Your Honest Deceit

Young Kuze works in a law office and is secretly in love with one of the senior partners, Yoshimasa Kitahara. When one night after a successful case Kitahara invites Kuze out to celebrate, he can't help himself but to confess his love to the older man. Pretty standard BL plot, but there are couple of things that make Your Honest Deceit stand out.

Firstly, although Kuze is the younger party, he's not a boy (though he looks like one) - he's 29, and Kitahara is 42. I can't remember if I've ever read another BL manga with such old characters, and it's refreshing not having to read about teenage angst for a change. Kuze at times displays some youthful, eh, excitement -- but Kitahara is a great balancing force. Also somewhat out of ordinary, the younger uke Kuze is the instigating party and the driving force in the relationship. I like both of the characters -- they are nice, likable people: Kuze is sincere and so much in love, and Kitahara is inexperienced but eager. Ajimine's art is simple but effective, and I really like the way she uses chibi characters, they give the story lot of humor it needs.

Your Honest Deceit takes little over half of the book, with the second part being two related stories called Honey Bunny and Cutie Bunny about another sensei-student relationship (lawyers, like Kitahara, have the honorific "sensei" in Japan). This time it's about two young men, Konno and Yuu, the former being the latter's former teacher, and their budding relationship. Although their relationship has already been established, they have some jealousy issues that need to be sorted out -- it's all very cute and tame (there is no sex in these two stories). Both main characters and side characters are again very likable and you get a feeling that they are well established characters with backgrounds which makes them unusually multi-dimensional. And characters are what Ajimine seems to be best at, and the second story keeps you reading because of that, even with the lack of steamy scenes.

So objectively I'll give Your Honest Deceit a straight B without any hesitation -- but subjectively it gets an F. I think it's because of the age of the characters and Kitahara's fatherly demeanour that Kitahara reminds me of my dad, and that makes this manga almost unreadable for me. I mean, the last thing you want to think about is your dad when you're reading BL, and I was at first disturbed that it made me feel uneasy -- and once I made the connection I couldn't get the thought out of my head. It's well done lovely BL manga, but I'll be giving it to my best friend, and the sooner the better.