Review: THE TYRANT FALLS IN LOVE

As always, BL doesn't want for bad romances and today I think it's finally time to discuss what might just be the guiltiest pleasure sitting on my shelves.

THE TYRANT FALLS IN LOVE (Koisuru Bokun), by Hinako Takanaga.  First published in 2004 and first published in North America in 2010.

PLOT:

For the last five years, Morinaga has been pining for his lab partner and fellow graduate student, the extremely tempermental, homophobic, and generally grumpy Souchi.  This emotional stalemate might have lasted forever, if not for Tatsumi going on an angry drunken bender and accidentally drinking an aphrodisiac forced upon Morinaga by a friend.

Morinaga takes full advantage of the situation, but afterwards Souchi's seemingly back to his old self.  But what will he do when Morinaga tries to quit school and slink away in shame?

Review: CROWN OF LOVE

Just because a romance is bad (in the sense of it being unhealthy for the participants) doesn't necessarily mean that a manga portraying has to be bad as well.  This series is a good example of that from a mangaka who seems to specialize in these sorts of complicated relationships.

CROWN OF LOVE (Renai Crown), by Yun Kouga.  First published in 1998 and first published in North America in 2010.

PLOT:

Hisayoshi Tajima seems to have it all.  He's a talented music student at Hakuo High School, beloved by all the girls in class, and well on his way towards taking up a respectable classical music career like his father.  No one seems to have any notion of just how indifferent Hisayoshi has become to it all.  His world comes into focus after a chance encounter on a train with Rima Fujio, a lovely teen idol.  Tajima swiftly falls for her, so much so that he's willing to work with Rima's former manager to become an idol singer himself just to get close to her again, something that his manager may want for his own reasons.

Review: GOU-DERE SORA NAGIHARA

After a bit of a birthday break, I'm back to run through yet another month of bad manga romances!  I'm starting with a doozy of a book, straight from the creator of Heaven's Lost Property and "would have been this season's whipping-boy if not for Interspecies Reviewers" Plunderer!

GOU-DERE SORA NAGIHARA (Go Dere Bishojo Sora Nagihara), by Suu Minazuki.  First published in 2008, and first published in North America in 2014.

PLOT:

Shouta Yamakawa is no good at getting girls, so he mostly sticks to 2D girls.  His favorite is Sora Nagihara, the perpetually sweet, sickly, kitty-eared heroine of of his favorite manga Tama X Kiss.  Imagine his surprise when one day, Tama pops right out of the latest issue acting nothing like the demure heroine of his dreams. Brash and perverted, Sora is convinced that Shouta should be king of the world.  Thus she sets out to turn the girls of the school into Shouta's harem by any means necessary.