Binan to Kedamono 1 (Beauty and the Beast)

Author: Motohashi Keiko
Imprint: Hana to Yume Comics
Publisher: Hakusensha
ISBN: 4-592-17591-3

Reviewed by Jeanne

'Can the leopard change his spots, or the Ethiop his skin, or a manga-ka her style?' King Solomon asked, more or less. No to the first two, naturally (why would they want to?) but amazingly, yes to the third. I'd never read any Motohashi Keiko, not even Third Reich, before I opened Beauty and the Beast. Somewhere I'd gotten the idea that she draws excessively 'bi' bishounen, of the long-lashed heavy blue lidded smouldering glance variety. And she does (see illo 1 below). Did. Whatever. The cover certainly looks like it, but inside- jeez, I might be looking at Takeda Yayoi's work (see illo 2). Not that Takeda is any slouch in the heavy-eyed department herself. But it's different. It doesn't shriek 'Shounen-ai!!!' at you in quite the same way.

Illo 1 is from a work published in 1986. Illo 2 was twelve years later. Tastes vary, of course. While I have a fondness for trad shounen-ai style simply because it's so awfully romantically overdone, I have to say I rather like the later style better.

The book itself is kind of hard to classify, which I gather is typical of most of Motohashi's work. If you can have a comic take on a tragic situation, intercut with riffs from detective fiction, science fiction and a few other genres-- well, that's what you have here. Somewhere along the line I seemed to hear echoes of the same vein Motoni Modoru was working in Detective Bluecat, whatever that may be. The two mangakas' sensibilities seem to be rather close to each other's.

At any rate, we have a journalist and newscaster, Suzuki Toranosuke, who hasn't worked in a while. Six years ago his scientist lover Shouichi, who'd been getting more and more engrossed in his research, failed to come home one day, and Toranosuke's been on the skids since then. His long-suffering landlord, rather more of a flamboyant okama than Toranosuke, comes by to dun him for the several years' overdue rent on a regular basis. One day a teenager faints in front of his door. Toranosuke takes him in and starts the search for his identity. The boy is a little strange- hates wearing clothes, only wants meat, sleeps on top of the tv and won't go near the bath. Very like a cat. (He's the beast of the title, were you wondering.) Toranosuke calls him Michael, a reference to the famous cat in What's Michael? His real name, as it turns out, is Yuan, and yes, there's a reason why he looks like Shouichi. This story, and the other two Toranosuke ones in the collection, contains a satisfyingly complex web of attraction and betrayal underpinning the action-story plot, topped by a surprise twist to the ending.

Toranosuke adopts Yuan and gives him a home along with Toranosuke's own nephew Kouta. Smart-mouth Kouta rather reminds me of Aoneko's assistant in places. But Kouta is accustomed to thinking of Toranosuke as his own, and becomes jealous at the feelings his uncle has for the interloper. When the two witness a murder in the neighbourhood, Kouta gets his chance to be rid of Yuan. With, of course, the usual unpredictable results.

The third episode involves the death of a super rock star who was about to appear in a major tv drama, and the need to find a stunning beauty to replace him. Yuan fits the bill, and agrees to perform for the sake of the money he's promised, which he wants to use to help out the perpetually cash-strapped Toranosuke. Needless to say, by doing so he walks into the usual maelstrom of dark emotions that seem to underlie everyone's life in Motohashi, but he and Toranosuke get out in time with their innocence undamaged. Remains only for Toranosuke to stop thinking of the kid as a kid and start seeing him the way the rest of the world does- as a really dishy guy in his own right. Maybe in volume two.

The fourth story, Kimi no mono wa boku no mono (What's yours is mine) is about a high school teacher- a Toranosuke lookalike- and the boy he picks up in Shinjuku, who later turns up in his school. It has the same combination of adventure and humour as the other stories, only in this one-- because the older man isn't saying 'I don't go for kids' every five pages- the guys actually get to have sex. Not that you see them doing it, just the uke's painful aftermath. Motohashi still retains her shounen-ai reticences, even while drawing in the yaoi style of Yayoi Takeda.