FAKE

"Meet Ryo and Dee, two New York City cops with an attraction for action- and each other!" That's what the back of the manga released by Tokyopop says and that's exactly why it took me years to finally pull it off a store shelf and give it a shot. Cop stories to me have never been interesting. If I wanted some sweet shonen ai I could find it without the cops and robbers high jinks and being an American, reading a manga that takes place in my own country was off-putting as well.

Misconception #1: Cops and Robbers high jinks
This is very much a character driven manga that just happens to take place in the police field. Dee and Ryo aren't patrol officers who cruse the streets and sidewalks but detectives who have in-depth cases that involve the characters themselves in one way or another. The cases are used in such a way as to delve more deeply into the characters pasts and personalities. Not just the two main characters Ryo and Dee, you get to see into the pasts of those they are close to and work with as well giving this manga a lot of humanity.

So as I said, I took the first volume of FAKE home and read it. The art was different from a lot of the mangas I had collected thus far. The faces were much wider with long thin noses and not the obscenely pretty faces I was used to. It is defiantly a style that grows on you as you continue through the book and meet the characters. Dee is charismatic and quite fun loving while Ryo is more conscientious and serious about his job. This would be considered your standard work partner pairing as well as your staple shonen ai passionate seme/hesitant uke but Ryo is no damsel in distress and Dee shows a great deal of strong emotion completely unrelated to his libido.

Enter Bikky: the obligatory child/elderly/pet/sibling stand in character for comic relief.

Misconception #2: Bikky as a useless lump of a character
Bikky is a little punkish boy we find in the very first chapter of FAKE who sticks around for the ride. At first I cringed, feeling that this would only ruin the delightful build up of romantic tension between Ryo and Dee that had sparked from the get go. But to my pleasant surprise, I liked Bikky. I liked the way the older characters related to him. He didn't take away from them but added to and enriched the setting of the love story.

By the end of book one I was completely drawn in. How would these two get together? There was obviously so much there between them but only one of them was willing to admit to it. I bought the rest of the series by the end of the week just to have the question answered and it takes all seven volumes to get the answer you're holding your breath for. But boy is it worth it! Want angst and suspense? The whole series is riveting. Whether you're into the hardcore sex of a yaoi manga or a sweet and angsty shonen ai romance, by the seventh volume you will be completely satisfied with the erotic climax.

And as if Ryo and Dee weren't cute enough, Sanami Matoh includes an extra chapter in the back of most of the volumes that jumps chronologically through Bikky's life as he grows up. Even if you're tired of heterosexual stories, these stories will make you smile.

This is one of my favorite yaoi/shonen ai mangas and if you've ever walked past it while looking for those other lovely titles in the genre, take a step back and flip through it. Sure it's a story about two police detectives in New York City but at it's core, it's a story about letting go and being true to yourself.