Love Recipe

From the back cover: Tomonori Ozawa has just landed his dream job at a large publishing firm. The only catch is, he is the new editor of a Boy's Love magazine! With that, comes the responsibility of managing Sakurako Kakyoin, a male yaoi artist who is notorious for missing his deadlines. To become a full-fledged editor, Tomonori-kun has to start from the bottom - checking drafts, editing scripts and lettering. Now if only Kakyoin-sensei would stop sexually harassing him, he could actually get some work done! Dealing with deadlines in the yaoi publishing industry can be quite stressful, especially if you have to put up with a tempermental artist whoe only motivation to get his work done is to role-play his love scenes in bed. Can Ozawa's recipe for love inspire Kakyoin-sensei to meet his deadline?

The summary on the back of the book fairly well sums up the whole story. Ozawa was hired and given the first assignment of making Kakyoin-sensei get his manga done by a tight deadline mainly because, as all the female characters continuously exclaim, he's so 'moe'. On his first assignment, Kakyoin-sensei becomes stuck, a sort of writer's block for the mangaka, and witht he help of his three female assistants he decides to use Ozawa to write the next scene. He changes from a drab, five o'clock shadow, baggy clothes wearing vagabond into a dapper, well dressed and shiny model of a man. He then seduces a naive, barely protesting and confused Ozawa into a bedroom scene while the three female assistants film, take notes, and drool over the boy's 'moe-ness'. Just at the critical point, Kakyoin-sensei's artistic muse is sated and he is able to complete the manga. Over the course of the book, the manga artist has fallen in love with his editor and uses the stories as well as his continuous 'molesting to visualize the scene' to show Ozawa his feelings. Ozawa, however, is oblivious. He can not understand boy's love, is mortified that he has an editor job in the boy's love section, and constantly searches to find that illusive feeling that will define 'moe'. The fact that he maintains a naive, innocent personality despite all the experience he gains throughout the story is probably the actual 'Love Recipe'.

This book is categorized as a comedy. I suppose there are readers who will appreciate the humor in the book and find it quite enjoyable. I was not one of those readers. Rather, I found myself bored with the manga. It even took me several reading sessions over the course of a week to even complete the book; not because it was lengthy and complex, but simply because I had no interest and found it a chore to read. The characters, while drawn well, did not endear themselves to me, and I found I had no real feelings towards them at all. Appearing in at least one panel (if not more) on every page was a chibi version of Ozawa with long rabbit ears and a tail, usually in the process of losing his soul (as represented by a ghost leaving out of his body), weeping and frightened, or exploding with embarassment. It lent a cute aspect to the story that some might find appealing.

Juné's presentation is done well. The manga is bigger than many other publishers, a seeming trademark of Juné that my eyes personally appreciate. It lends for borders such that one does not have to break the book binding just to read the bubbles that reside toward the inner margin. It is an aspect of Juné's books that I wish some of the other BL publishers would mimic. There is also a dust jacket, though sadly no interior color pages.

Overall, I was not impressed with this title. It's books like these that make me long for sample pages at the publisher's website.