la Esperança

French schoolboys in a religious boarding school, harboring dark secrets that are drawn out by the growing attraction between them -- on the surface, la Esperança sounds like a sure hit. There is something classic about the boarding school setting with religious overtones, bringing to mind the shounen-ai classic Kaze to Ki no Uta, promising the kind of delicate, heart-wrenching angst and yearning young love that made that title so irresistable. Unfortunately, la Esperança fails to capture any real emotion, and never quite gives the reader enough to truly captivate.

The story's main character is Georges, a sweet, friendly schoolboy of 14 years, who is friends with everyone in his class and even beloved by his teachers. He is kind to everyone because, as he tells himself, he couldn't like himself any other way. However, when dark-haired troublemaker Robert joins Georges' class, he starts to provoke Georges, trying to draw him into conflict in an effort to make Georges be honest with himself. Georges and Robert both have some kind of dark secret in their pasts, but only the vaguest hints are given. However, through those hints, their "dark secrets" seem to be the same old evil parent/lost sibling drama that inhabits so many yaoi manga.

The plot progresses through the first volume with different conflicts and troubles which force Robert to save Georges against his better judgement, tossing the two characters together over and over. The situations quickly become predictable, and the religious metaphors are tired instead of being meaningful and beautiful.

It doesn't help the weak plot that many of the schoolboy characters are virtually indistinguishable from each other. Frederic, a secondary character who appears on the scene shortly, resembles Georges enough that when they appear together, you can only tell them apart because Frederic's lines actually contain exclamation points. Another classmate, Henri, defends Georges to Robert, and with similar faces and hairstyles these two potential seme boys become impossible to tell apart.

Robert and Georges are clearly the main pairing of the story, but very little happens between them aside from the same scenes of provocation and angst played out over and over. Their attraction isn't clear and is often difficult to understand. Why are these characters drawn to each other? What makes them come together under the most unlikely circumstances? These questions are not really fully answered in the first volume, but it is the first volume that needs to hook the reader into the rest of the series. la Esperança fails to do that, and risks losing readers for the later volumes of what might become a very good story.