The Man Who Doesn't Take Off His Clothes

The Man Who Doesn't Take Off His Clothes is a story about easy-going Kaitani and his mean, but very good-looking boss Fujiwara. Kaitani usually being quite uninterested in his work got excited about a new product his firm is going to launch. He rakes his brain how to convince his boss that product and design are going to sell well and he comes up with the idea of blackmailing him by threatening to email compromising photographs to all the co-workers.

Everything goes according to plan until a friend of his comes by Kaitani's apartment and sees Fujiwara lying on the floor - in full bondage. He assumes they're fooling around. Kaitani can't deny it because he can't tell that he is blackmailing his boss, so when this friend invites him to go out for a drink Kaitani learns that his friend is gay and finds himself in a gay bar being hit on by the bar's owner. As Kaitani tries to fight off the advances he gets himself deeper and deeper into a made up story about his relationship with Fujiwara and ends up having to blackmail Fujiwara to go to a gay party, where Fujiwara is being given an aphrodisiac and both are getting locked up in a room together. Can anyone imagine where it goes from here?

Let me start commenting on the art: there are three drawings in black and white included in this title - they seemed to me a little too foggy with a lot of shadows. On the cover we see a coloured picture of Fujiwara with his shirt open, but not off. When I read this novel I imagined him a little older.

The dialog I found difficult to read because it is strongly indented. There were a lot of typos like "souls of his feet," which was quite disturbing and made me assume that the text wasn't proof-read properly. The all in all impression of the production of this title is: cheap.

The story is outrageous. I wasn't able to work up sympathy for any of the two main characters really. Can someone be so naive as to think blackmailing was okay if the purpose is right? And can someone be so vain to be blackmailed with photographs showing that he is "missing one of a pair" as the author put it? I'm not the one to compare a manga to reality, but a novel is not a manga. I bought this novel by mistake, thinking it was a manga - oh well, I thought, what the hell? I wanted to give it a try, but it didn't convince me - at all.

After admitting this I have to give this title the benefit of the doubt, but to me it was definitely not enjoyable.