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▪ | RELEASED BY: | DIGITAL MANGA PUBLISHING | ||
| ▪ | AUTHOR / ART: |
YUGI YAMADA |
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| ▪ | FORMAT: | JAPANESE / BW | |||
| ▪ | PAGES: | 200 | |||
| ▪ | RATING: | M | |||
| ▪ | RELEASE DATE: | 03/25/2008 | |||
| ▪ | REVIEW DATE: | 03/07/2008 | |||
| ▪ | REVIEWED BY: | RACHEL BENTHAM |
A new yaoi by the same mangaka as Picnic and the upcoming Spring Fever, Don’t Blame Me is multi-faceted yaoi drama. It caught my attention right off by starting differently – the manga starts from the end rather than the beginning. Youthful Makoto goes to visit the cousin he always admired, film student Toshi, and is put off by that fact that Toshi seems to have given up his dreams of filmmaking. Toshi’s become a deadbeat! Plus he’s gay! Makoto isn’t as shocked as you might think he would be. They end up in a hospital and Makoto meets the film group his cousin was involved with and then –bam, we’re in the past. Then the story goes to a whole behind the scenes to find out what happened to make the present drama in Toshi’s life. It’s flashback time mega style with Toshi in school and how he trips into the Film Club and who he hooks up with while there.
The yaoi has a nice small group of off the hook characters. Everyone’s fascinated with bad boy Kujirai and Toshi is no exception. But his new buddy, the cute guy with glasses that he’s fond of, Nakamura, is bent out of shape over his interest in Kujirai. But someone else is hung-up on Ku – his half-brother! Big gentle fond of bears guy Takasaki, seems he has a brother complex. Toshi bonds with Nakamura over films, they get closer, but the green-eyed monster goes boo! Nakamura’s riddled with jealousy. Plus there’s more drama in the story with Kujirai and the mess he’s made of his life.
For all the drama, there’s funny stuff when it shows Toshi trying to stay awake during a movie marathon. The expressions on his face are priceless! The illustrations overall is pretty standard stuff, what makes it stand out is the comedy switches it pulls every so often and the quality of the story.
IN SUMMARY:
The drama in this film club has nothing to do with the movies! These guys get the soap opera rolling and run with it in Don’t Blame Me.