Midaresomenishi: A Legend of Samurai Love

When the English license for Midaresomenishi was announced by Be Beautiful at Yaoi-Con 2005, I'm sure I was one of the panel-goers who squealed the loudest. I love everything that the stylish and unique Kazuma Kodaka has ever created, especially the compelling and violently beautiful tale of passion, devotion and dominance that is Midaresomenishi. Delays in publishing and Be Beautiful's long silence during 2006 led to the postponement of this manga until early 2007, but having this manga in English is a delight that was worth the wait.

Be Beautiful's full English title is Midaresomenishi: A Legend of Samurai Love -- and at least on the cover, the "Samurai Love" is heavily emphasized. Let's get one thing straight, however: this is no delicate tale of bushido, with delicate boys and noble samurai tripping over their kimonos to fall in love with each other. Midaresomenishi does contain elements of forbidden love, noble samurai, beautiful boys and revealing kimonos, but each of these comes at the thrilling price of intense violence, bloodshed, kidnapping, imprisonment, enslavement and murder. Much of the story and its characters are rough, flawed, scarred and bloodstained, but these torn edges only make the moments of true beauty that much more precious, like diamonds found amongst piles of coal.

The central character of this legend is Shirou, a red-haired swordsman whose lust for blood and violence leads him to be disowned by his family. The only person in the world that Shirou cares for is his adorable younger brother, Fujimaru. After Shirou has been turned out of his family's house, Fujimaru chases after his younger brother, and by a stroke of bad luck, the brothers are attacked and captured by ruthless bandits. The leader of these bandits, hot-blooded, muscular, scarred and domineering Sougetsu, takes Shirou as his personal sex slave, claiming that his perverse bandit followers will leave Fujimaru unmolested if Shirou would only become his.

Shirou rises through the ranks of bandits, much to the dismay of his new comrades, and continues to have rough sex with Sougetsu in order to keep his brother safe. However, the bandit leader's promise has not been kept, and Fujimaru -- who has grown into a beautiful but frail teenage boy -- is regularly raped by the other bandits. He keeps this a secret from Shirou, and the brothers are the only lights in each others' lives. When Shirou does, inevitably, learn of what's been done to Fujimaru, it is too much for him to bear, and he decides to take his revenge on the entire bandit group and escape with his little brother. Little does he know that Fujimaru has fallen in love with his primary jailer, the hardened but kind Saizou. The love of captor and captive, unspoken for years, stands in sharp contrast to the violent, confrontational and luridly explicit sexual relationship between Sougetsu and Shirou. The story unfolds in directions at once beautiful, tragic and melodramatic, and the reader is swept along on the passionate and often violent tide of Shirou's journey.

Be Beautiful's simple presentation allows the core material, both art and story, to take center stage. Kodaka-sensei's shounen-style art shines the most in the action-packed and passionate scenes that spill over every page of Midaresomenishi. Muscular, rough men fight or fuck on nearly every page, filling the entire manga with the urgency of the edge of a sword's blade. The only exceptions are the fragile and tearful Fujimaru, and the beautiful brothel worker Chihiro, a character appearing later in the manga whose purpose is to echo Fujimaru's beauty. The trembling delicacy and relative weakness of both characters stands out strongly against the tapestry of broad-shouldered killers who make up the rest of the cast. Kodaka-sensei is at the top of her game in this manga, pointing out contrasts and emotions with powerful action sequences and poignant love scenes. The art is almost perfect, and my simple dislike of Fujimaru's character design is just a personal preference.

The Be Beautiful release has very little in the way of extras. Only some brief character profiles and a one-page free talk by Kodaka-sensei accompany the main manga. For a deeply engaging story like Midaresomenishi, though, there is nothing to distract from the content itself. The printing quality also seems nice and clean, at least to the untrained eye like mine. Perhaps best of all, the English translation is strong and straightforward, neither too modern nor too flowery. I really appreciate translations like this that don't use English idioms in a historical Japanese context. This is a simple but well-made publication that lets the story stand for itself.

If you're tired of pretty high school boys angsting at each one another in other English yaoi manga, then the adult melodrama of Midaresomenishi might be for you. Fans of shounen-style fighting stories will definitely find a lot to enjoy, but Midaresomenishi is a good bet for anyone who enjoys a harder, rougher, more edgy yaoi tale.