MOTONI Modoru Presents:
	Koi ga Bokura o Yurusu Han'i  - The Range of Desire

- Reviewed by Jeanne

The title means literally 'the limits that desire allows us,' and the story is a variant on an old slash staple- 'We aren't gay, we just love each other.' This time it's 'We aren't in love, we just want each other.' Two men in their late twenties, friends since university, have had since university a sexual attraction to each other both have agreed to ignore. It's not that there's any trauma about being gay or anything (the word is never mentioned); but you gather they think it would get in the way of their friendship and their lives. Fujio is yer average office worker with a girlfriend, Miku, who's still in university. Yamazaki is a gifted graphic designer whose girlfriend Reiko- a few years older than himself- is an editor at the magazine he works for. And everything is just fine. When they've had a falling out with their girlfriends or it's a 'dangerous day' for one of the women, (ie she might get pregnant: no Pill in Japan) the two guys sleep over at each other's apartments, in the same bed, quite chastely. But then a couple of little emotional shocks, crammed into the elliptic dialogue of the first three pages of the manga, send Yamazaki into a creative block and a suicidal depression. He calls to Fujio for help; Fujio runs, afraid of his feelings; and Yamazaki's condition deteriorates.  

The stage is set for the next event: the girlfriends get into the action. Realizing what's eating Yamazaki, they push the guys into each other's arms. Fujio's girlfriend Miku goes so far as to lock him out of his apartment. 'You belong with Ken-san. Come back when he's better.' The two guys with the Pharaoh complex, kings of de Nile (that's 'denial' to you) are- oh lucky day!- forced to act on their desires: and do so, sweating mightily but not otherwise emitting visible body fluids, while insisting just as mightily that this is only a secondary affair for both of them.  

Sounds like a stock yaoi fantasy? Well, yes, but--- Somewhere between Motoni's realistic art style and her attention to the little emotional details, this manga starts to read like the weirder side of real life. Fujio and Yamazaki's solution to their dilemma is very like the unbelievable situations your own friends get themselves into and then ask your advice about while you sit in slack-jawed disbelief. 'His wife is really upset about him leaving her for me so we've decided that she can come along on the vacation with us. I think after that she'll be able to accept the situation, don't you?' 'Well he loves me but he also loves Tom and I can understand why Tom's unhappy that he lives with me so anyway now Tom's going to move in with us.' For me, Motoni's story has the strangeness of reality, not of fantasy. I could see it happening somewhere, probably to a friend of mine. It all makes sense emotionally if not rationally, and the charas involved act from the same combination of rationalization, wishful thinking, self- delusion, ambivalence, and unstated hostility that real people seem to do. 'Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.' Depending on your type, you'll either say 'Poor sods' or 'What a bunch of steaming nits!!' as the protagonists get deeper and deeper into their quagmire. (Confession time: rationalist though I am, I still felt for them. But I like the art style. It helps if the guys behaving like steaming nits are also eminently fuckable according to your definition of same.)  

Our two pharaohs have it quite clear in their heads that it's a case of 'desire' (koi) not 'love' (ai). Ai is for their girlfriends, and rule no 2 is that they don't go beyond the bounds of desire. (Rule no 1 was 'We don't acknowledge we're attracted to each other.' You remember what happened to rule no.1.) So how long does it take before Fujio wants to hear Yamazaki say, 'I love you'? Before we're out of vol.1, naturally. Vol.1 is lighter in tone than vol 2- rather like a French bedroom farce, actually- with our guys still discovering the joys of gay sex and having sulks about not getting presents for their birthdays. And deciding who's to be top. More of that later.  

Trouble starts early, of course. Trouble is unavoidable unless this was a yaoi fantasy, which it's not. A westerner would sit down and talk about this rationally with the people involved (well, a westerner *thinks* she'd sit down and talk, or knows she ought to sit down and talk but somehow...) These guys, more like the westerners I know, get around to telling each other how they really feel only when they've well and truly lost their tempers, and sometimes not even then. This leads to a lot of second- guessing, self-contradiction, lying and misunderstanding. (You see why I think this is a realistic manga?) When push gets close to shove in the second volume and Fujio, in a rare moment of clearsightedness, realizes that it can't work and that it's Yamazaki he wants more than Miku, Yamazaki stops him from breaking up with her. 'When you come to your senses, you'll regret this,' Yamazaki thinks. *Thinks*, doesn't say. And it probably wouldn't make much difference if he did say it. Fujio soon reverts to his usual fuzzy-minded wanting everybody to be happy and no-one to be hurt and for himself to go on having his cake and eating it. The road to hell is paved with this kind of attitude, which is one that leads to murder in countries where people have easy access to handguns.  

It's not yaoi fantasy, for sure. For one thing, the two girlfriends are realized people, and quite as screwed up as their boyfriends. Maybe you're wondering why on earth a couple of women would make their guys sleep together? It's not stated openly in the story as far as a gaijin can see, though the Japanese probably read it all between the lines quite clearly. However there are these little profiles of the characters the author includes as throwaways; and there among the details of their blood types and favorite foods you learn that Reiko wants to be married eventually, but not to Yamazaki. Hmmm... And who is Miku's ideal person? Reiko. And you begin to see how it happened: the editor's cash cow stops producing, experienced woman of the world (with a voyeuristic streak to her) realizes the problem and sees the solution, romantic university student falls in with this sophisticated proposal, yes indeed. It's Miku who breaks first, naturally, and gives in to jealousy and possessiveness. Reiko's reactions and motivations are much more obscure: what might be manipulation, what might be jealousy, what might be vanity, all come in to play. Reiko is a complex character and I hope to find out some day what, if anything, she's up to. It would be a relief, actually, if she *was* up to something and this wasn't just four people stumbling around making a mess of things because of their messy emotions. But that's a gaijin talking: one who finds human conspiracies more reassuring than random natural chaos.  

I'd better say now that the language used in the manga is not so much obscure as opaque. It's the shorthand of Japanese city dwellers who all operate in the same cultural context. English is the same: a phrase such as 'It's like- well, you know'-- means 'I'm feeling what you'd expect me to feel in this situation but you have to know me and the culture and the expectations to know what that is.' When characters do start saying how they feel, they sound demented. Take Yamazaki, who thinks he's been invading Miku's territory because she's been leaving messages on his machine saying 'Don't go see Fujio tonight, ok?' for six weeks. This he believes to be a gentle hint. Once Reiko sets him straight that it's Miku who's been horning in on his rights, Yamazaki angrily decides that all he has to do to get rid of Miku is to rape her. Then she won't be able to look Fujio in the face and will simply disappear. The notion that raping his lover's girlfriend will harm his relationship with Fujio never enters his head. Fujio in fact stops him in his attempt: then does a big song and dance about how Yamazaki has 'raped' *Fujio's* feelings in his passing attempt to 'humiliate' Miku. That Miku has been terrorized and traumatized doesn't rate a mention. And it's Miku he sends home and Fujio he keeps at his apartment. Why? 'It's more painful for you to stay here than to leave.' Uhh- yes- but... It all makes *emotional* sense, yes, when you think about it: but it's so far from our reflex attitude to things that it makes this gaijin's head hurt.  

Possibly I'm making this sound too intense to be fun. There's a lot of fun to be had, though. The problems two lovers face: well, the uke is pissed at the seme's assumptions that he's going to be uke. Doesn't say so in so many words, natch; just sulks, and it's Mama Reiko who explains to the puzzled Fujio that Yamazaki likes to say 'You're beautiful' during sex and Fujio doesn't give him a chance. 'But I'm not beautiful,' the literal- minded Fujio objects. He still doesn't quite see why Yamazaki objects to hearing 'You're cute' from *him*. 'You say the same things to me as to Miku-chan.' Fujiro thinks that's normal: until the day he comes to Yamazaki's apartment and hears him having sex. But Reiko's shoes aren't in the hallway. Ah hah! Yamazaki is jerking off- 'Fujio I'm gonna fuck you-- oooh, I'm reaming you--ohhh I'm gonna come *right* *inside* *you*.' Fujio gets the message--- not knowing that Yamazaki is calmly smoking on the other side of the door while providing the appropriate sound effects. Yes, they do switch roles, but Fujio really hates it and only does it to be nice. Like life, I tell you...  

We're at vol 2 now, and I have no idea what's going to happen. If this was a French series all would end well, because in France love is always a comedy no matter how much you suffer during it. If this was a British series all would end in bitterness, because the Brits want you to know the world is a serious place and love is a drug dream. If this was an American series it would end with at least one body if not more littering the landscape, for cultural reasons too numerous to mention. But it's Japanese and the Japanese are likely to pull the most amazing switches when they aren't being totally predictable. It may well have a happy ending with a lot of bitterness and a few corpses. Matsu dake desu: one can only wait and see.