WL's Gay Manga and Anime Review - 5. Junjo Romantica by Shungiku Nakamura (Modern Gay Romance/Ensemble Gay Romance Stories)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junjo_Romantica:_Pure_Romance

This series is perhaps one of the biggest and most well-known amongst its peer in the Boys’ Love genre. It has its fans and detractors due to its length and longevity, which I would consider to be similar to the Simpsons due to its nearly 20 years-spanning legacy with various storylines. The first volume of the manga began in 2003 and the latest volume is scheduled to be published on September 1^st, 2022 with official English translations for readers. I got into this story in the 2010s and followed the anime throughout its three seasons, so I am very familiar with this work. It’s not a stretch to say the Junjo series represents everything from the best aspects of gay romance to the worst conceived rape fantasies. A lot of writers and producers within the genre drew their inspiration from the Junjo series, so it has a wide influence that can be seen in modern works. Artistically speaking, Junjo has a very unique art style that is colorful, whimsical, and romantic, adding to its mystique. Its creator Shungiku Nakamura produced a spin-off series Sekai-Ichi Hatsukoi, which is also ongoing and set in the same literary universe as the Junjo series with characters making cameos between the series. I can’t say I loved all the stories equally, but I will say that it deserves to be reviewed and I am a fan.

Length: It is currently 26 manga volumes long with another volume coming next month and 36 episodes with 2 OVA as an Anime. This series is quite involved with complex relationships that run the gamut. You will encounter everything from Soap Opera scenarios to real-world issues that many gay couples face. I recommend offering at least a month to enjoy this series if you are a binge-heavy person. If not interested in binging, then you will need upwards of three months to give this series its full attention.

Plot: The series revolves around a primary gay couple and 3 other gay couples; some are loosely connected. We follow them on their relationships, issues, and general lives.

Romantica:

Takahashi Misaki is an 18-year-old high school student with poor grades and high ambitions. Through his hard-working and oblivious brother, Takahashi Takahiro, he is introduced to Usami Akihiko, a famous 28-year-old author and childhood friend of his brother. Akihiko agreed to tutor Misaki, who quickly discovers Akihiko’s eccentricities and side hobby of writing gay erotica with scenarios including Akihiko and his brother. Misaki confronts Akihiko about his homosexual interests in anger, while Akihiko, in a fit of rage, forces himself on Misaki, with the caveat that if Misaki wanted to stop all he had to do was “cry out”. After their first sexual encounter, Akihiko admits to having an unrequited love for Takahiro, since they were younger. Despite their rough start, they both decide to continue the tutoring and over the months, Misaki does genuinely grow attached to Akihiko, and vice-versa. When Misaki’s brother is promoted and gets married, he leaves Misaki in the care of Akihiko. Over the next 4 years in the anime and manga, they develop deep emotional bonds with major events such as Misaki accepting his sexuality, and his relationship with Akihiko despite still angrily arguing with Akihiko about writing their sexual exploits in a BL manga. During this time, they encounter several outside issues in their relationship, from potential male love affairs for Misaki and Akihiko, neither of them cheated, to the powerful Usami patriarch, Akihiko’s father, seeking to break them up. As of the current manga, they are in a committed relationship with one another and have come out as a gay couple to several family members, except for Misaki’s brother. (Gay marriage is not fully legal in Japan, yet. So that’s still not an option for cohabiting partners in most places.)

Egoist:

Their story begins six years before the beginning of the Romantica storyline. Kamijou Hiroki, a 22-year-old senior in college, has been in love with Usami Akihiko since they were young boys, but Akihiko has only been in love with Takahashi Takahiro. After a failed sexual encounter with Akihiko, leaving both feeling empty and unfulfilled due to the lack of love, Hiroki sulks in the park. He encounters Kusuma Nowaki, an 18-year-old young orphan high school dropout, who tried to cheer him up. Nowaki, despite having six jobs and very little time, seeks to gain entrance into a junior college but requires tutoring to pass his high school proficiency exams. Hiroki was resistant at first, but relents after Nowaki steals his apartment keys, then comes around the morning to wake him up and make him breakfast. Their relationship develops over time and Hiroki allows his guard to drop for the younger man. Hiroki and Nowaki have a brief separation of several years, while Nowaki studies abroad and becomes a premed student, eventually becoming a pediatrician. Hiroki in the intervening time has finished his doctoral thesis and became an assistant professor at the university that Misaki is attending with a reputation for being harsh and a “demon” to his literature students. In the current story, now 10 years into their relationship, Hiroki is 32 and Nowaki is 28, they still have issues with finding time for one another and communicating, but neither of them has any doubt as to who they love most of all. In essence, they are married in everything, except the title.

Terrorist:

This story is set 3 years into the Romantica storyline, Miyagi Yoh, the 35-year-old college professor and superior of Hiroki at the university, is invited out by his ex-brother-in-law, Takatsuki Shinobu, a 17-year-old high school senior. Shinobu admits to Yoh that he’s been in love with him, since he first met him during an attempted robbery that Yoh save him from before Yoh’s marriage to his older sister, then demands Yoh takes responsibility for his emotions. Shinobu claimed that it was destiny that they would end up together. Yoh tries to avoid Shinobu and thinks that he’s crazy at first, but then over time realized, Shinobu was truly in love with him. It sparks memories in Yoh concerning his love affair with his much older female high school teacher when he was around Shinobu’s age. This connection and the spark of latent interest due to Shinobu sparks a late-life bisexual awakening. Currently, they are still in the early stages of a relationship and have recently moved in with each other under the guise of Shinobu attending college.

Mistake:

This romance is already established before the others in the manga since Isaka Ryuuichiro and Asahina Kaoru were childhood friends. Kaoru’s family was saved by Ryuuichiro’s father from committing family suicide after his father’s business had gone into bankruptcy. We learn of their romance through side plots from flashbacks in the main manga. (If you want to see the anime version, you will need to start watching the spin-off series Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi, where Ryuuichiro is the managing director of the publishing house, Marukawa Publishing). Ryuuichiro is introduced in the main Romantica storyline as a high-level abrasive executive, who pushes Akihiko to public events and increases his visibility as a famous author with his publishing house. Kaoru is first introduced as a loyal personal assistant to Ryuuichiro. They are the least explored couple amongst the established continuity, but they appear to have a power dynamic relationship.

Review: The manga and anime are very hard to rate because there’s a lot that went into them. Some manga and anime fans have noticeably distanced themselves from this series due to Romantica’s depictions of rape fantasies. Even as a fan of the series, I think initially at least Akihiko did rape Misaki in their first encounter. I am not going to make any apologetics gymnastics with the dubious consent or “Dub Con” arguments that BL fans attempt with this series or others in the genre that did the same thing with their primary couple. Even if Misaki did not scream out to stop, it doesn’t mean Akihiko had a right to give him a hand job. However, I would agree with most fans after the first encounter and after Misaki understands Akihiko more, he’s just protesting out of nerves rather than true resistance. Plus, after Misaki admits that he “may love Akihiko”, I think the rest of the sex becomes just how they as a couple play out their power roles in the bedroom, consciously or subconsciously (Misaki is a stereotypical uke/bottom, he was pretending to resist, but subconsciously wanted to submit). Later in the manga with the meddling of his father, Akihiko does feel a bit guilty about everything in the manga and anime, offering Misaki a way out if he doesn’t feel the same way he does. At that point though, readers and viewers already know Misaki internally has admitted to himself that he’s in love with Akihiko, then Misaki reassures Akihiko with a direct admonition. They do become a very positive-influenced gay couple over time.

Also, Akihiko is not a bad person at his basic level early in the story, he just doesn’t have the social awareness to understand what is acceptable and unacceptable things to do with a partner. The interesting thing in this anime and manga is that Nakamura tries to explain the childlike psyche of Akihiko, who has a massive collection of teddy bears and can barely manage to live without someone to take care of him, as Misaki does throughout the manga. Akihiko was neglected as a child with wealth and resources, but no one showed him, love. All he understands of desire is objective, what he wants and what it is without the nuances of how to get it. It doesn’t excuse Akihiko’s actions against Misaki during their first sexual encounter, but it makes it understandable. Misaki, on the other hand, has probably been repressing his homosexuality for years; he never had a girlfriend, nor has found any girls that interest him. One aspect of Misaki’s psyche to think about is his deep guilt complex, which came from being a cause of both his parents’ deaths. Misaki forces himself to act appropriately, want “normal” things, and essentially be less troublesome as a result, effectively making him artificially selfless. This kind of psychology would probably make Misaki an adept submissive partner, so I would point out to new readers and viewers of the series that Akihiko is helping him by forcing him to confront his needs and sexuality. There were several scenarios, where Akihiko had stopped having sex with Misaki after arousing him, forcing Misaki to admit to wanting gay sex. For Authoritarian and BDSM-aligned folks, you know this practice is pretty common between Dom/sub relationships as a form of power roleplay. If you interpret the Romantica couple as a Dom training his inexperienced reluctant and willing sub, it becomes far easier to accept from a reader or viewer’s perspective.

As the story progresses, Akihiko and Misaki represent an adorable gay couple once you get over the way they met or had their first sexual moment. Throughout the series, they play off each other’s strengths, make time for each other, and I will admit some of the sexy scenarios that came up were hot as a gay man. I found the fact that Akihiko would continuously write explicit BL manga volumes concerning his and Misaki’s sex life to be quite funny, Misaki’s anger at each revelation was tempered by the fact that he never stopped Akihiko, even in the present storyline. Maybe there’s an unconscious voyeuristic side to these characters, I know some gay couples like the idea of being open and public due to how closeted and secretive our lives usually are. If that was the intent, I would have to applaud Nakamura for her willingness to push the envelope on creating such an interesting meta-concept for a couple. I interpret Akihiko and Misaki to be representative of the extreme frontiers of gay romance with elements of BDSM and voyeurism.

I could spend a long time talking about the main couple, and their struggles with family and friends trying to tear them apart. However, I want to leave those story arcs to you the reader to discover along with the rich characters that exist in this world. Thus, I’ll move on to my favorite couple in the series.

My favorite couple of the story though is the Egoist couple of Hiroki and Nowaki because I can identify with their personalities and issues.

Let’s start with Hiroki, many of us know how it feels to have unrequited love for friends. Hiroki is a gay guy with a lot of pride and insecurities about himself; he’s a walking contradiction of someone successful, who keeps wanting more and fearing failure due to his work and life. Akihiko commented once to Hiroki when they were younger that he was digging his own grave with his need for perfection. Hiroki is a perfectionist. However, one thing he cannot perfect is his love life, he failed at being a replacement lover for Akihiko, since Takahiro was straight. Feeling a bit of failure from that has led him to question and fear all his instincts about love, resulting in continual distrust of his relationship with Nowaki. It’s a real issue with gay relationships, something that is glossed over in our stories is the times when a gay guy fails at being with a partner, either due to chemistry or lack of communication. In this regard, Hiroki is very relatable despite sometimes being a bit too aggressive. He’s afraid to fail again and have his heartbroken.

Nowaki, on the other hand, is the perfect counter-balance to Hiroki. He’s insecure in his relationship with Hiroki, too, but he is not as quick to abandon their love as Hiroki due to failure. He has a strong work ethic, like Hiroki, but he’s far more empathetic than Hiroki, allowing him to sense the needs of the people around him and his partner. Being an orphan, he struggles to make his way in the world and has to make the best of his life, but he doesn’t despair rather he holds out hope for better things, including spending time with Hiroki during his medical residency. He is considerate and patient to a fault, despite the punches and kicks that Hiroki sometimes throws at him.

There are negative aspects to Hiroki and Nowaki’s relationship, too. One of them is the physical abuse that Hiroki sometimes causes due to his outbursts of fear and insecurity. Hiroki doesn’t mean to be abusive, he often regrets it, but his psychological fears cause him to imagine the worst. In the real world, if this were a real relationship, Hiroki’s behavior would be unacceptable and Nowaki’s continual love for him may be signs of a co-dependent relationship forming, like an abuser/victim cycle. It does highlight one of the major flaws in this kind of BL relationship. In the end, they stayed together and thrived, when both of them accept they can’t be apart with Hiroki attempting to be a better person for Nowaki. That’s a deeply romantic gesture and demonstrates a great deal of emotional growth, both aspects I appreciate in romance stories.

As to the Terrorist couple, Shinobu and Yoh are about 17 years apart in age, which is one of the largest age gaps I’ve read in BL outside fantasy genres. However, unlike Super Lovers’ cringe-worthy issues with aspects of child grooming, it’s the younger partner Shinobu initiates the relationship and forces Yoh to reciprocate, out of a sense of destiny. Despite Shinobu being uke/bottom partner status in sex, he’s the one with the most demands on what their relationship should and needs to be. It’s an odd dynamic and even in today’s BL genre, it’s rare to find a uke like Shinobu, who is the more aggressive and demanding of the couple. Yoh as the seme in contrast is far more experienced at least with heterosexual sex, but he’s relaxed about what he wants, reacting rather than being proactive in the relationship. For readers and viewers, I think it will not be out of the possibility to think of this couple as being a dynamic between a power bottom and a passive top. Overall, this couple was a nice departure from the norms in terms of their plot and the story behind how they got together. I enjoyed the parts about Yoh’s past relationship with an adult female teacher, who passed away. This early relationship and loss caused several of Yoh's issues with forming relationships with other women, there's a visceral imbalance in his life without his older female lover. His awakening as a bisexual, more likely pansexual if I were to guess, was made for comedy at first, but there were genuine moments that I can see were deeply emotional. Shinobu acted like a hothead with his heart on his sleeve. He is a very naïve headstrong lover, who does not think before he takes action, creating a lot of comedic moments. The age difference and the taboo relationship were complex, but I don't feel like they were developed as well as Romantica or Egoist couples, since neither character is tied with Akihiko or Hiroki directly. The couple feels a little disjointed, each individually strong for motivations and substance, but as a couple, they don't have as many shared moments to shine.

The final couple doesn’t have much to discuss, but they have a lot of potentials. The “mistake” couple of Ryuuichiro and Kaoru was formed over a long period. There’s a master-servant relationship angle going on with Kaoru being indebted to Ryuuichiro’s father for saving his life, so he dedicated himself to serving Ryuuichiro, while Ryuuichiro acts like a buffoon at times knowing his loyal assistant will always be there to pick up the pieces. They do love each other and both held those feelings. I think they warrant a bit more exploration and hopefully, with this manga’s continuance, we’ll see where they go. Childhood friends to lovers is a great concept to explore.

Overall, the series is pretty good for what it offered, its plots can showcase absurd soap opera scenarios to questionable rape fantasies, along with sometimes real-world issues that may come up with gay relationships between partners. It is an umbrella series that has the best and worst of BL genre.

Ratings: 3.75 out of 5, it’s worth reading and viewing despite some of the questionable ways the author handled the characters or situations. I know rape fantasies may not be acceptable for everyone, but the other stories have a lot to offer as well.