Startline

Startline
By Oyamada Ami

Overall: Pretty Much Awesome
Smex Factor: Modest
Art: Pretty
Status: 1 Volume; Complete

Review: This story is all about the importance of communication.

Well, sort of. If you interpret it that way. (And if you’ve been reading these reviews, you KNOW that I DO.)

For a book this short (4 chapters, totaling 83 pages), I’m very impressed. I just have to say this. The art is gorgeous. Seriously, so pretty. I just want to keep looking at it. The manga-ka also does consistent backgrounds, which is rare in manga in general, not to mention BL. It’s just so clean, and consistent, and lovely to look at. The only things that I would complain about are the homogeny of the characters, and the occasional overly lengthy limb or torso. But seriously, art this good is so hard to find (and backgrounds! Backgrounds!!) that I don’t even care.

Story-wise: communication. Communication! I (and many experts, hurr) always say that the key to good relationships (romantic, business, platonic) is communication. This manga-ka seems to agree with me! Again, the characters’ various problems are solved by communicating their feelings. In the end, the main character even realizes that if he’d communicated clearly earlier, everyone would’ve been happy sooner.

I mean, aside from a good message, the story isn’t fantabulous. It’s pretty much a standard childhood friends-in-love. It does, however, try to cram a lot of events into its very constrictive page count, which leaves me with an unfulfilled taste in my mouth by the end. There’s an alum that had a few pages in the middle of the story, who played a fairly clichéd role in the grand scheme of things, but could have been an interesting character (even for his small role) had he been given the chance. And the secondary character, the childhood friend whose head we aren’t inside, could have been given more dialog or involvement. We really do spend most of the time reading the fretful main character’s indecisive and self-deprecating thoughts, when there are other characters that would've been nice to know better.

This manga’s main problem was simply length. It did incredibly well for what it had (the dialog is cute and funny, the interactions are interesting), but it simply didn’t have much. Also the sex was rushed. The story would have been perfectly fine without a sex scene. I would’ve preferred it, even.

Props, though, that I almost forgot to mention. Now pay attention, this is very important… The sex scene. Yes, I just basically said that I didn’t like it, but listen/read closely, because the manga-ka did something freakishly rare, but oh-so-right. The sex scene…was happy. “What?” you think to yourself, “what does she mean by that?” I would like to believe that most couples that proclaim their love and mutual attraction are actually relatively happy with each other. I also believe that couples that like to have sex with each other also enjoy having sex with each other. YET…So many couples cry out in pain, sob, beg and blubber…Make unpleasant faces… Yes, it’s a vigorous activity but jesus, would it kill these BL artists to draw lovers looking like they're actually enjoying themselves?!

Back to my main point: Yes, these characters do paint the picture of passion with entranced and flushed faces, with dramatically parted lips… But then they smile as they kiss. They laugh as they hold each other. It’s…nice. There’s no better word for it. They look happy. While ‘intellectuals’ always seem to decree that the best stories are the ones that convey human suffering, it’s nice to sit back and read a love story where the characters actually love each other.

So the lesson learned today is that we should all communicate nicely so that in the end we may achieve the anomaly that is “enjoyable sex.” (Maybe?)