Nekasenaide

Nekasenaide
By Machiya Hatoko

Overall: Intéressante
Smex Factor: Sexy Sexy
Art: Generic+
Status: 1 Volume; Complete

Review: This is a collection of three couples, interwoven with the common element of a certain bakery.

The first couple is two teenagers. It’s cute and sweet, and if you’ve read yaoi, you’ve read it a dozen times before. The bread theme is way cuter than anything Haruka Minami ever pulled off, and it adds a nice kink to their story.

The second couple is two salary men. The little one with the crush (Sasa) is the kind of character I would usually hate, with his glasses and his meekness… But I don’t really mind him. He’s got a sort of…resolve that redeems him. His sempai (Hana), whom he has a crush on, is an idiot. Therefore I like him by default. Again, the story is cute, but nothing terribly unique.

The third story pulls away from the cute angle of the other two and adds some angst. The baker, Watari, appears as an advice-giver in the first two stories, guiding the other couples together. But, like most givers of sound advice, he is the most troubled of all. His lover, Kyougou, has problems settling down, and their relationship is unsteady. Neither Watari nor Kyougou know how the other wants to or should be treated, and Kyougou especially doesn’t know how to react to Watari’s love. It’s a bit of an anxious read, but they work it all out, and it’s very nice.

The whole book follows a pattern: The first part of each story is about how the couple gets together, and the second is about their sex lives.

The teenage couple’s second part is cute and kind of funny (as all “first-time” BL stories are). The salary men’s, despite being the most sexy sexy, is the cutest. It’s full of cuddling and declarations of love. Watari’s and Kyougo’s is more complicated…They have a lot of sex during their main story because it’s part of the plot, so their second part focuses more on the simple happiness of their existence together. It has sex in it though. I mean, the sexy sexy rating up there sure ain’t for nothing.