Menkui!

Menkui is a 3 volume BL manga by Suzuki Tanaka and published by BLU.

Menkui is the story of a boy named Kotori and and his troubles he has with his new found love Akaiwa. Kotori has an older brother who is deemed a beautiful legend who graduated from the school, so when he sees Akaiwa standing outside of his house, he thinks that he is just there to see his brother. The two end up talking, and right away, their relationship begins.

Throughout volume one, we dive right into the BL relationship of the manga, and that definitely serves as a plus right away to pull in the interest of the reader. Also, the characters from the start have a certain appeal. We have Akaiwa, the rather stoic pretty blonde seme type, and then we have Kotori, the plain-looking "always falls for a pretty face" uke type. The two together are an instant adorable pair. One of the themes explored throughout the manga also is being "superficial," which is what "menkui" means, and what Kotori is accused of being through the whole story. Between that and Akaiwa's extreme jealous nature, we get some pretty tough to handle moments.

Another thing that makes this manga a nice read is the bonus chapters that explore some of the more subtle relationships between other characters, and I must say that those stories are real treasures in the Menkui story.

Volume one starts off normally, but what made this manga lose some grade is how it takes a turn in volumes 2 and 3. Personally I didn't enjoy the "out of nowhere" sci-fi/fantasy elements, what with a mirror world and other dimension thing. It really seemed out of place, considering the first volume was really charming and in my opinion, the story would have been a lot better if it had stayed down to earth a bit more and continued to develop relationships in a more normal way. I'm not saying that sci-fi and fantasy elements are bad, it just didn't work in this particular manga, and really made it hard to enjoy... especially with the note that it ends on, it left something to be desired.

The artwork is pretty good, and I quite enjoyed the style of it all. The boys all looked really adorable. It's a bit simplistic but it does work well. I found also in volume 3 that a few speech bubbles got cut off but nothing too big, which is a good thing.

There are also a few bonus short manga stories at the end of the volumes that are quite enjoyable as well, especially the ones in volume 1.

Overall, this manga was enjoyable at first, and there was some sweet moments in between but it definitely lost its charm with the out of place elements. I'd still recommend it to fans who are looking to collecting a short series of sugar though.