BL Manga Rec: Acid Town

2017-09-07T22:06:19Z

I am officially in love with Kyugo’s BL manga series, Acid Town, and want to spread the love to others. Many thanks to 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... )

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BL Manga Rec: Acid Town