Imprint: B-Boy ZipsPublisher: Biblos
ISBN: 4-88271-450-7
Imprint: B-Boy Zips
Publisher: Biblos
ISBN: 4-88271-450-7
Summary by Jeanne
Not a review, this, but a summary. Spoilers abounding. Beware.
I grant you, a nice middle sounds to us like the thing you do situps in order to obtain, but of course that's not what it is at all. It's a Japanese euphemism, dreamt up by who knows what well-meaning government department or advertising agency, to reconcile Japan's aging population to their lot. No more obasans and ojisans. Now we're all naisu midoru. The English word is supposed to take the sting out of being on the wrong side of 35.
When Bboy does a collection on nice middles, it's talking about sex with older men. Admittedly, Bboy mangaka being the twenty-somethings they are, the editors had to play fast and loose with the term to get enough stories. At least one contribution is about two dirty old men of 30. But still, it's specifically not about sweet young things of 22. The sweet young things are the nice middle's partners. With one stunning exception, none of the mangaka wanted to think about, let alone God forbid draw, a yaoi story with two fortyish men in it. This is not the country that declared Sean Connery the world's sexiest man at 60.
However, that's by the by. There are some good middle aged men in this collection, and some not-bad stories. These summaries obviously contain spoilers, so if you're going to read the collection, stop here.
1) Kimi ga dakaseta shitto by Misasagi Furi. Which may be loosely translated as 'You made me jealous.' Pretty much the plot of the story. I don't know this artist, but it reads like it comes from a series, or possibly the 'younger seme' Zip collection. We've got a librarian, we've got his (apparently) younger lover, we've got for no discernible reason the lover's younger brother, and we've got the mysterious woman the lover is seen with so the librarian can do the stock 'Oh he doesn't love me after all' moaning. Librarian of course has been set up by lover so that he will realize how much lover means to him and make his grand declaration. Lover, for all his seme breeziness, has been having some insecurities of his own about how his uke feels. At least the librarian does make a grand declaration, having decided that he's not willing to give up his boyfriend without a fight. This sets him apart from the general run of insecure ukes who'd rather turn into puddles of self-pity and weep their tiny passive hearts out, than actually do anything to hold on to the person who's supposed to mean so much to them. See the last story in the collection for a hideous example of same.
2) Tsuki no kagayaku yoru ni by Asagiri Yuu. Literally 'On a moonlit night', though she renders it as 'Love under the moon.' Rather fun PWP, what you'd expect from Asagiri. Young guy has just been dumped for the fourth time in a row by a lover who wants to get married, and in a seriously pissed-off snit he betakes himself to his uncle's place (his aunt's husband) to demand that uncle, a sophisticated company chairman, introduce him to some older man who wouldn't think of doing any such thing. 'Some nice older man who's a good lay and doesn't talk much,' he specifies. 'What about me?' his uncle asks. 'No way! I don't want anyone with a wife and children. I want an unmarried gay guy for a fuck buddy.' Uncle persuades him otherwise: 'When the moon shines there's nothing wrong with being a little crazy.' This story isn't romantic at all, but it's very satisfying. The uncle is one of those sophisticated older men that the Japanese characterize by the untranslateable term 'shibui', which literally means 'astringent.' Urbane, smooth, experienced-- I don't know how to say it in English, but you know it when you see it. Someone quite capable of screwing his nephew to his nephew's satisfaction while remaining perfectly devoted to his wife. And on another moonlit night, nephew encounters...
3) Private 40 by Tamaki Yura. Tamaki Yura is the Partners artist, but he or she (I still can't decide which it is) has modified the highly characteristic Partners style so that on a first read-through I didn't even register whose story it was. The subtlety and the realistic gay lifestyle should have tipped me off, though. Sugiuchi, a teacher (whose name and occupation we don't learn till much later) is turning 40, and his 22 year old lover gives him a birthday cake with 40 candles. Cake at once collapses under the weight. Lover is distraught: 'That was the only present I had for you!' 'There are other presents you can give me,' Sugiuchi suggests. Lover is willing to do anything- 'I'll give you head- you can come in my face-' but S. asks him to jerk off while he watches, even though he knows how much lover hates the idea. Lover does it, but then has a demand of his own- 'For my birthday next month, I want you to have sex with another man while I watch. But it has to be someone older than you.' Lest you think this sounds too pwp fantasy, there follows a real-life-couples type argument on the lines of 'You want me to sleep with another man?' 'Well, you've done it before!' 'And you've done it *three* times before!' S. is in a quandary. He goes to a gay bar to see what's available, and falls at last into conversation with another guy, 48, with the same life-history as himself- married, had kids, divorced. 'I thought I loved her at the time- I never meant to deceive her-' 'Don't be so serious,' the other man says. 'You can only be yourself.' 'Do you pay child support?' S asks him. (Only in a Tamura story would one guy ask another a question like that.) 'Of course.' 'Good,' S says drunkenly, 'otherwise I'd have to hit you.' And collapses, out cold. Other man takes him to a hotel room and suggests they practise for the big night. In his partner's embraces, S. remembers being assaulted by his uncle and realizes what's at the heart of his reluctance to grow old- a fear of becoming like his uncle. Cut to lover's birthday. 'About that present you wanted-' S. begins nervously. 
'Huh? You didn't think I was serious, did you?' lover laughs, before swearing eternal devotion to S. At which moment the 'present', armed with flowers and a bottle of wine, rings the doorbell. "Newspaper?" S says loudly to his astonished face. "I'm sorry, we already get one." "I see," the other man responds without missing a beat, "Excuse me for disturbing you,", gives S a kiss, and goes. 'Watching him turn away quietly and leave without another word, I realized that being an ojisan might not be so bad after all.'
4) Smile Killer by Oumi Shinano. A publishing company, again. (sigh) Mangaka will write what they know. The editor is getting all hot and bothered by his sweet-faced assistant with his eternal enticing smile and his eternal mistakes. Everyone else likes him, but the editor has to keep cleaning up after the young man's blunders. Doesn't help when assistant announces 'I really like you!' after bringing boss a take-out lunch. (From the tempura store, not having remembered how unappetizing cold tempura is.) 'I want to be like you! I'll do my best, so please keep on chewing me out!' (A classic Japanese line that, believe it or not.) Boss gets his chance: a little later, assistant does it again- gives the crabbiest author in the stable the wrong date for the deadline so boss has to go and ask him to be finished early. 'Lend me that assistant of yours for a night and I'll do it,' author leers. 'My friend says he's really good- will do anything you like with a smile.' Boss and assistant walk out into the night. 'So that's what you meant by 'doing your best'?' boss demands. 'Well fine. If that's the way you want it, go back and practise that smile of yours on him, and bring me the manuscript!' Assistant smiles happily- 'I will'- and goes running back to author's apartment.
Boss spends the night at the office smoking and stewing, and when assistant comes in in the early hours, dripping with rain and clutching the manuscript, boss throws him onto the desk in a fit of jealousy. Let those who are more experienced than I at deciphering extreme closeup shots decide whether boss actually rapes him, or whether he stops on seeing his perennially smiling assistant crying and begging for mercy. It seems assistant was badly bullied at school, but his mother told him to just keep on smiling and eventually people would come to like him. 'And I did, and the bullying stopped, but now it seems all I can do is smile nicely. Even when things are so awful I want to cry, all I do is smile. And one of the writers said I was coming on to him and dragged me to his bed. I got away, but after that there were all these funny stories about me.' 'You're the only one my smile didn't work on,' assistant says with tears running down his face. 'I thought maybe you'd be able to change me.' Boss seems to have done that; amazing what a little desk-top rape can accomplish. Boss makes him promise that from now on he'll only smile when he feels like smiling. 'And when you want to cry, you'll cry in my bosom.' (Sure there's no such thing as a coded female. Sure there's not.) 'OK!' assistant says, smiling. All is happiness, especially when editor learns that assistant got the ms from the author by kneeling all night in his front hall, not by screwing in his bed.
5) Utakata no Hibi by Kawai Toko. 'Bubble days', I suppose- something short-lived and easily broken. At 35 an art teacher is given a choice between an operation with only a 30% success rate or another three years to live. He refuses the operation and proceeds to live a kind of half-life. But that spring he meets a student- loud, healthy, from Osaka (a rambunctious lively city known for its rambunctious lively inhabitants) and begins an affair. Still, the knowledge of his impending death keeps him from being fully involved. When he learns that his lover has slept with women, he suggests breaking up. 'Tell me 'Don't do it again' and I won't!' his lover yells at him. 'Why won't you feel something- anything!?' Teacher is afraid because he actually is beginning to feel something. 'I'm afraid to go to sleep at night, wondering 'what if I don't wake up in the morning?'' To protect himself he breaks with his lover. But meeting him a month later he has a sudden attack and collapses in the boy's arms. As he's rushed to hospital with his frantic lover yelling 'Doctor, don't let him die!!', he tells the doctor, 'I want to live.' 'First time I've heard you say that,' his doctor remarks. 'Something to do with Mr. Big Mouth there?' He has the operation, it's a success, and the two are soon necking in his hospital bed. Actually a rather low-key and understated story, with the action all in the dialogue.