Gravitation

When someone first gets interested in BL, one of the first things people always recommend is Gravitation - it's considered an easy, fun way to get used to the idea of guys making out. So Gravitation was one of the first things I tried, too, starting with the manga.

Gravitation is a story about a young budding rock star Shuichi Shindou who one evening meets mysterious writer Eiri Yuki -- Eiri berates the lyrics Shuichi is writing and Shuichi immediately falls in love. The series tells a story about Shuichi rocketing career and his stormy relationship with the moody Eiri.

Personally I don't understand why this series is so popular. I find especially Shuichi extremely annoying -- his behavior most of the time is like a typical 5-year old's. The setting is mildly interesting: passive blonde seme (Eiri) and the aggressive black-haired uke (Shuichi) is not something that you see too often, but let's face it, that alone is not enough to save the story. I don't mind Eiri that much -- he's pretty handsome, broody and tragic in just the right way, only this way his contrast to Shuichi is even bigger.

Maki Murakami's art is smudgy, confusing and ugly. Eiri is the only distinct looking male character -- all other blondes look the same, as do all the black-haired ones (I kept confusing especially Shuichi and his friend Hiro). I especially hate the way Shuichi turns into a 2-foot chibi and climbs all over Eiri when he gets excited, the bulging eyes and how he overreacts to absolutely everything. And just when you're hoping for a sensitive touching moment between the lovers -- like when Eiri cries for the first time in front of Shuichi -- he goes completely nuts and has a tantrum completely spoiling the mood. It's not even that I have something against slapstick -- I'm all for good humored fun BL, but this is just too much. And please, this must be one the most cliched piece of writing I've seen in a long time -- I'm not going to go in to examples in case it'll spoil someone else's fun, but pretty much everything from the "tragic romance 101" seems to be covered from the dangerous mysterious past of certain characters to tragic accidents.

What bothers me the most though is how serious issue like rape is taken so lightly. For example Eiri and Shuichi's first time is practically a rape -- the boy is clearly not ready for it, but out of fear of angering the older man goes along with Eiri. Eiri shrugs it off later on with "I know you were whining about it hurting at first but you never told me to stop" whereas Shuichi has been asking Eiri to be more gentle and repeatedly told him how scared he was. But at least Eiri has some feelings towards Shindou and their encounter turns into a relationship. The most disturbing event though must be when Shindou gets gang-raped: he's hurt so much he can't walk and asks for Hiro's help, but then the next morning he's OK, both physically and mentally, and doesn't really visit the events later on. Rape is of course fairly standard BL stuff, but rarely is it this blatantly disregarded.

I tried, I really tried. I wanted to love this series -- after five volumes of manga I even watched the anime to try to see if it would make more sense or if it would make me like the characters more... and I'm sorry to say it didn't. I won't be buying any more Gravitation and will be selling the manga I already bought. And I most certainly won't be recommending it to anyone.