Empty Heart

Empty Heart is a story about a schoolboy's and a teacher's love affair, a love triangle with a third wheel who doesn't even realize being involved. Takami Kajihara is in love with his big brother's friend and his teacher Jun Usami. But Takami is afraid to show his emotions to the older man because he knows Usami is in love with his brother Ryuuta - but when Ryuuta tells him he's going to get married, Takami uses the situation to his advantage and seduces the distraught Usami. But is Usami just seeing Ryuuta's face when he looks at Takami, or can he possibly fall in love with the brother who will actually respond to his feelings?

The characters in Empty Heart are a mix of the conventional older seme/younger uke and refreshing active uke/passive seme set-up. I like Minase's independent ukes -- even though Takami is young and naive, he's also determined, strong-minded and seductive. Usami in turn is a gentle seme without being wimpy, slightly confused about his feelings towards the two brothers, but caring and dependable. Both main characters have qualities that are unfortunately often lacking in stereotypical BL characters, so it's easy to care about what happens to them. Ryuuta as the third wheel is cute and funny and his relationship with his dominating fiancee is delightfully entertaining.

Minase's artwork is as gorgeous as ever: the sex scenes are scorching hot without being explicit, and I think her ukes are just the cutest around. Something that does bother me about the art and the bird-like Takami especially though is that he's pretty much identical to Haru in Minase's later book Lies & Kisses, so much so that when I started reading this book I had to double-check that it wasn't done with the same characters, the likeness is so uncanny. The semes are didn't bother me that much, but if I compare Usami in this book and Tatsuya in Lies & Kisses side by side they too share quite a lot of similarities. Still, the art is so pretty that it's really not a major complaint.

Drama Queen has done a really nice job with the translation -- this is one of those works where keeping the honorifics is absolutely crucial. When at school Takami should address Usami as Usami-sensei but often reverts to his childhood Usa-nii (which is an affectionate big-brotherly nickname that really doesn't translate), and Usami should use the formal Kajihara-kun but sometimes lets go and uses Takami's first name -- the list of the different variations the men use in different situations is long. Although I don't generally like lazy translations (like not translating "oniichan") and Empty Heart does require little bit more knowledge about the whole honorifics system than is explained briefly in the back of the book, it adds so much to the feel of the book and the relationships between the characters that it is definitely right choice not to try to translate these terms here.

Empty Heart really is Boys Love at it's finest: it's engaging, moving, funny and beautiful -- a must buy for every fan.