Author: YOTSUYA Simone
Imprint: Ohta Comics
Publisher: Ohta Shuppan
ISBN:4-87233-167-2
Reviewed by Jeanne
Yotsuya Simone too registers in my head as an institution, though I can't say why. Maybe because there always seemed to be a lot of her on the bookstore shelves when I was in Tokyo but I could never make myself actually buy and read it. Her art style is an acquired taste, all aggressively pointy noses and aggressively pointy chins, and umm I never acquired it. However she does tell a good story.
Fin-de-siecle Detective Club, this one's called. First story is a fun and frothyish run-in between Holmes and Arsène Lupin. I am such a suck for a crossover, and the run-in happens to be over the affections of Dr. Watson. I've always been intrigued that Lupin seems to hold an even more prominent place in Japanese imaginings of the 19th century than Holmes himself. (Warning: Digression follows.) It may be that most cultures' understanding of other cultures depends on that most random of filters, what gets translated by whom. Granted what gets chosen to be translated in the first place is probably a work thought likely to appeal to the target culture, is why Mishima and Kurosawa made it big in the west long before (certainly) better writers and (possibly) better directors did. But don't discount that 'by whom.' A fable for all translators here: there's a horror fic by the minor Victorian fantasy writer Arthur Machen called The Great God Pan. Somehow it slipped past me when I was reading fantasy of that period, the stuff that got rereleased in the 70's by Ballantyne. But when I started reading Japanese weird tales suddenly the name was everywhere in the free talks etc- scariest story of all time, unforgettable impact, etc etc. So I read it (in English.) Enh. 
A bilingual Japanese friend told me that she'd read it in English too and found it enh, but the Japanese version was a total chiller. So there you are. What's a minor unknown work here is a semi-classic over there, thanks to the translation.
But back to Holmes and Watson. This time around we have not shoujo hints of attachment but full-blown BL, with sex scenes. But oddly, to my mind, it runs off of canon hints of m/m in Conan Doyle's work itself. In the second story the mangaka basically retells The Three Garridebs from The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, and prefaces the whole thing with the passage that alerts any slasher that here is where we dig for gold. Since she quotes it, I will too:
"You're not hurt, Watson? For God's sake, say that you are not hurt!" It was worth a wound-it was worth many wounds-to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.
Now all definitions of slash and yaoi are highly personal and idiosyncratic, but I've always maintained that a concern for canon indications that A and B have a thing for each other is a mark of slash, not yaoi. I know also that djka will often say "But the way A *looked* at B when he said that line ohh raburabu smiley faces and sweatdrops" ie it's not a hard and fast rule. Still, something about the way The Three Garridebs is mined to provide a rationale for sex between Holmes and Watson feels very slashy to me. This isn't 'because they look good together' by a long shot. Holmes is drawn looking Holmesish ie thin and bony. It's very much 'All emotions, and (love) particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind'-- but sex isn't an emotion. So by all means let us have sex to release the physical tensions of chastity.
Which is admirable. Of course the last story, which perversely happens in and around A Scandal in Bohemia- the one story that shows Holmes reacting to a woman- does indeed drag in the romance and the 'what is the difference between love and friendship?' But then the defaults of BL are always romantic rather than purely physical, so perhaps it's no surprise.