The Judged

The Judged contains three short stories of which the first two share same characters and revolve around the public prosecutor's office and their investigations, and the third one is about two doctors falling in love.

The main story, "The Judged", is about public prosecutor Kyou Sugiura who is investigating a dirty politician Tatsuki Toudou, who to Kyou's horror turns out to be his old childhood friend from the time both of the boys lived in an orphanage. I don't really get these characters or the story -- at first when the men are introduced they hate each other, but then suddenly they love each other and the motivations for the sudden change are really not that well explained. The side-characters, Kyou's sister Mizuho and Tatsuki's secretary (who isn't named until the second story) are in many ways much more interesting and sympathetic, at least I understand what drives them a bit better.

Unfortunately the second story "Spring Haze" isn't much of an improvement: it introduces another public prosecutor, Shinoda, who visits Tatsuki's secretary Hatchiko in the prison. Now Shinoda (for some reason that is never explained) is in love with the insanely jealous Hatchiko and wants him to open up and tell him all his dirty secrets. If you don't count the strange infatuation the prosecutor with a hand puppet fetish has for pretty blond criminals, Hatchiko's story is actually intriguing and moving, and I liked it better than the first story. Honma's style of drawing for the first two stories is detailed and very realistic -- but just as a personal preference it doesn't really appeal to me. Kyou and Tatsuki are manly enough, but characters lack emotion and personality -- especially Tatsuki's face seems to be totally immovable.

It's the last story, "Like a White Phantom", which I like the best. It's a story about two young doctors, Haruka Suzaki and Matsuda, who work in the same hospital. Matsuda is fascinated with the cold and distant Suzaki and ends up finding out Suzaki's secrets and the reason he doesn't want to let anyone close. "Like a White Phantom" is also Honma's earliest work and perhaps that's why her artwork is softer -- while Suzaki seems to be quite typical of Honma's cold blond ukes, I really like the handsome and funny Matsuda with his long hair and expressive face. As the first two stories are dead serious and quite violent, it's the humor that attracts me to this last story (I do have to admit I have a soft spot for funny semes).

The Judged is certainly a change from sickly sweet BL stories with schoolboys -- these are all adult men in these stories with no ambiguity -- but somehow the stories and settings seem almost too adult and serious for my taste. For politics and violence I prefer something like Kizuna, and for dark stories I prefer a series like Jazz.