Blood

Author: Yura Tamaki
Imprint: Super BBC
Publisher: Biblos
ISBN: 4-88271-736-0

Reviewed by Jeanne

Well, I'm obviously not the only one who read Blood and said 'OK, that settles it. Yura Tamaki is a woman after all.' Yura Tamaki is the artist who did Partners, a series about six gay NY leathermen (s/m practitioners.) Partners is notable for its detailed and accurate depiction of the paraphernalia and rituals of s/m. There's a story, possibly mythical, about a group of twenty or so yaoi fen/ mangaka who went on a group tour to New York so they could tour the sex shops and bars of Soho, to the shock and bemusement of the shops' proprietors. Tamaki was probably one of them. Partners also stands out because of its delicate portrayal of the personal relationships among the three couples who meet regularly to 'play' in the dungeons they own. It was the mixture of rivalry, comradeship and jealousy among the men that made me wonder about Yura's gender. It's a far cry from the not terribly realistic romance of most yaoi.

Blood however seems a little closer both to yaoi and to the fantasyland Japanese version of New York than Partners is. I'm not familiar with New York street gangs, and for all I know there may be small outfits like the gang described here- a guy and his three friends and his younger brother. But it seems unlikely that they'd really try to take on a large Italian numbers-running outfit, rather than knocking over a liquor store, say.

There's Vinnie, the gang leader, and his best friend and sidekick Sean. (Sean looks far more Italian than Vinnie, but shou ga nai.) Skip and Dick are, respectively, the errand boys and the muscle of the gang. And there's Vinnie's younger brother Kyle, whom Vinnie raised from a baby after his stepfather took off and his mother died of drug addiction. Vinnie also has a neat girlfriend, Sandy. Vinnie is rabidly homophobic (besides having a hate-on for almost everyone else- doctors, police, social workers, the usual.) Kyle is gay and getting it on with Sean. Trouble is just around the corner. Trouble happens, but with a long fuse. Things aren't over when Vinnie finds that Sean's been screwing his baby brother and beats him to a pulp.

This isn't the story a westerner expects to be reading, because as per the title, the relationship we get to look at most closely is that between the two brothers. (That's Vinnie on the cover standing with the half-naked Kyle, not Sean.) The book seemed a little lopsided and disappointing to me first time. I had an automatic expectation that it would be the story of two lovers, and the homophobic older brother would be the heavy/ problem to be overcome. But once you look at it from the proper perspective, things fall more into place. The story is about the homophobic heavy, and the lovers are the problem.

Their relationship brings up all his demons from the past, and lay bare the complicated, very human needs that underlie his desperate actions and attitudes. 'Without someone to love- without someone to hate- I couldn't believe I was alive, back then'-- back when he was a kid. There's a happy ending, of sorts. (The story ran in Bboy Gold, which is big on happy endings at all costs.) At any rate, let's say that the ending's more happy than otherwise.

Aficionados of realism in sex scenes will be happy with this one. Yura's research is as impeccable as ever. True, the cocks- the few we see- are all glowing phallus shapes, not lovingly detailed flesh. This is BBG, after all, not Reijin. But there's enough condoms and lube to make anyone happy. The lube is Johnson's baby oil, which does terrible things to latex condoms, but that's the sort of detail a couple of street kids might well overlook. Meanwhile, those who find the Partners style too strange for them can relax. The pictures in this one are almost pretty. Another reason to think of it as yaoi and not gay male.

(Of course, Yura spends the afterword talking about how she loves any sports especially football and baseball- and now once again I'm not sure that she isn't a he.)