The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu / Luo Di Cheng Qiu and Mao Tuan Xiao Jian Jian

A friend of mine is very, very, very into the Chinese drama “The Untamed.”

I’m probably going to end up watching the entire TV series with her, but, try as I might, I just can not get into those 3-D boys.

Deep in my otaku heart, I only have love and devotion in 2-D.

Thus I could not have been more relieved to discover that not only is there a dongua (an anime produced in China) of the same story, but there is also a manhua under the name of The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation / Mo Dao Zu Shi.

I can finally share her in fandom… albeit, from a 2-D angle.

SPOILERS

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I feel like if you are in anime fandom, you have probably come across a reference to “The Untamed” or something like it or have seen the phrase, xianxia. I do not know why it is assumed Western anime fans will love things from China and Korea in equal value, but that is a rant for another day.

Regardless, I tend to avoid C-dramas of all varieties because they are entirely out of my comfort zone. I understand no Chinese dialect of any kind, nor can I read or speak Mandarin. My understanding of Chinese culture and Chinese history can be summed up by “?? A Great Wall, maybe?? Uh, terra cotta soldiers??”

My only previous exposure to things (at the time, much more adjacent to) China was a brief interest in the 1990s in Hong Kong films. A local theater ran a “Asian Film Fest,” which was really a “Let’s watch everything Golden Harvest ever produced” on Fridays nights at midnight event, where I saw movies like “The Killer,” starring Chow Yun-Fat, “Drunken Master” with Jackie Chan, and “Once Upon a Time in China” with Jet Li.

It was during those midnight movie showings that I saw several Mr. Vampire films…. I don’t know if “Mr. Vampire” can be considered xianxia. It did, at least, introduce me to the idea of flying Taoist priests, as well as the fantasy concept that rural Chinese villages are often overrun by reanimated corpses and/or that a vengeful spirit problem can be solved by the supernatural placement of a proverb or two–and a liberal application of wires and wigs.

I actually really loved the Mr. Vampire serie. I found it to be cheesy goodness.

So my resistance to the C-drama craze has nothing to do with a dislike of melodrama, bad wigs, or awkward wire work. I suspect that the reason I bounce out of it nine times out of ten is that, after all this time immersed in Japanese culture, all of the tropes and expectations of Chinese media feel really foreign to me. It’s like that first time you read a manga and you hadn’t yet learned that the little * by someone’s forehead means they’re quietly seething or angry.

Learning an entire new culture and cultural cues feels beyond me at the moment. Particularly, since nothing I’d come across has felt particularly worth the effort.

Until now.

The story of The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation is ridiculously complex and has far too many flashbacks, but at its basic it is the supervillain origin story I have always, personally, craved, especially since it’s also an epic gay romance.

Pretty much every version of this story starts in the same place. The main character wakes up in the center of what is essentially a demonic summoning circle. It is quickly revealed that our “hero” is spirit of someone named Wei Wuxian (魏无羡) who now, through this dark magic, possesses the body of a hapless “lunatic” named Mo Xuanyu (莫玄羽).

You know something is up because Wei Wuxian is deeply baffled how he could be considered evil enough to have ended up fitting the description of a corrupt spirit, but he goes along with trying to figure out what Mo Xuanyu wanted with this sacrifice, because what else does he have to do?

Even as Wei Wuxian is figuring out who he’s supposed to be taking revenge on, he keeps dropping little hints to the readers that he’s definitely the sort of villain who thinks he is the hero of his own story.

Also, he’ll say things like, “Ah, I see they’re still using my technique” when looking at really evil-looking corpse-repelling talismans and the like.

Yet, it’s impossible not to like Wei Wuxian.

He’s light-hearted, carefree, unorthodox and casually brilliant.

Wei Wuxian tries to solve the mystery of his summoning on the QT, but he almost immediately runs into an old rival, Lan Wangji (蓝忘机). Lan Wangji is everything that Wei Wuxian is not–stoic, serious, proper, and the legitimate second son of a powerful “cultivator” clan that believes in following every single rule to the letter.

Or as one of other characters puts it, Lan Wangji is the person everyone is referring to when they tell you to “behave more like other people’s children” (here as Lan Zhan–this story is not helped by its use of various titles and names for the same people. Lan Zhan is Lan Wangji’s proper name and title.)

This is a rivals to lovers story, too–though a longtime BL reader can pick-up very early that Lan Wangji has been in love with Wei Wuxian almost since the first moment they met.

And the cute-meet is really something. It won me over to the entire series, in fact.

Remember how I say above that Wei Wuxian is casually brilliant? You might not notice that personality trait in the live-action tv series, because the notes that get hit a lot with his character are the humorous/comedic parts. He is funny, and his situation–being stuck inside a madman–lends itself to some very over-the-top overacting.

However, because the manhua is “acted” in my head, it was easier for me to see Wei Wuxian in a different light, and so I was very struck by the meet-cute because I think Lan Wangji sees in Wei Wuxian the same thing I do, which is his genius.

So, the set-up is actually in a flashback which we are given to contextualize why Wei Wuxian is freaked out that of ALL PEOPLE called to help put down one of those many walking dead problems that rural China faces, it had to be Lan Wangji. In the flashback, we see Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji in a classroom setting–a lecture being run by the clanhead/master, Lan Wangji’s father. Wei Wuxian is being his typical self, bored and disinterested, and so the master attempts to discipline him by quizzing him on various esoteric facts. Wei answers everything quickly and easily, until the master seems to stump him with a hypothetical situation. Let’s say the angry spirit you need to excorcise is an executioner….

There’s more to the scenario, but suffice to say that Wei Wuxian’s hesitation is mistaken for not having an answer and so the father calls on his second son who answers textbook perfectly, no mistakes. Wei Wuxian follows up with a question, shocking everyone. His basic answer is, “So, what about a new way of looking at this? What if we summoned all the even angrier spirits of all the people that the executioner killed and used them to our advantage to bring down the executioner?”

The master is horrified.

You don’t use the dead to fight the dead, FFS!

It’s unnatural.

And, here was the moment that I believe won both Lan Wangji’s heart and I know stole my own. Wei Wuxian holds his ground. He says, “No, wait, how can it be unnatural?” and makes an argument that what he’s proposing is no different than the flood control invented by Yu the Great. Now, I know zero Chinese history, but I do know Yu the Great and so you have to believe me when I say that this connection is f*cking brilliant. He’s saying if one of our greatest historical figures can harness a river’s own destructive power and make it into a good thing that saves people’s lives, how can what I’m proposing be bad?

The master has no argument at this point. Lan Wangji’s father is reduced to throwing things at Wei Wuxian in frustration.

I can only imagine that at this second, Lan Wangji sees that this silly, carless young man is not just bullsh*tting his way through life. He will be–or, perhaps already is–a force to be reckoned with.

But, the audience also sees the danger. The student humiliates the master… and from this moment, the reader understand exactly how it is Wei Wuxian’s life becomes a tragedy. He’s going to do the right thing using the “wrong” methods and get labelled a perversion of the natural order.

And no one likes perverts.

Which is the other clever bit about the core story of The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, in my opinion. The gay romance subplot isn’t just an add-on for titillation, it actually underscores the entire theme of the story, which is the question that Wei Wuxian asks his teacher, “How can something be unnatural if it is good?”

Which brings us back to that perfect child, Lan Wangji…

The other thing that I found much clearer in the manhua is that body that Wei Wuxian possesses–the madman, Mo Xuanyu? He’s not crazy so much as queer in a society that finds that so abhorrent as to consider it a mental illness (not unlike my own country, until 1973.) There are implications early on that MO Xuanyy was… at least a crossdresser, if not something more, as among his possessions Wei Wuxian finds a make-up kit which he uses to disguise himself from cultivators whom he worries might know him if they look too closely at this new body. Later, too, Wei Wuxian uncovers that the reason Mo Xuanyu knew the spell to offer his body in sacrifice was because he was a prominent cultivator student himself… until he “harassed” the clan head, by which is it clearly meant flirted/fell in love (or someone thought he had), and was dishonored and banished.

One of the things that is uncomfortable about Wei Wuxian is how willing he is to use Mo Xuanyu’s homosexuality/queer mannerisms as a repellant. Like, if he needs someone to not take him seriously because he just dropped the equivalent of a 10th level spell, he just minces around and hides behind a strong, manly man… like Lan Wangji.

This is made especially painful by the fact that Lan Wangji has probably always known he was gay.

Since there are other flashbacks that imply this very heavily. There’s a scene where the two boys are trapped together in an underwater cave in a classic hurt/comfort scenario (Lan Wangji is injured protecting Wei Wuxian) and Wei Wuxian is mindlessly talking about all the cute girls as Lan Wanji is growing more and more possessive. I mean, every queer teen who has accidentally fallen for a straight person can see themselves in this moment, I feel. It doesn’t even matter when in time this scene takes places because the conversation they have also makes it clear that Lan Wangji has never–and you get the sense that it’s not JUST because he’s a straight-laced prude, maybe those laces have never been straight, if you catch my drift.

So, the story runs on two tracks–the larger world realizing that zombie magic isn’t inherently evil, and Wei Wuxian realizing that “unnatural” attraction is as natural as his own zombie magic… or at least the story flirts with that (apparently the light novel is more explicit that the boys get together in the end.)

If I have any complaint it’s that this manhua spirals away from our central boys far too often. It’s epic? I guess that’s part of it’s appeal, but I’m not all that interested in the story of the severed arm, though I do absolutely adore the Ghost General.

And, of course, the donkey, Little Apple… in fact, I told my friend as we were watching the live-action tv show that I am 75% here for the donkey content.

So, should you read this manhua or watch the anime or live-action? It really honestly depends on the amount of free time you have. The anime might be the shortest, having only three seasons (?), but the manhua is at 203 chapters to-date. This thing is SPRAWLING. The scanlators have actually provided character/relationship charts to help you keep track of everyone. It is, as the kids say, a LOT.

But the art is gorgeous, and because it is a manhua, it’s in full color. Also, if you’re watching any of the other versions of this, I suspect that manhua streamlines some stories.

As always, it’s up to you.

I’m just glad I finally have something I can talk to all the xianxia fans about.

If You Do Not Obey Me by Fei Xiaoyue

It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed any manhua. Alas, despite it’s tantalizing name, If You Do Not Obey Me… is not, perhaps, the most auspicious return.

 

SPOILERS

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Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong place, in the wrong time.

Particularly, when I read a manhua like this, I feel like if I had been born just a little later, like in the 1970s or 80s,  somewhere in Japan or Korea, I would have already made my first million dollars by now, having authored the smuttiest of smut manga in the history of manga.

Because, honestly?

The set-up for this one, I feel like I’ve already written a zillion times in my fevered teenaged head.

Basically, you’ve got this guy, Jang Jieon, who is a powerful businessman/son of a mafioso (that last part is just a guess, given where things trailed off at chapter 15).

Jieon is a guy who is very, very used to getting what he wants. He doesn’t like to lose and he’s got the ways and means to make sure he never, ever does.  What Jieon wants, it turns out, is Lee Geon, whom he meets by chance at a snooker contest. Jieon, you see, never loses, but Geon beat him by one point.

So now it’s all, “I must possess you.”

Geon has zero interest in being some rich man’s play thing, so there’s a lot (and I mean a LOT) of drama before Geon is forced to capitulate. Geon even flees the country to get away from Jieon’s influence, but it doesn’t work.

Make no mistake. Geon is not into any of this. There’s a lot of the typical talk about how his body is responding despite his protests, but his protests are pretty clear and he is very obviously being held against his will.

When I was thirteen, I would have found this scenario super hot. If I had lived in a country where teenagers could write/draw and submit stories like this to magazines, I could have churned out a million, zillion JUST LIKE THIS.  Especially the part where half of it doesn’t make sense (there are a lot of back and forth between “present” and past events) and some of them are just excuses to attempt to show a softer side to Jieon (look! he cares for Geon when he’s sick!) or throw in some random (and I’m not making this up) gun battles and long lost nephews.

Did I enjoy this? Probably more than I should have.

Would I recommend it? I’m not sure I would even recommend it to my thirteen year old self, but obviously I got a little nostalgic/guilty pleasure out of reading it.

It’s not finished, so, if you have the same guilty pleasure, you might want to wait for more of it to be scanlated, especially since Mangakalot’s version cut off in the middle of a shoot out.

I don’t know what I was thinking being born in the US and trying to write science fiction…. I’m telling you, I could write stuff like this in my sleep (and there’s probably be a lot more graphic sex.)

*sigh*

我成为了BL漫画家的助理 / I Love BL Comics by Li Zhiheng and Mei Dajiong

How could I resist a title like this?  I Love BL Comics.  It seems sort of made for me, doesn’t it?

SPOILERS

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Our somewhat hapless hero, Ly Chee, is an unemployed artist, who is desperately seeking work as an assistant in the manhua business.

In the opening chapters, he tries a number of places and gets results that are very familiar to any freelancer in the creative arts.  Well, I mean, I’ve never been asked to wear a maid’s outfit as part of the job, but I have been asked to work for free:

Still funny, even though the translation is VERY rough.

Finally, Ly Chee ends up finding what seems to be the perfect job.  He finds it a little odd at first that all of his potential bosses are women, until they reveal that they write BL/Boys’ Love.

Then the tables are turned, they wonder if he can handle the subject matter.

He stares at the sketches of naked men for a long time, looking stricken, and they become more and more convinced he’s far too disgusted to work there.  Until this moment:

He makes a huge, impassioned speech about the purity of the relationships in BL (he must be reading different things than I am,) which causes the ladies to make an obvious assumption about our passionate Ly Chee.

Perhaps…. the boy doth protest too much.

Ly Chee insists that he’s straight as an arrow, which is an assertion that is put to the test in the following chapters. I suspect, in fact, it will be the main drama going forward.

There are, to-date, only 6 chapters available.  Buka Manga, which for some reason shares authorial credit on most sites, is the only translator of this manhua… which, is a bummer.  Their grasp of English grammatical construction is tenuous at best.  The words are all there, but, obviously, “I am for job here,” is not how a native English-speaker would that they are here for a job.

Yet, I’m not entirely convinced that this detracts from the story. It might make it unintentionally funnier in some cases, and this is meant to be comedy.  More importantly, it’s not IMPOSSIBLE to parse what’s being said.  It just takes me a second or two to mentally correct it, which, should they ever take a dramatic turn, might lose me as a reader.

The art styles are, as you see, also vary wildly.  Normally, where there are two mangaka listed, I tend to assume that one is the writer and the other is the artist.  My guess is, in this case, we actually have two writer/artists.

On the other hand, I think that helps them pull off scene like this one, where Ly Chee is showing off his artistic talent to his bosses:

My artistic talent in a nutshell.

It’s interesting how often this sort of handicap is shown in comedic manga/manhua about manga/manhua writing.  At least, there are similar gags in Gekkan Shōjo Nozaki-kun/Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun.  Apparently, there is hilarity to be found in the idea that artists might not be capable of drawing All The Things (which, as someone who dabbles in art, seems really LEGIT.)

If you read this, be warned that there were moments of “???” that might be lost in translation or ‘humor works differently in different cultures’ kinds of things for me.  As you know, gentle reader, the broader the humor, the less likely *I* am to appreciate it.  So, as always, grain of salt any problems I have with the funny bits.

Would I recommend it?  I’m kind of intrigued by the fact that Baka-Updates gave it a ‘smut’ designation (however, they seem to also assume it’s shoujo ai/Girls’ Love? So, maybe that’s just a mis-tag.)  The cover also seems to imply that there might actually be smut/romance between the two others in the picture, though I will tell you (even though it’s a GIANT spoiler) one of them is decidedly NOT human… which might be a kink for you?

No judging.

So, a hesitant yes.  I do wish the translations were a little smoother, but the chapters are short.

和女儿的日常/Grow Up With My Daughter by Chen Yuanfeng

In my never ending quest to find things to read that are about absolutely nothing, I have found this charming manhua, Grow Up With My Daughter. This is not just a slice-of-life about a man and his daughter, it’s autobiographical.  Each chapter ends with a picture of the daughter in question.

SPOILERS

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Can you spoil something this wonderfully simple?  I’m not sure.  A man hangs out with his daughter, doing family things, often with humorous results.  My biggest caveat would be that it’s possible the humor could bounce off anyone who has not spent sufficient time around toddlers (or who flat-out doesn’t like them.)

You do kind of have to find toddlers innately charming.

Or parenting sort of ridiculous.

I still indoor too much, thanks.

There are only four chapters of this so far, but it’s well worth checking out. I mean… it’s little vignettes about stupid things parents do to amuse their kids, etc.  But, you are talking to the person who read all of Yotsuba to! /Yotsuba&! and kind of wished there had been more than 13 VOLUMES.

So, yeah. With a grain of salt.

In These Words by TogaQ+ KichikuNeko

What is with manhuas? Why are they so well drawn?  Why are the stories so… right up my kinky alley?

SPOILERS

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Bad news first.  In These Words is another one that I have not found scanlated.  I picked up this volume at Quatrefoil, and no one seems to be scanning this.  Worse, when I went to look to see if I might just go ahead and buy the second volume in English from the publishers… the price on Amazon.com was… unreasonable (Like, seriously, 69 dollars!)

This is a huge shame, because this manhua is stunningly illustrated and the story is kinky af.

The story follows psychologist, Asano Katsuya, a renown U.S.-trained, criminal profiler. The Tokyo police have hired Asano-sensei to get a confession out of Shinobara Keiji, a serial killer.

A couple curious circumstances arise, however.  One, Asano-sensei keeps having these extremely vivid nightmares about being one of Shinobara’s victims.  In fact, the volume starts with a prologue (written, like, as a light-novel, which is funky,) that makes you think Asano was maybe picked up by Shinobara  at a coffee shop, drugged, and held captive for weeks.  Only… after several wonderfully explicit panels of all the torture, Asano wakes up.  It’s all been a dream.

Or has it?

A young detective has shown up at Asano’s apartment to take him to talk to the chief of police about the big assignment.  Except, sensei has kind of forgotten where he’s supposed to be going or what he’s supposed to be doing.  It seems that Asano-sensei has not only been plagued by the vivid nightmares, but also these odd headaches.

Add on top of that, we find out when the police chief explains his mission to him, Shinobara has requested him specifically…. in fact, he won’t talk to any other psychologist and they need this confession, pronto.

Thus, the reader is left with an uneasy feeling that maybe these dreams aren’t just empathetic projection.

That feeling is underscored by the fact that at one point the young detective ‘reminds’ Asano-sensei to take a pill that sensei does NOT remember being prescribed… and that immediately brings on the headache again.

Something is clearly going on between Asano and Shinobara.

Only what, exactly?  Was he a former victim? Will be a new one?

The volume ends just when Shinobara has come up with a way to corner the doctor… and I pretty much ripped through the internet desperate to get my hands on volume 2 to find out what happens next.

IF YOU SEE ANYTHING ABOUT THIS MANGA/MANHUA PLEASE, PLEASE TELL ME!

The art is amazing, did I mention?

Also all the sex is explicit, no invisible penises.

I’m so bummed not to have more of this, AND that I can’t share it with you because it’s not on-line, anywhere.

Sad face.

Vampire Yaoi Round-Up 2

My second vampire round-up actually unearthed a few gems!  One an non-vampire story and the other a science fiction dystopia manhua that I’m kind of addicted to all ready!  Last time I found five, but this time I had trouble reading much of anything after finding the really good one… so, there are only four.

 

SPOILERS

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1.

“You Must Be Joking” is the 6th chapter of 3-manen no Kareshi / 30,000 Yen Boyfrind by Mio Junta : it’s… uh?… silly? It starts with out hero complaining about how this vampire he just met is the total opposite of the stereotype: he’s poor and not-at-all-polished, in fact he’s a little froo-froo. But I guess they fell in love because the whole neck-biting thing didn’t work out…?  The bite hurt, which it isn’t supposed to.  The vampire figures the problem was he wasn’t terribly hungry and so it was more of a love bite.

 

The 3-manen no Kareshi story, however?  That one I liked a lot.  Our hero, Takagi, is a popular office worker who is secretly very lonely.  He’s been dating a married man and, well, that’s not going to go anywhere is it?  So, when he hears the office girls talking about boyfriends-for-hire he decides to try it out.  He finds a super-hot one, but that guy is booked.  He ends up with his second choice, a youngish, enthusiastic guy, who further frustrates Takagi by explaining that, yeah, no, sorry not an escort service. You’re supposed to, you know, just date.  Takagi is having none of that.  Rent-a-boy says, “Wahh! Can’t have a bad mark on my performance, okay, let’s f*ck!”

And they do.

And, of course, gay sex is so awesome for this straight guy that he’s completely smitten.  Adorably, however, he keeps trying to bring over games and DATE Takagi. Takagi thinks that all this insistence on dating instead of f*cking is a rejection, and so when number one is freed up he rents him.

Number one is very smooth, but Takagi can’t stop thinking about number 2 guy…. and of course they run into number 2 out on another date-for-hire of his own.

Love confessions ensue.

In case you had any doubt, rent-a-boyfriend is a real service in Japan: https://www.japantoday.com/category/lifestyle/view/real-boyfriend-rental-service-offers-dates-with-men-aged-from-19-to-57

The other thing that amused me about 3-menen no Kareshi was that, because I found this whole volume under the tag ‘vampire’ in Baka-Updates, I was kind of half-expecting number one popular guy to be a vampire, because, well, it would be perfect cover for one.

 

2.

Blood Bank by Silb : This ongoing manhua is pretty much everything I have ever needed from a vampire yaoi, possibly even fiction in general.

It’s yaoi; it’s BDSM; it’s vampires; AND it’s science fiction!  Plus, it features my favorite kind of power dynamic….

In the future, a meteorite crashes into earth.  The ash and debris plunges the world into a ‘nuclear winter,’ where it’s nearly always dark and cold.  Vampires, who had been living among us but shackled by the long days, come out of hiding and dominate the remaining humans.  The powerful vampire clans fought bloody wars to possess the most humans.  Now, years later, there’s a kind of peace brought on by mutually agreed on shared resources: blood banks.

The story follows One.  One has a pretty okay life, for a human. His blood is ‘A’ quality and so he’s never had any trouble paying the ‘blood tax.’  He’s also extremely good at his job, hence his name One, as a banker.  The clients like him, and despite the vampires’ powerful pheromones, One has always been able to keep a cool head.

Actually, he’s mysteriously not affected by pheromones at all.  He can smell them, but other humans are enthralled, in the traditional sense, in that they have to do whatever a vampire orders them to do.

Along comes Shell, a vampire who is the son of a powerful overlord.  Shell has come to inspect the bank.  He takes note of One… and quickly uncovers his secret. One is trapped… or so it seems, except that what Shell wants is for a human to dominate him.  It’s his own shameful secret because vampire are supposed to use and abuse humans…

..not the other way around.

So, yeah, this story!   So good!

As I have confessed many times before, I am easily taken in by stories where there’s an underclass.  The more unfair, unequal the underclass has it, the more invested I am. The world of Blood Bank is pretty bleak.

Humans are basically cattle in this world. One lives in a place called a human farm that looks a bit like a rough barracks. He lives on rations granted by the overlord.  But, he’s doing pretty well.  The ones who aren’t pretty enough or have bad-tasting blood live in slums.  Others are literal pets of the vampires, known as ‘arts’ because not only are they bought and sold like objects d’art, but also been artificially-bred to be the most beautiful and desirable.

Vampires, meanwhile, seem to have a pretty strict society, too. It’s basically understood that vampires dominate by force, so, of course, every vampire lord of note has a playroom-a BDSM dungeon.  Poor Shell just looks at all that stuff and wants all the wrong things.  He can’t come out because any non-dominant behavior is seen as abnormal–even being kind of swishy can get you thrown in jail.

The world is f*cked up.  Obviously, this means I could NOT get enough of it.

Plus, the plot actually gets pretty interesting fairly quickly, so it’s got smut AND plot! The only thing missing were women.  They’re almost conspicuously absent, but I wonder if some of that has to do with the nature of the society.  In some ways, it’s so brutal and unequal that it could be fairly stomach turning if there were women involved…? I’m not sure. It’s also possible that the mangaka also just forgot.

This manhua is going into my rotation and I’m going to be anxiously checking for updates!

 

3.

“Vampire Boyfriend” chapter 5 in Etowa / Love Machine by Tsuge Amayo : is… okay, nothing is going to satisfy me much after Blood Bank, but the age difference here was kind of a no-go for me.  The set-up, however, is that there are just vampires at school, no big deal.  Higashi has a problem–whenever he gets excited (sexually), he bites people.  He’s having very creepy teacher/student love affair with Shiozaki, his teacher, whom I think we’re supposed to like… possibly because he’s the one who made the love confession and isn’t into Higashi only because he’s a vampire.

Eew…. sensei, just no!

The whole chapter turns on a misunderstanding that’s… kinda cute, but I could never really get over the age gap in the relationship and the art was kind of meh-to-awful.

 

4.

Glow Vampire by Wanatabe Asia : this is a one-shot that has vampire, but really mostly is just a very smutty, odd threesome.  I can’t even really explain it. There’s a priest, and a vampire bat and another vampire and… yeah, sex.

Let’s Take the Train Together, Shall We? #15-17

So… apparently, my review of this manhua showed up on someone’s Google search and so I got contacted by a person at Träumerei Scans who is involved in the official scanlation of Let’s Take the Train Together, Shall We? 

As one of the side-effects of that, as it were, I can now point you all to the official scanlator’s page: http://bato.to/comic/_/comics/lets-take-the-train-together-shall-we-r18448.

So, go read the next chapters, they’re cute.

WARNNG BIG A$$  SPOILERS

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What is very weird to me right now is that, while I was briefly very honored to have been sought out by people associated with something I was really loving, I feel kind of uninvited to have an opinion on this manhua.

If you want to read the comment exchange between me and the folks at Träumerei Scans, you can see them here: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/2016/09/26/lets-take-the-train-together-shall-we-10-14/comment-page-1/#comment-335

I’m not sure if the scanlators intended to spoil the entire manhua for me, but they did.

I’ve been admonished not to ‘read too much’ into the relationship between Chen Yuchen and Li Tengyu. They took time out of their day to contact me directly and spray NO HOMO all over this.

Okay. Great.

You do realize this entire manhau is about their funny interactions between the two guys and how they can be/might be interpreted, right?

So… literally all the joy has been sucked out of my reading of this manhua, because I sure as F*CK was not tuning in to find out how Li Tengyu’s office politics were going to turn out or whether or not Chen Yuchen was EVER going to get a new hoodie.

I was there for, what I assume most readers were: the cute interactions, which I could enjoy for their sweet bromance-y awesomeness… and, you know, imagine as the scanlators clearly do the potential for gayness.

The entire tension of this manhua is built around how other people, including the characters themselves, interpret this relationship. You can not deny that part of what makes you turn to the next page is a potential for someone to misinterpret what’s going on. It literally happens constantly in these last few chapters, like, where Tengyu’s boss is insistent that the texts he’s getting from Chen Yuchen must be from a date.  The fact that Tengyu doesn’t just show his boss the screen and say, “Nah, that’s just my friend standing over there who’s getting all weird because I’ve missed hanging out on the train with him in the mornings for the last week,” is because Tengyu thinks his boss is going to think he’s gay.

That scene has no power otherwise. It’s got no traction if the titillation, the queer-baiting, isn’t intentional on the part of the author.

Plus, it’s just fun, right?

Like, oh noz!  The touchy-feely boss might think Tengyu is gay!

Except now I’ve lost all that fun. My enjoyment of those moments have been taken away by the insistance of the scanlator that I might be “disappointed” by the end.

There you go, then. Thanks for deflating all of the fun tension.

No need to read any further.

And I honestly don’t know if I should bother any more.  I really kind of feel like I was singled out and told ‘we don’t want fans like you, you who READ TOO MUCH into things.’

Crap.

Now I can’t even love this thing any more. Damn it.

Let’s Take the Train Together, Shall We? #10-14

Somehow I missed a bunch of these!  The bonus is that I got to read a whole slew at once, which is lovely.  If you’ve not caught up either, you can find them all here: http://bato.to/comic/_/comics/lets-take-the-train-together-shall-we-r18448 (official scanlation site.)

SPOILERS

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If these two don’t end up as lovers by the end, there will be gross sobbing and possibly a little raging from me. I can no longer pretend I won’t be devastated if this ends in a platonic way.  Also, if these two just end up bro’friends at the end?  Sally-sensei is a queer baiting son-of-a-b*tch!

Because Chapter 10 is literally about how Chen Yuchen is having an extremely sh*tty day until he sees Li Tingyu in his street clothes.  Seriously.  Just seeing Tingyu in casual clothes lifts the cloud from Chen Yuchen’s day.

Listen, I have some really awesome friends in my life with whom I have a 100% platonic relationship with, but they usually lift me out of  my crappy mood by talking to me about their lives or hanging out with me.  I do not get happy just by seeing them in cute clothes.

When I see my wife coming out of work in her cute shoes and a kicky skirt? Holy sh*t, yes. Just watching her walk will bring a smile to my face, brighten my day–before I even talk her.

Do you see the difference?

I don’t think that people in Taiwan are that much culturally different than people in the U.S.  Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe bro’mances are really different in Taiwan. Maybe guys there are just more laissez fair about it all. “Dude! Cute shoes! OMG, they make me so happy! How do they make you feel?” But, I have tons of girls who are my friends who do not make my day just by wearing something I’ve never seen them in before.  Hell, half the time I don’t notice when my friends who are girls get new glasses or change their hair, but that might be part of being a lesbian.  So, maybe this isn’t a Taiwan/U.S. thing, maybe this is a straight thing.  Maybe straight people really get happy when they see their other straight friends looking good.

BUT, JUST FYI, THIS READS AS VERY QUEER TO ME, AS A QUEER WOMAN.

Especially since the next three chapters are all about the guys finally exchanging phone numbers and then spending a lot of their waking hours wondering why the other one won’t call.

Plus, we do get some full-on queer baiting/fan service, when the two high school girls who were hoping to score some adult salaryman action try to get closer to Chen Yuchen and Li Tengyu again, and, when the train breaks suddenly, slam the two men “too close” together.  This ends with a bloody nose from Chen Yuchen, which has its own kind of cultural double-entendre, but in this case is actually cause by a hard skull whacking into a nose.

So, yeah, what to make of where this is going…. I’m not sure.

Let’s Take the Train Together, Shall We? is not, so far as I know, listed as a yaoi, so I can’t be certain things are going to go as they should.  In fact, what I’m suspecting is going to happen next is that now that Li Tengyu’s overly touchy boss is sitting next to him on a the train and is more a little sloshed, having had an afternoon client meeting at the Taiwanese version of an izakaya, there’s going to a Big Misunderstanding between our boys when touchy-feely boss gets a little too physically friendly with Tengyu.

Now, how that’s going to play out will be interesting.  Is there going to be a whole lot of Chen Yuchen avoiding Li Tengyu because “OH SHIT HE’S A HOMO!” or what?

I don’t know, but things could go terribly, terribly wrong from here.

Someone hold me.