XY

Author: Tohjoh Asami
Imprint: Bamboo Comics-Reijin
Publisher: (Take Shobou)
ISBN: 4-88475-793-9

Reviewed by Jeanne Johnson

Tohjoh Asami's works may be the place where the dysfunctional families of fan yaoi cross over into mainstream manga. Certainly whenever anyone has a family in her works, you can expect a cavalcade of suicide, obsession, sexual jealousy, sexual secrets and sexual abuse to follow. In keeping with the yaoi incest tradition, though, the family is also the source of (300% unrealistic) True Love. And in fact, Asami's outside world is pretty much the same- a place where raping semes (either your senpai or your sensei) stalk the landscape, and other people are intent only on threatening the innocent pair of lovers at the the story's centre. Even the women rape in this world. In such a sexual jungle, all that lovers have for protection is each other; but of course that's enough.

XY is a case in point. Best subtitled as The Perils of Nagisa (the first half of the book) or The Perils of Takaya (the second half), it chronicles the story of a pair of cousins who have been raised together since they were five. This after Nagisa's mother killed herself in front of her twin sister and small son because her gay husband who had only married her to get a child had left her and was going to take the kid with him etc etc etc. Ordinary life in Japan it's not. Ordinary fantasy life in Japan it is. The Japanese fantasy imagination has a thing about incest. It likes it. A lot. Probably because incest threatens the family structure and the family structure is so basic to Japan that one can't resist the horrid thrill of imagining its breakdown in the face of sexual passion. So here we have Nagisa, in scenes reminiscent of male hentai, being hit on and buggered by his stepmother/ aunt, to console herself for the fact that her own son is going off with girls. And when his cousin Takaya comes in on the scene, what happens? Why, naturally Takaya apologizes to Nagisa for having left him to handle his mother alone. 'I'm so dirty,' Nagisa mourns. 'No you aren't,' Takaya consoles him. 'Then screw me,' Nagisa implores, and of course Takaya does. After which Takaya's mother simply disappears from the scene, having become No Longer An Issue. Fantasy land.

Probably Takaya's Mum (we never hear sniff about a father) is as impressed as other predatory characters later in the story by the pure exalted feelings between the cousins. As examplars of model lovers, these two have few equals. Each is ready to lay down his ass when the other is in peril, and does, in scenes straight from the erotic imagination of masochistic self-sacrifice. This proof of pure love then makes the sexual boogeyman back off and, occasionally, reveal his own humanity. Both boys have a complete harmony of feeling straight from a Bronte novel. Takaya's having a girlfriend is explained by Nagisa as Takaya's unconscious simply reacting in sympathy to Nagisa's own feelings about his cousin, and in the context of the story it's pretty clear that that's all it is.

The very high romantic tone of the series is (for me at least) rather at odds with its Reijinish visual frankness. Nowhere else is it as clear that Reijin is a crossover publication aimed at both the yaoi and the gay male market. For the former there's all the 'pure love' stuff. For the latter there are humoungous phantom penises, lots of huge hanging balls, close ups of anal penetration and fellatio, and assorted dildoes, vibrators, cock torture and you name it. I don't know who the gushing assholes are intended for and would rather not guess. But for fans of male anatomy, this is the book to own.