Deservedly, the art has been extensively praised. The artist is particularly adept at using lighting and I wish there was news of more of their work coming soon. Otherwise, the writing had much left to be desired. The pacing was a slog to get through. Comment from another site astutely sums the experience of reading Love History: dreadful, cliched and contrived story beats (stalker fan, mob rapists etc.,) actively harm any interest in the story drummed up by the complex character writing for the seme. Furthermore, any plot progression driven by the uke in S1 solely falls to the seme by S2 onwards, so he becomes quite redundant (the seme's confession, their love consummation, even their meeting in the States are all examples of the seme taking control in the narrative). It's kind of a shame since the uke's motivations in S1 (his desire to investigate the reason for his friend's death despite it going against his constitution) set up for an intriguing premise, though they eventually become flimsy. Uke's character is ill-handled toward the end; there are examples of set-ups for his character (the suggestion that the seme was his first love, the conclusions of his motivations/reasons for investigating the seme) which become unfortunately dull or anticlimactic in conclusion. Prime example being why he continued to love the seme (apart from 'already being in love with him'). This could've been a chance for a 'despite or in spite of'. Was slightly surprised to read this was one which had drummed up quite a lot of buzz during seralization because it is hardly brought up now. I did enjoy it to some extent but this was a story that would've actually benefitted from some realism if at least to align with the seme's surprisingly nuanced character.
Deservedly, the art has been extensively praised. The artist is particularly adept at using lighting and I wish there was news of more of their work coming soon. Otherwise, the writing had much left to be desired. The pacing was a slog to get through. Comment from another site astutely sums the experience of reading Love History: dreadful, cliched and contrived story beats (stalker fan, mob rapists etc.,) actively harm any interest in the story drummed up by the complex character writing for the seme. Furthermore, any plot progression driven by the uke in S1 solely falls to the seme by S2 onwards, so he becomes quite redundant (the seme's confession, their love consummation, even their meeting in the States are all examples of the seme taking control in the narrative). It's kind of a shame since the uke's motivations in S1 (his desire to investigate the reason for his friend's death despite it going against his constitution) set up for an intriguing premise, though they eventually become flimsy. Uke's character is ill-handled toward the end; there are examples of set-ups for his character (the suggestion that the seme was his first love, the conclusions of his motivations/reasons for investigating the seme) which become unfortunately dull or anticlimactic in conclusion. Prime example being why he continued to love the seme (apart from 'already being in love with him'). This could've been a chance for a 'despite or in spite of'. Was slightly surprised to read this was one which had drummed up quite a lot of buzz during seralization because it is hardly brought up now. I did enjoy it to some extent but this was a story that would've actually benefitted from some realism if at least to align with the seme's surprisingly nuanced character.