BRONZE 9: Minami Ozaki

Margaret Comics

Genre: Shonen Ai

Theme: (Deranged)Romance. A womanizing High School delinquent drops out to become a womanizing idol singer and then turns stalker (face it, he IS) when he crossed paths with his idealized mate--an anti-social, self-mutilating soccer player.

Yaoi Value: 1.5 There's nothing very yaoi at all between Koji and Izumi. Izumi's the typical uke of the pair who never initiates sex and has to mutter the uke-creed "no, stop..." while Koji appears to be horny all the time. While many Ozaki fans would beg to differ on the romantic aspects of their relationship is yaoi enough, I still don't get it. There's nothing terribly chivalrous about a guy who won't get off your leg.

Artist Value: 2 Ozaki's styles are evolving further away from her uniqueness that made me follow her dojinshi and commercial works. Her characters are losing a lot of masculinity (not that the free flow of waterworks that Koji can turn on and off on command makes him very virile to begin with...but I digress) and becoming too shojo looking for my liking. The eyes are becoming rounder and so are the faces. I swear the heads on her characters are shrinking and the hands and torsos are getting bigger. She does better work back in the early '90s. And let's not even get into how many commercial brand names managed to creep in most of the frames. An attempt to be westernized, perhaps.

Unresolved Sexual Tension: 1 There's a slight hint of possible incestuous theme that might happen between Hirose and Akihito. I'm sure it won't show up in the commercial series but in her dojinshi line, it could happen. She has done worse to her characters in CD lines. A lot worse.

Overall rating: 2

Mitigating Factor: Izumi's run over by a Porsche.