I just finished volumes 1 & 2 of Sasaki & Miyano by Shou Harusana. These are short little mangas about a high school boy who’s obsessed with BL and his growing relationship with an older classmate. The story is playful and fun, but I thought Vol. 1 was a little too disjointed. The series began as a webcomic posted to Twitter, I think, and so the first volume reads as little vignettes but they’re not chronological so it can be a little confusing to try and keep up.

The story is meant to play on some of the BL tropes: the younger and smaller and shyer Miyano thinks he would be a top and his big scary love interest is a total himbo. But for me, it didn’t play on enough of the tropes and ended up just falling into them. It’s also a little weird to read in English where they translated to “top” and “bottom” and those terms are used a lot rather that “seme” and “uke” which are character tropes and don’t really have to do with sexual positions but I guess it’s hard to translate.

Overall, it’s fun and cute and my favorite moments are the ones that are surprising and funny: Miyano gives Sasaki a chocolate for white day and he almost passes out he’s so flustered.
And this line:
“I just really think bottoms are manly!”

One guys girlfriend reads gay monsterfucking and he had an existential crisis because he “couldn’t compete sexually with slime” and it was funny!


Vol. 1: I give 2/5 stars for being too disjointed
Vol 2: 3/5 for some lighthearted BL fun!