chlorine's Manga

"Maybe I've endured everything so far just to cross paths with this person..."

While the prose was beautifully written, with the story having so many sentences that jumped out at me as something you could easily imagine posted onto a pretty photo or grunge picture and posted on Tumblr, the way those sentences came together to form a story was just incredibly poor.

Having been framed for the rape and murder of a six-year-old child, Ichiro Akitaka has lost everything. No longer a priest and having to constantly go from job to job due to his supposed past routinely coming around to the ears of his coworkers, Ichiro can only imagine one thing to do: kill himself. He happens to drunkenly find a beach, and decides there and then would finally be the time he hangs himself. With the noose around his neck, constricting around his throat, he thinks this is the end—except someone ends up saving him just in time, a priest by the name of Kyosuke Kiba.

Instantly, Ichiro grows attached to Kyosuke. He doesn't know him for long and yet feels this overwhelming warmth from him; Kyosuke is what offers him salvation, he is the one person in the world who still sees him for the person he is, not the monster he's painted as.

However, it turns out Kyosuke isn't a stranger.

Kyosuke is the man who framed him.

I personally find that to be an incredibly strong premise, and when put on paper, the entire story sounds like something that could've been incredibly strong. It had so much potential to be a great slow burn psychological story but it ultimately just couldn't live up to said potential because the biggest flaw this story had was its pacing, which is in part due to its short chapter count of only six and is present almost immediately.

After Kyosuke takes him in, Ichiro trusts him basically straight off of their first interaction, and talks about him as if they have a deep connection. Kyosuke being what saves him from falling into the deepest end is something that has an almost poetic element to it I like, the story does that incredibly well—it has this ability to phrase things in a way that feels like beautiful, poetic musings . . . But after only one chapter Ichiro is saying things like "Maybe, just maybe, my life's winding path has been just to encounter this person." It's very romanticized language, which I love; in a vacuum, that quote is great . . . But that is about a man he's known for, like, two days. We haven't seen any development there for quotes like that and the supposed connection they have to feel all that authentic.

I'm also quite conflicted on my stance towards the way Ichiro gets attached to Kyosuke. On one hand, I totally understand how after being hated all the time and having to exist in constant fear of this allegation being revealed to new people he meets, he'd obviously find solace in a man like Kyosuke who says he hears him and believes him when he says he's innocent . . . But, he still lived an incredibly rough life for a while there. To constantly be barraged with people calling you a pedophile, to be stripped of your job, serve time, constantly have to move—that would jade you. Ichiro should be a jaded man. And yet he's not. I get he's desperate for the comfort of a safe space but I found his acceptance of it too quick, he didn't have any walls that needed to be torn down when realistically I feel like he would have.

Kyosuke as a character also just fucking sucks. Like to be blunt, he's fucking ass. He murdered *and then* raped a six-year-old. The story did try to redeem him, which I'm actually not against, but . . . Its tries were very low effort. It felt more focused on explaining his past, which while appreciated and shows a clear reason as to why he acted the way he had, there's a difference between focusing on his past and focusing on his character. Like, congrats I guess, we learn the child rapist got raped as a child. So what? You didn't actually develop him in any meaningful way outside of his trauma, so it unfortunately ended up feeling shlocky and like low-quality shock bait.

One thing too is that this story is structured in a way that it feels like the intention is to be a slow burn, but . . . It's just not a long enough story to actually be slow in any way. It has multiple "plot twists" and reveals, but the thing is that since there are only six chapters, there isn't any real plot established to actually twist. It plays these like huge reveals, but . . . No, they're really not. They're plot beats, not plot twists, and I thought the execution of it was really underwhelming because of it. This story would have shined if it was longer, if it could further establish mystery and some tense unsettling dread behind who Kyosuke is before revealing that he's the one who set Ichiro up. But no, it just goes from plot A to plot B to plot C every like two chapters.

To end on a positive, the art is great. Stunning, even. And as I've mentioned, and even highlighted, the prose of this story is phenomenal. The author really knows how to write in a way that is incredibly pretty. Lastly, I liked seeing a suicidal uke. We need more ukes who try killing themselves

(This is who volumes; I believe the second volume isn't out, despite the chapters being marked as volume one and volume two—there only being three chapters for a volume seems a little odd—however I have no intention of reading volume two, if it makes its way on here. Maybe if I'm bored, I guess).

This story is something that leaves a kind of bitter taste in my mouth because it's so, so close to being good—great, even—but there's one thing that rather dramatically weighs it down.

Having accidentally bumped into Shiraki—a popular, seemingly rich classmate of his—bloodied and running away from who he later finds out is one of Shiraki's "clients," Kuro impulsively decides to run away with him in order to shield him from the dangerous life he was living. They'd be getting a fresh start together, with promises of seeing the sunrise together and a better future. But after running into the police, their whirlwind romance is brought to an end after three days. They end up losing contact and going their separate ways once brought back home.

That is until years later, when they end up reuniting by chance. And when they reunite, their feelings—both known and unknown—end up rising back to the surface.

I personally felt like the post-time skip was rather stronger than the first half of the story when they were running away together. While the first half of the story had this romanticized filter painted over it, which I loved, I felt the emotions once they reunited were more interesting to me, and felt more understanding and digestible as a reader.

After they end up going their separate ways, Kuro gradually forgets about Shiraki and the three days they shared. That is until he walks into a bar and sees Shiraki is a bartender, and everything comes rushing back to him. And when the memories of everything come back, so does a new feeling form—guilt. Guilt over the fact that he didn't fight for him, that he let that distance grow between them until they were strangers again, that there was so much he could have done to help that he just didn't do. He could have said something, did something. He could have stayed. But he didn't. And that eats at him, it washes over him and is something he ends up dealing with in a way that makes him have to do it head-on.

Shiraki was also an incredibly good character. He was a character that was inherently sad; everything about him was shadowed by a depression. He was a prostitute who was sold off by his mother, forced into it because they were poor. And there was one scene I don't think I'll ever forget where Kuro says he smiles a lot, and Shiraki apologizes and says it's just out of habit now, because his clients would treat him better if he had a smile. So he had just gotten used to constantly smiling. And small things like that build his character, he is a man built of bittersweetness and sorrow. And I really fucking love characters like that. He's something that feels almost Shakespearean in how his character is almost a tragedy.

However, I did say there was one major thing keeping this story down . . . And sadly, it is the act of them actually running away together. I just didn't buy it. I felt there was no reason for them to run away together because I didn't feel like there was any instant connection between them, there was nothing there that'd warrant Kuro taking Shiraki's hand and just abandoning everything to keep him safe. It's so intensely romantic in theory, yet in execution, it just felt rash and silly. I usually don't like instalove but I think a story like this needs that instant moment where time slows down the first time they look at each other and you can just see that there's something pulling these two men together. Because in this story, there's just nothing, and when your whole story hinges on this, there being nothing is bad. Like, really bad.

The lack of connection is also why I like post-time skip more than the time they ran away, because the lack of connection does fall almost entirely on Kuro. He's the main character during the first three chapters, so the lack of connection only really impacts him. After finding out Shiraki is being whored out by his mother, you can easily understand why he'd take Kuro's hand and be swept away, and you easily understand why he fell in love and stayed in love for all these years after. You don't have that with Kuro, though.

To end on a positive, I will say that I thought the art was pretty great, and the writing itself—the prose—was quite beautiful.

Giving it 2 stars but it's more like 2.5

Dude, this story was so fucking shit, literally just do not read this ever. If you're drawn in by the fat tits, trust me there is better—anything is better. Open up MRM and literally everything under the 'huge breasts' tag blows this out of the water. There's genuinely nothing redeeming to this for me.

The art—the fat tits especially—was a big draw, and that was almost enough for me to say that this story had at least one redeeming quality. But the art seemed to be really inconsistent, and the proportions were just some of the worst I've ever seen. The tits were huge, which I loved, and so the rest of Oroks body was huge too to be proportionate to that, even with the exaggeration of the breasts . . . Except for his head, which at times looked distractingly small. It was just bad. This was bad art.

Another thing that was just straight-up bad, which also impacted the overall story, was the translation. It was very evident that the translator either wasn't fluent in English, or they were using a machine translation and just didn't bother to clean it up; I'm going to assume it's the former, because for whatever reason that's just really common. People that can't speak English for some reason love translating shit to English . . . Don't do that. You ruin the story. Stick to your own language. If you can't differentiate between 'you're' and 'your,' what business do you have translating shit to English. Bitch you can't even speak English.

The biggest issue for me though is that the story just . . . Wasn't good. It just wasn't. I can't tell how much of that can be attributed to the poor translation, but even with that, the basic story is just poor. The structure and flow of it was terrible. There are only thirteen chapters, and it's a love triangle . . . Except the second love interest isn't introduced until, like, five chapters in, and it's mainly just porn, so the sudden inclusion of legitimate feelings from the two love interests just felt very . . . Well, sudden. It wasn't well built. There was no foundation there. All they did was fuck, we didn't actually see any of these three men fall in love, so Karrian and Cornnell trying to make him choose between them at the end just felt stupid and unearned rather than engaging and intense. Why would he pick either of y'all when you're just glorified dildos?

Cho mama those lips are botched, and those puffy cheeks too girl you might want a refund

This is only three chapters and is, needless to say, a story that exists as basically nothing but porn. Because of that, I'm not rating it nor am I looking at it very critically. It doesn't need that effort or scrutiny.

Myung Chung-Hee and Cho Ha-Hyun are best friends who accidentally started a silly, lighthearted tradition of gifting each other gag presents for their birthdays. However, it turns out Myung's gifts towards Cho had all been sexual in nature.

After getting a pair of cat ears and a tail butt plug, Cho confronts him about it. It was an earnest mistake, Myung just gifted him stuff he thought was stupid and hadn't realized everything had been sexual, but talking about it created a kind of charged atmosphere.

Obviously, considering they were talking about sex toys and kinky getup, one thing led to another and they fucked. And it's . . . Alright. It's not particularly hot but that's not to say it's bad or anything. I just feel like the story, considering the context of all the sex toys and whatnot, had set up something rather kinky and intense . . . And it's just not. It felt like a rather plain story.

One thing I didn't like at all was Cho's design. Like I said, he looks botched. The most horrendous uke eyes I've ever seen and some inflated pornstar lips. I hate when authors try to do a "pretty boy" because it's a fine line and so many don't seem to realize that. You have him looking botched. He's been the surgeon a few too many times.

. . . Meh.

This isn't bad, it's actually quite cute, but it just doesn't really have much to offer. It's only three chapters and two of them just exist as the setup for porn, so I'm leaving this unrated.

This story is about a daily vlogger called Cha-yeon who goes on a trip, with the plan of doing some fake date segment with his travel partner assigned to him by his travel agency. It's kind of a unique plot, and I think there's a lot of potential in it. Fake dating is cute, and the first chapter kind of implied the fake dating would actually be more like a dating gameshow—which it ended up not being, and that was disappointing.

Unable to create content that Yeon is satisfied with, Hangyeol—his travel partner—suggested they get some skinship so that it looks more authentic when they flirt on camera. That then leads to the final chapter where they fuck. It's whatever.

Again, it's just kind of . . . Whatever. It's a cute story, small enough to be an inoffensive nice read but not long enough to be something that there's much to say or think about. A longer story that actually details them fake dating, especially if it's the gameshow-type format, would've been fun.

At first it was kind of hard to decide whether or not to give this a proper rating, and honestly, I'm still struggling to be confident in my decision not to. Because while it is only three chapters, and the story is rather small . . . There was a dynamic to these characters that gave it a bit of depth. It was kind of unexpected for a smut story.

But a smut story is still just a smut story.

I did like it; I found the conflict of the story quite unique and interesting to read. Having the story revolve around Zheng's feelings of dissatisfaction and the feeling of being unwanted is a nice bit of angst, and the shtick of him constantly being kidnapped by villains because he's dating a hero is quite funny.

But it's still just three chapters, and despite the unique approach, the plot is still directly tied to sex. So I'm judging this to the standard I hold most purely porn stories rather than something with actual weight to it. You just can't really do much with three chapters, which is easily this story's biggest flaw. The core conflict could have been drawn out a little longer and explored a little further, to push this into an actual story with a heartfelt arc rather than just hentai.

I really liked the way this story approached the threesome, too. I'm someone who can easily be turned off if the dynamic rubs me the wrong way—like if it just feels like cheating with extra steps—so to have the third guy here be a clone of Vin was pretty smart. Also made it kinda sexy, made it look like Zheng was getting used by twins #sorry

One thing of note too is that the art here was genuinely phenomenal. Like, I really can't undersell just how good this art is. It's fucking great. These are some of the prettiest characters I've seen in a while

This one star is dedicated purely—and I mean purely—to the art. This has some genuinely phenomenal art, to the point that it's almost disappointing to see it used on such an ass story. There's such a blinding disconnect between the quality of the art and the quality of the writing.

For me, the biggest issue this story had was the fact that it's just not subtle. At all. So much of the story is spent on Risbel wondering why Kendon is acting weird after Risbel had his demon lapdog infest his dreams . . . And it's just so blatantly obvious that he's weird because he dreamed of Risbel. Like it's so obvious that it's almost frustrating to read. I don't find any enjoyment in dwelling on some half-baked emotional mystery that just isn't a mystery in the slightest. This is only ten chapters yet it felt too long. When the reader knows what's going on and the main character for whatever reason just isn't catching up, it's not enjoyable. It's frustrating.

I also thought the dynamic between essentially all characters just wasn't fleshed out enough. There's two main relationships going on, being Risbel & Robernia (the aforementioned demon) and Risbel & Kendon. While their dynamics aren't particularly bad, I did find them to be rather shallow, and that's easily attributed to the fact that this story simply isn't long enough to create a good, dynamic relationship between basically three people. They have the basics down but there's not enough room to really grow or explore these relationships in a way that feels meaningful and impactful, but especially amongst Risbel and Robernia.

Risbel and Robernia is especially annoying as they get a lot of focus together, but ultimately kind of don't amount to anything. Robernia just gets up and disappears at the end of the story after Kendon comes in and makes his move, so I'm left just thinking . . . "That's it?" The focus on their sexual relationship could have instead been shifted to further focus on Risbel and Kendon and to actually further develop and show the two of them together, as Robernia ends up being such a nothing character to me.

One last thing that's kind of annoying is that this story puts a lot of attention to sex, and the sex we do get is pretty hot . . . But it's barely there. It's like we get sprinkles of sex scenes instead of just full ones and it's kind of confusing? It's only ten chapters, and you already introduced the sex scenes, so why not put more focus on them and make the story some shameless smut? It's not like it has much to otherwise offer.

. . . It was alright. It was serviceable. It was cute.

This isn't a particularly memorable story, though I don't mean that in a way to say it's boring. It's not boring. It's cute, it's funny, and it's sexy . . . It just doesn't really do anything new. It doesn't set itself apart from the crowd.

I will say, though really no fault of the story, that my expectations weren't met. The base premise of this story is that Ryuusei is confessing to Sawami as a "prank," in hopes of going viral. I thought them basically being YouTubers was a fun premise and I was hoping to see that intertwined more in the story, especially since it is in the first chapter. But it's just not. After Ryuusei confessed that entire aspect of the story is just completely dropped—because Ryuusei & Sawami aren't the YouTubers, it's the twins they're friends with, and the twins are basically just complete noncharacters. Again, this is no fault of the story, but I do think the story would have been more fun if that aspect had a throughline throughout.

There were a few things I didn't like, mainly being the pacing. This issue is really highlighted by the conflict that comes once Sawami finds out Ryuusei confessed as a "prank" . . . It's just over as soon as it begins. It lasts like a quarter of a chapter. It's so short that it makes me question why even write it to unfold the way it did. In general, I don't think this aspect should have been a conflict, or at least not at the point in the story it ended up happening. Sawami finds out that it was a "prank" after having fucked Ryuusei . . . At that point, it's common sense that it's gone beyond just a prank. Like no one fucks as a joke. So to have Sawami blindly react and push Ryuusei away—to then immediately take him back, mind you—is just silly. I would have preferred if this happened before they fucked, or alternatively have Ryuusei explain his POV after the truth came out. Ryuusei actually never explains it, which I didn't really like. He technically didn't need to as Sawami realizes there's no way he didn't love him, but it still would have been better to me if Ryuusei explained he only went along with the prank because he did actually like him.

When it comes to the characters . . . Meh. I didn't love them but I didn't hate them.

Ryuusei was a very emotional and animated person. He expresses his feelings in a kind of loud way, and I personally found it kind of annoying. It wasn't to the extent it ruined his character, because he was still very cute and there was still even something endearing about how emotional he was, but it was something I don't particularly seek out. He's definitely not one of my favorite ukes, that's for sure.

I definitely liked Sawami more. He was written to be quite "cool," and I mean, he was. He was very suave, and quite confident. It verged into cocky but it never quite broke into that. He's confident and shameless in a way that's both attractive and surprising; there's a scene where he goes to a sauna with Ryuusei and he's just letting it all hang free, and even gets hard to brag about his size to the other guys there. Some people might not like it but I did, there was something kind of sexy about the way he didn't care tbh.

The best thing about this story was the size difference. It was fucking crazy. It was so sexy and idgaf it should have been focused on more. Ryuusei was so much smaller than Sawami and it was so sexy

. . . Meh. The strongest thing about this story is definitely, by far the art. The characters are hot enough, especially Garam when he's all beaten. The dad's tits should've been bigger though.

I just can't really tell how deeply the issues I have are influenced by the poor translation—because the translation's straight shit, like it's just not good, but I've also seen stories that have a really bad translation but you can still tell the base story, the story you're meant to be reading, is good . . . That can't be said for this story. There's just not really much salvageable about it.

For me, the biggest issue I have is the pacing. It's only six chapters. Because of how short it is, I kind of expected something that'd be mainly just smut; Garam would be transported into the dating sim and just spend most of those chapters fucking Taeho. Maybe there'd be like a backdrop of drama, like cheating or having to break up with the game's protagonist or whatever. But instead it kind of felt like the opposite—the drama took center stage while the porn was on the back burner. And for a story of such few chapters, I don't think that's a good idea. At all. You can't do shit with six chapters.

The character of Yena is quite emblematic of all the pacing issues I feel this story has, as she changes moods and goes from one extreme to the other so often that it's almost disorientating.

For example, when Garam is transported into the game, he instantly goes to find Taeho, the father of Yena. Once he finds him he forces himself onto Taeho, and Taeho ends up restraining him and being all reprimanding . . . And then Yena walks in . . . And when he sees her dad holding her shirtless boyfriend down, she flips her shit, accusing her father of trying to steal him away. Like . . . What? Is her father stealing her boyfriends a common thing or something because that's the impression I'm getting from her instantly jumping to such a conclusion. Even with the situation being quite suggestive, what type of person assumes their dad is trying to fuck their boyfriend? It's just so insanely stupid and little idiocies are sprinkled throughout the story.

And then when Garam does break up with Yena, Taeho basically instantly accepts him . . . And it's like . . . You borderline hated him before for toying with your daughter's feelings. Him breaking up with her doesn't change the fact that he still fucked her over, so the father so quickly going from hating him to opening his legs and letting himself get rawed was just kind of insane.

Again, the art was nice though. The characters were really sexy, and it's quite rare to find an older bottom dad character which I always fucking love

This was just a very mediocre story.

The plot of it is rather simple—Cheon Ki-Joon is a vampire who's in love with Yoon Han, but Cheon refuses to suck his blood as the blood of the one you love is uniquely intoxicating, so Cheon doesn't trust his self-restraint.

It's a simple enough plot—it's something you find quite often in vampire stories, such as Twilight—and while inoffensive and good enough for what it is, it isn't special. It doesn't do anything. It's not memorable.

That's the biggest issue for me, it not being memorable. Sure, it technically didn't do anything wrong, but it certainly didn't excel at anything either. This is a story you read when you're bored and sure you don't regret it but you'll never think about it again.

Following the fact that it just doesn't really stand out from the sea of vampire lit, I also found it to lack any type of resolution. This is a simple story and so it should probably follow the path it's expected to take to at least be good for what it is—Yoon Han wants Cheon to suck his blood, Cheon refuses, they have an argument or get in their feelings by it, and then by the end of the story Cheon gives in and sucks his blood. But the story doesn't do that. Cheon admits that he loves him, but . . . That's it. They're not even dating, they're in this grey middle ground. Yoon Han doesn't say "I love you" back.

I don't really understand the point of creating such an unremarkable story just to not give what's expected and wanted by the end of it. If you're doing something so typical, you may as well at least give the people what they know they want from their expectations. That's a very direct conflict with a very direct resolution so I'm just lost at the fact that the author decided to steer clear of it for no reason. Just make him suck his fucking blood.

When it comes to their characters, again, just kind of 'meh.' I didn't care for either of these boys.

Cheon Ki-Joon was written in a way where I feel like there was meant to be this poetic air of melancholy around him, and while I usually love characters like that . . . It just didn't hit for me. I didn't care. He was battling these intense conflicting emotions, that he both loved Yoon & was attracted to his blood, but he didn't want to sentence Yoon to an early death by him essentially being sucked of his blood 24/7 and it's like . . . I love vampire angst. And this is very much that. But IDK. I didn't care. At all.

Yoon Han had the same issue of being written in a way that was clearly meant to be angsty and sad but it just didn't get to me. At all. He does have a bit more to him that makes his feelings more "real," but even with that benefit I still just didn't care in the slightest. While I liked his conflict in theory, the way he was desperate for Cheon to suck his blood and how that kind of thematically acted as him being desperate for Cheon's love, his character was otherwise so annoying that I didn't care. I just didn't care. I mean, one, he was a total fucking whore. Total slut uke. Unlovable whore uke. But I also didn't really understand his whorish behavior; I can make assumptions, but they're still assumptions. It's not me picking up context from the story and accurately filling in the gaps, it's . . . Just guessing. Maybe he was fucking other dudes because he was trying to make Cheon jealous, or maybe it was him filling the Cheon-shaped hole in his heart. Idfk. Also, didn't really get the rape. Why'd he go to such extremes? He could have just admitted he liked him. Or better yet, just ask to fuck.

In general, the cucking was something that really turned me off of the story. It wasn't done for a kink reason, which would have been enough of a turn-off but the fact that it's done merely because Yoon decided to act rather cruel just completely turned me off of these characters and their relationship.

One last negative thing and this is uniquely just to my personal taste, was that I didn't find the sex scenes hot. They were pretty underwhelming. This story is full of sex but it's not one I'd ever think of jerking off to. Sorry for the TMI.

This gets two stars though because, one: great art. Two: there is erotic blood play. Yoon ends up pouring blood over his thighs and makes Cheon lick it off of him which was admittedly really hot. I always hate when authors of vampire stories don't realize the pure eroticism vampire stories hold, so at least the author did that right.