Midaresomenishi: A Legend of Samurai Love

Kazuma Kodaka is best known for her romantic BL series Kizuna: Bonds of Love, but if you're looking for more of the same, Midaresomenishi: A Legend of Samurai Love is not a title for you. Forget about slow courting and gentle love-making - if there's one word I would use to describe Midaresomenishi, it would be raw. It's a fantastical (or "fake" as Kodaka herself calls it) samurai story of two brothers: crimson-haired blood-lusting Shirou and young and innocent Fujimaru who get captured by a group of bandits and their evil leader Sougetsu. And Sougetsu, the sadistic and brutal seme of the story, decides to keep Fujimaru as a hostage to get Shirou's cooperation both on the battlefield and in the bedroom.

Now Amazon.com claims that "...this stand-alone melodrama is perfect for first-time yaoi readers..." but I couldn't disagree more. Sex in this manga is explicit and violent: Sougetsu is a sadist who gets pleasure from rape and humiliation, and Shirou gets pleasure from killing people and smelling blood - Fujimaru is the gentle soul of the story but gets horribly abused by Sougetsu's men. Midaresomenishi is intense and bloody, and if these things don't sit well with you I would recommend staying away from this book - a "first-time yaoi reader" would most likely be very put off by it.

But on the other hand if you like these sort of themes, like I do, you will love Midaresomenishi. I love strong ukes, and they don't come much stronger than the angry and violent Shirou. He's big and strong and masculine and has a wonderful six-pack - but then he dwarfs in comparison to Sougetsu. Sougetsu's gigantic and stoic and insatiable, he smokes an opium pipe and has a constant hard-on, and expects absolute loyalty and obedience from everyone - and if he doesn't get it he takes it. Both men are passionate and volatile, and their meetings are always aggressive and sizzling hot.

Yet amidst the power struggles and raping, there's a gentler side to Midaresomenishi too. The baseline story of brotherly love is a sweet one: how Shirou is ready to sell his body and his soul for his younger brother, and Fujimaru is ready to hide his constant abuse to protect his older brother. There is also a gentle love story between Fujimaru and his caretaker Saizou, a delicate romance between the bandit whore and the crippled reject. While these elements shine some light to the otherwise very bleak situation, they also feel slightly out of place for me because of it. It's a difficult transition when you harden yourself to deal with the horrors of the bandit life, then soften up for the sensitive parts - and the next one is bloody and violent again and feels doubly so because of the contrast. This is probably Kodaka's intent, too.

I'm generally not a big fan of Kodaka's art, but Midaresomenishi is best I've seen from her. The men are handsome and well built, with the exception of Fujimaru who first looks like a 10-year old child, and then later like a slender girl with long hair and big eyes. There is a lot of eye candy - I have a particular fondness for men in kimonos and there's plenty of that in here: oh those peeking legs and the exposed chests and shoulders! The release is a standard Be Beautiful book - quality of the paper and print are decent, the translation straightforward without honorifics, sound effects mostly translated and extras sparse (there's one page afterword from Kodaka in the back).

All in all, I quite enjoyed Midaresomenishi but I fully understand it's not for everyone. It's very intense and left me very hot under the collar, but it also left me somewhat disturbed. It's a tragic story with tragic characters and circumstances - and while the ending is very appropriate and I wouldn't wish it any other way, it's not entirely satisfying either. But manga that evokes such emotions doesn't come by every day - this one is a keeper.