. Yuki and his friend, Tetsu, get a break—or do they?—when a yakuza boss, Hyoudou, agrees to pay Jun’s bills in exchange for Yuki visiting him once a week.
Acid Town is definitely boys love, but it breaks a lot of conventions. The reader has to wait for the romance, and when it shows up, it’s not necessarily where or how you might expect it. Like many a BL manga, it is rife with sexual abuse. But it also devotes a great deal of attention to relationships that are not sexual, producing a strong sense of multiple ties that bind people simultaneously to family, friends, lovers, colleagues, mentors, etc. It is a tightly plotted, intricately crafted story that builds its relationships (sexual or platonic) out of a lot of typical angsty tropes but also out of a great deal of psychologically astute character development. ( Read more... )
imperfekti for putting me onto this wonderful series. She likened it to Mirage of Blaze (novels) in having an intricate, interesting plot with a great ensemble of characters, and that’s all quite correct. General Review and Rec:
spoilers only for the chapter 1 setup
The story, which is currently ongoing, is set in a near future dystopia run by yakuza and opens with the tough life of a teen boy, Yuki, who has to pay the hospital bills of his chronically ill and adorable little brother, Jun. Yuki and his friend, Tetsu, get a break—or do they?—when a yakuza boss, Hyoudou, agrees to pay Jun’s bills in exchange for Yuki visiting him once a week.
Acid Town is definitely boys love, but it breaks a lot of conventions. The reader has to wait for the romance, and when it shows up, it’s not necessarily where or how you might expect it. Like many a BL manga, it is rife with sexual abuse. But it also devotes a great deal of attention to relationships that are not sexual, producing a strong sense of multiple ties that bind people simultaneously to family, friends, lovers, colleagues, mentors, etc. It is a tightly plotted, intricately crafted story that builds its relationships (sexual or platonic) out of a lot of typical angsty tropes but also out of a great deal of psychologically astute character development. ( Read more... )
