First of all, i'd like to share that I HATE nineties manga art. The faces, the hair, the clothes, the abnormally long legs, all of it. And so when I started this, I was already prepared to endure it, and was expecting to quit after a few chapters.
But the story was actually good enough to pull me in until the end. And as a bonus, the art actually gets better, until it barely even bothered me anymore! Big big plus: there are even really cute drawings of the couple takashi and hiroya ^^
I came to absolutely love the story. It's the first yaoi I read where being gay was actually a discussed problem. Not just thinking "but we're both guys" and then they have lots of sex anyway. No, it was well-developed in here. And I really liked the bit about aids. I was still a toddler during the nineties, so I'm not sure about this, but I felt it reflected well the situation on gays at that time.
I also loved teh fact it was that long! It was not dragged or boring. I wouldn't mind reading even more of it. And because in longer series, the story has much more time to develop, it feels more genuine than the 1-volume stories.
I have one bad point though: what the hell kind of a skiing trip was that at the end? Someone falls down, loses conscousness for five minutes and oooops, there goes his memory of the entire love affair? Puhleaaaase!
And ten pages later, he wakes up, falls down a flight of stairs and....tada, re everything?
oh god, that was such a blooper after all the good chapters that preceded it. Amnesia never ever works. I very rarely find any books or films or series where amnesia doesn't completely ruin the story. It's so fake!
But anyway, except that little slip-up, it was actually better than I'd expected, and one of the better ones I read. I really like how masaki is so completely in love and very protective of fujimoto. And fujimoto who looks very weak and fragile, can actually kick some ass if he wants to. He stood up for himself at school when he changed his image, and even knocked out a teacher. (not on purpose though 😛 )
Absolutely worth the read I say!
