Great art, and I fucking adored the characters, but the story was pretty significantly brought down by the fact that the conflict during the last two chapters was simply just confusing.
Look, I appreciate subtly, and I love nuance. The golden rule of "show, don't tell" is usually something you should follow to a T. But sometimes, I feel like authors tend to overshoot when they're purposefully being subtle, to the point it instead becomes obscure. Because I'm not the only person who was confused by the end conflict, multiple other people were lost, so that tells me without a doubt that it simply wasn't conveyed properly within the story.
The story is about Tobita, a man who can only get aroused through abuse, having a relationship with Masumi, who finds himself getting lost in the violence. Throughout the story their relationship slowly develops, starting out as purely physically but over time having rather emotional roots seep deep into the soil of their dynamic. I fucking love that premise and that type of dynamic, someone who chases pain and someone who finds himself almost scarily easily being able to fit into the violent role wanted of him, and for most of the story, it's done incredibly well.
For most of it—despite wearing their feelings on their sleeves—Masumi is under the impression that their relationship is purely physical, so the fact that he's so easily adapting to being so violent against a man he loves and his violence is all he can offer in the relationship makes him a bit uneasy. And Tobita can see that Masumi is no longer satisfied by their relationship, so he breaks it off. But, like . . . The thing is, as I said, they wore their feelings on their sleeves. They may have never outright, word-for-word said "I like you," but they still expressed the same sentiment in ways that even went beyond that, like the time Tobita said he doesn't spend time with & eat with men he's merely having flings with. So the sudden break-up near the end was confusing.
It's even more confusing because Tobita said he'd wait for him. And it's like . . . Wait for him over what? I just didn't get it.
It's such a shame that the conflict near the end reared its ugly head and muddled up so much of the story for me, because up until that point, it was genuinely looking like it would have been a favorite of mine. I thought both of the characters were beautiful, both in the way they were drawn and characterized. There's a moment where Tobita looks into Masumi's eyes and says "Venus has never been so beautiful," and there's just something about it that was so tender that it makes me teary eyed thinking about it. They really expressed in so many different ways how they felt for each other, which again, just makes the end conflict so baffling.
One thing about Masumi's characterization I really liked too was his rather intense jealousy. There's a specific scene where him and Tobita's in the middle of a scene, and he uses his degredation as a way to pry—he asks Tobita if any other man, any ex, has touched him normally. And when he says yes, Tobita calls him I think a disgusting whore or something like that, and in his mind he's telling himself he's only playing a part. He's not mad, he's just giving Tobita what he wants; he's being cruel, he's degrading him. He's not mad. And at this point, Masumi hadn't realized his feelings, so it's this internal, repressed rage, this spiteful jealousy that he so fucking totally has despite trying to reaffirm himself of otherwise. I loved it.
Also, the violence . . . It was amazing. It was so extreme; there's a scene where Tobita gets strung up on a rope by the neck. It's insane and intense and so, so hot. I always love sexualized & romanticized violence and this goes all fuckin' in.
Another thing is that even though I didn't understand it, the emotional scenes at the end still managed to pack a punch. I feel like the author was so effective at conveying mood regardless of the context that it's honestly impressive. The entire scene where Masumi pretends to be asleep when Tobita woke up and laments about how Tobita could escape in the night, just to give one last inner plea for him to return to bed, was so upsetting in a way I find hard to convey. I loved it. I just wish I understood what it was about lmfao
I love this one. Bdsm ain't my thing buuut I love their relationship, all the space stuff was cute, and I really love the art style. I think it's simple but very beautiful and high contrast. The city lights look like stars.
Good concept and consensual, I think. It was hard to follow and rushed so I'll rate it a 3 wouldn't read it again and don't really understand it all that much
All I can say is that I will never understand coping mechanism or bdsm with the way of enjoying getting beat or humiliate. It is a genre I'm not familiar with. But of course, I understand that its all have to do with people psycological and metal. This is not in any way to offend anyone who enjoy this type of thing. I just want to say, I can't and never will understand it.
Masumi steps in to help Tobita with an agressive ex and ends up finding out about his S&M fetish and becoming Tobita's sex friend while taking the sadist role. Although Masumi isn't too into it, he likes seeing how much Tobita likes it, but as they get closer, he starts to lose control of his feelings and himself. I was on board until Masumi started to get a little too violent with Tobita, then it really turned me off of this. Trigger warnings: S&M, bondage, violence, verbal abuse.
