Lovely Sick

Lovely Sick is an possessive love story between a doctor and a young patient. Ryouichi Sumi is not only crippled Naoyuki Akiyoshi's primary doctor, he is also his lover and his primary guardian, and he wants to make sure Naoyuki is totally dependant on him. The manga is a collection of stories about Naoyuki wanting to break away and be less dependent of Ryouichi, but failing every single time.

Naoyuki starts out as spoiled and childish, and Ryouichi admits smilingly that he's made the boy the way he is -- and he encourages boy's dependency on himself urging him to call every single time there's even a hint of trouble. Ryouichi does everything for Naoyuki: he carries him around, he feeds him, he bathes him and even dresses and undressed the boy like he was a doll -- yet there's nothing else wrong with the boy than his weak legs. So Naoyuki understandably feels uncomfortable with this and tries to be more independent -- he tries to socialize with his school friends and go out, but every time he tries this something awful happens and Ryouichi proves himself right for pampering the boy.

I find this manga somewhat disturbing. I think overpowering semes can be very exciting when done right, but when it comes to domineering in so many ways as Ryouichi is, it starts to become questionable. And then add the fact that Naoyuki is 18 years old (although he looks about 12 which gets uncomfortably close to shota for my taste) but he's been Ryouichi's lover for five years -- you can do the math on how qualified he was for making decisions for himself when the relationship started. Ohmine's art is competent although it does nothing special for me. Ryouichi is pretty handsome and well formed, but Naoyuki looks very young with his glasses and big eyes (he's also a spitting image of Chika in Bisco Hatori's Ouran High School Host Club manga).

This review is based on the first volume of the three volume series, and I think despite all its shortcomings I'll be buying the second volume when it comes out. The end of the first volumes gives reader some hope that Ryouichi might some day be able let Naoyuki off the leash and that the boy might regain his health and his freedom. Although Ryouichi annoys me with his smothering attitude, I ended up liking Naoyuki and I want to see what happens to this odd couple.