Aishisa wo Korosenai (Can't Hold Down my Love)

Author: Fujiwara Takuto
Imprint: Bamboo Comics (Reijin)
Publisher:Takeshobou
ISBN: 4-8124-5248-1

Reviewed by Jeanne

Warning: contains spoilers

I first met Fujiwara Tact in some anthology stories Sue sent me, where a depraved-looking rat-faced blond cat-boy in skirts and two ponytails was doing nasty things to a small weeping dark-haired cat-boy in short pants, for reasons that were never made clear but that seemed to boil down to the classic definition of evil: hurting someone because you can. (Or yaoi: raping someone because you can.) And there you have the essence of Fujiwara Tact. (She calls her characters cat-faced, but one speaks as one finds, say I.) There are no catboys in this volume and no-one quite gets into skirts, but the rest of the hot buttons are there. Randy rat-faced obscurely angry blond semes, welling-eyed rat-faced loving ukes, and an indefinable undertone of bleakness to the whole thing. It's hard to say just why, since the majority of her stories have a yaoi happy ending, but Fujiwara is not a feel-good mangaka. (The cat-boy with the ponytails just turned up, sans ears but still in skirts, in a Reijin story where he's a vicious highschool hooker who, wonder of wonders, Gets His. And feels better for it.)

All her semes are blond and all her ukes have black hair. Even the hero of Maria Shouten (The Ascension of Mary), who starts life as a dark-haired little boy comforting his bullied brown-haired friend, grows up to be a blond teenager. In Japan, actually, this isn't impossible, but the yellow that comes from bleaching is a lot different from the Scandinavian fine pale hair that Fujiwara likes. His little friend goes from being a bullied brown-haired boy to a raped black-haired senpai. Fujiwara does the occasional 'I can't help it if people keep raping me, I just come back for more' copeless uke, who tends to annoy westerners. But in this story there's a twist to the seme on a white horse motif- bullied little boy and raped little senpai both resent the shining golden guy who insists on being their best friend. The complexity of the uke's motivation and the unusual darkness of the denouement lift this story magnificently out of the by the numbers league.

Fujiwara's semes are also arrogant lovers, high-handed and painfully hung. (These stories ran in Reijin, the crossover magazine that also caters to gay men, so the proportions of the phantom penises are fairly large. In contrast her ukes don't have penises at all- they have assholes, usually shown being penetrated in wincing detail.) The title story, a two-parter, concerns a graphic artist who had a summer interlude when he was fourteen with an outcast boy who'd come back to the suburban town where the artist then lived. Artist screwed outcast all summer long like the randy little teenager he was. Outcast boy then went back to the big city with his 'water trade' (bar hostess/ prostitute) sister and, in spite of promises, was never heard from again. Artist got taken in by the daughter of a famous designer who was setting up her own business, and became the firm's sole artist and the boss' lover. Boss is also grooming him as a husband, in spite of the six-year differences in their age. Artist doesn't care one way or the other. Artist doesn't care much about anyone, but still has uneasy dreams about his affair ten years ago. Into this scenario who should come but the old summer fuck buddy. Follows some mandatory rough sex and the requisite clearing up of misunderstandings, and all seems set for the classic BBG happy ending. Except that this was a Reijin story, and it doesn't happen that way. I like this one a lot, because it hits one of my odd erotic kinks. You don't often get, in yaoi, the seme who's forced to sit down and actually think about what he's been doing, but when it happens I find it hot as all get out. And it happens here.

By way of contrast to all this reality, we have a pure-love uke in Ama no Hagoromo (The Heavenly Feather Cloak, a reference to the old story of a Heavenly Maid who comes to bathe on the earth and whose feather cloak is taken by a human so she's forced to stay.) At the outset the story seems to be less mythological reference than French bedroom farce, as a famous novelist's secretary and lover is made the confidante of the author's suspicious wife. But again, it doesn't happen that way. This story isn't about two guys in love. It's about one guy in love, and the rest of us are to make of this what we will. It's the closest Fujiwara comes to stock yaoi romance, but it leaves a typical wry and acerbic aftertaste. The Heavenly Uke doesn't belong on this mundane earth, and his pure inhuman love isn't necessarily the best thing for his artist lover. And it's the betrayed wife who gets the last word.

And finally we have a classic scenario- the randy little student who puts the moves on his tutor. Boy may be shorter- waay shorter- and younger, but he's blond, so you know who fucks who. Classic plots (you notice I'm not saying 'by the numbers', even if I'm thinking it hard) have the virtue of showing where, if anywhere, the mangaka's innovation lies. Fujiwara manages some twists on this old theme, in line with her general outlook on the world. Her general outlook has something to do with the inherent depravity of blond men. Unlike other randy little fourteen year olds in yaoi, who are a cheerful fantasy combination of innocent sexuality and teenage-girl pure love, all of Fujiwara's guys have a disquieting air of reality to them, for this gaijin at least. Their depravity is a reflection of the depravity of the world they live in, where sex is the only way people can connect. For Japanese, these guys are terribly isolated- no friends, no groups, no family members they can relate to. Like the blond in this story, who was seduced by one of his bar hostess mother's clients and had an affair with him and several others since. 'Mom's usually out at night and it's better than sleeping alone.' For these boys love is inseparable from sex in a way quite different from other semes one has met. The others read like sexual fantasies. These guys read like guys-- horny, physical, a little bleak.

There's no mistaking Fujiwara for anyone else. No-one draws like she does. To call her page layout busy is an understatement. Her pages are crammed margin to margin with varying tones of grey and lots and lots of dialogue, which makes reading her feel somewhat like plunging into deep water. Unfortunately, most of the psychological nuances happen in the dialogue too. On the plus side, you'll probably never get more verbal semes, even if they're a little wanting in the self-knowledge department. It's an educational look into the seme's head. And for the unJapanesed she's worth reading for the sulky sexy fuck-with-me-if-you-dare little ratfaces who are her trademark.