A King's Lesson

It's a typical story. Uke meets seme. Uke falls hard for seme. Seme doesn't understand uke's feelings. Seme forces himself on uke for no apparent reason. Uke's best friend threatens seme. Seme apologizes, and has magical healing sex with uke for a similarly unclear reason. It's a tale as old as time, at least in the world of yaoi manga, and it's also the entire plot of A King's Lesson by Aoi Futaba and Kurenai Mitsuba. The manga duo that brought us the delightfully smutty Level C now presents a much less smutty, and unfortunately far less delightful, tale of boarding school boys in love.

The plot is as I've already described, and doesn't get much deeper than that. Sui is a new, perky, earnest student at his boarding school, who predictably suffers from low self-esteem, especially when compared to his dorm leader, Daiki, who is not only so brilliant that professors consult him for advice, but is also an Olympic-level athlete and drop-dead gorgeous to boot. For all these reasons, he's known as "King" on campus, which leads to the book's title. Sui also has a best friend, Sou, who obviously has a crush on little Sui. Of course, Sui can't see it, because his great big uke-doe-eyes are focused solely on Daiki... who rarely pays any attention to him, talks down to him, and insults him whenever they're together. Sweet, cheerful, hardworking Sou barely gets any attention, but he's there to prod Daiki into considering his own feelings for Sui. For no real reason, about midway through the book, Daiki gets Sui alone and forces him into sex, which leads to even more tearful angsty drama and confrontations.

A King's Lesson is chock full of tired yaoi stereotypes: a cold, emotionless seme, an earnest young tearful uke, a rape scene, and the healing power of sex that brings the young lovers together in the end. For a manga originally released in 2004 in Japan, you would hope the creators might have gotten past these tired stereotypes. Sure, Level C was full of clichéd stereotypes as well, but at least it had a positive relationship between the main characters, and a whole lot of imaginative sex scenes to make up for the trite plot. A King's Lesson doesn't have any of that; even the very few sex scenes are short, sketchy and unoriginal.

One thing the book does have going for it is Aoi Futaba's sweet and strong artwork. Each character, even the background and side characters, are well-defined and have their own individual looks. Sui is incredibly adorable even if he is a tearful wimp, and his sweet little smiles and earnest eyes truly reinforce his character. Cuteness seems to be what Futaba-sensei does best, but her chilly seme Daiki is beautiful in his own right. It's too bad that the prettiest and most realistic character, Sou, is relegated to the best friend role and doesn't get to play a strong part in the story.

Kitty Media's publication of A King's Lesson just reinforces the average nature of the book. The cover artwork is bright and colorful, and the presentation is straightforward: plain pages, simple translation, average paper quality and printing clarity. A couple of the pages have artwork or dialogue bubbles cut off, but that too is par for the course with this publisher. At least they don't make you break the binding to get at the artwork close to the spine.

Perhaps this volume was licensed to cash in on the name recognition of the creators of Level C, but A King's Lesson holds very little of the ridiculous plotlessness and rampant smut that makes it easier to look past Level C's faults. A King's Lesson is, sadly, quite dull and nothing special, unless you're a real sucker for yaoi schoolboy tropes.