This collection of four connected short stories by Fumi Yoshinaga has more in common with Ooku than her yaoi works. For one thing, all of the love relationships demonstrated — and there are several variants included — are either male/female, friendly affection, or familial (parent/child). For another, the setting is a kind of historical fantasy, revolving around a castle and its baron. Two adopted brothers wander out of the desert to become bards for the baron, where they find an […]

Well, that’s quite a switch. It’s as though someone said, “Ok, you’ve established all the characters, with their relationships and believable motivations, in volume one. Now let’s just have them boink a lot.” Seriously, The Moon and the Sandals volume 2, in contrast to the first, has lots of sex. It’s as though the twin points of appeal of yaoi manga were split into two different volumes. The last one got the love, while this one is all about the […]

My exploration of Fumi Yoshinaga’s yaoi and shonen-ai manga titles continues with this stand-alone volume. I didn’t like Solfege as much as I did The Moon and the Sandals because it’s more traditional in structure and characters — older, established gay man educates a much younger guy in the ways of love and sex — and limited in story scope. It’s the story of a junior high music student who gets involved with his teacher. (“Solfege” means learning to read […]

After enjoying the new books by Fumi Yoshinaga, Ooku: The Inner Chambers and All My Darling Daughters, I decided to try some of her earlier works. This Juné manga seemed a good place to start. I knew from the imprint that this would involve boys’ love stories, but it’s not at all explicit, more schoolboy romance than yaoi. The Moon and the Sandals is a series of six short stories about falling in love, each revolving around a different member […]