Wild Rock

Author: Takashima Kazusa
Imprint: Be-boy Comics
Publisher: Biblos
ISBN4-8352-1327-0

Reviewed by Jeanne

I won't say this story is set in a prehistoric period. It's set in a RPG-influenced A/U prehistoric period. Only RPG-influenced people wear biceps-high gloves anchored at the middle finger and long black stockings below their cheetah loincloths. There's no logic to the outfits except that they look good on Takashima's characters. Oh, and hot. Did I mention hot? I'm a fan of biceps-high gloves anchored at the middle finger, temperature-hot though they may be.

This one was recc'd to me for its artwork alone, and the artwork is pretty-pretty indeed. I had trouble getting into it because, meh, our viewpoint character Yuuen is a short thin blond youngster with huuuge eyes who can barely wield a spear and at the hunt needs to be saved from saber-tooth tigers and so on by tall dark manly!Enba (from the neighbouring not-quite-friendly tribe.) Yuuen might as well be a girl, frankly, and guess what, he dresses as a girl to go off and entice the tall dark manly!guy into giving him and his malnourished tribe some of the day's catch. Besides, it's a BBC imprint. Biblos' worth-it to forget-it ratio is very very low indeed, and a Biblos imprint is more likely than most to have cookie-cutter plots and characterization.

But this turns out to be a rather sweet and pleasant romance with a side-glance at actual reality (that tribe that keeps having its hunting prey taken away by the tall dark guy from the other tribe, and the social ramifications of that.) But only a side-glance; the romance is why we're here. I call this kind of work operatic because its values are those of opera-- what matters is Love alone and other criteria don't rate even a mention. Men don't conquer the world out of political considerations or vainglory, let alone god-forbid economics, but to gain or impress the woman they love. (Opera queen note: Grand opera is unswervingly het; m/m gets a look-in once you reach the 20th century composer Benjamin Britten, but by that time you're also into the modern tendency towards atonal and unhummable music.) Wild Rock doesn't have the overheated passions of grand opera, just a low-key but absorbing love story. And a bittersweet back-story about the characters' fathers that also does the side-glance thing at political realities, only applied to the romantic entanglement of two men.

(I miss Manga Bonbons, she whinges. *Try* to find out what else Takashima has drawn, just try. Amazon.jp mentions Inu mo arukeba fall in love, which posits some connection between walking a dog and falling in love, and the Asuka series Harlem beat wa yoake made (Harlem beat goes on till dawn) as well as illustrations for some novels; but if that's all she's done I shall be rather sad.)