Review: KIREPAPA

 Well, it's time to dig once more into my inordinately large pile of bad BL and fish out another example to take to task, and this one even manages to tie into the fact that I'm posting this on Father's Day.

KIREPAPA, by Ryo Tanagi.  First published in 2003 and first published in North America in 2009.

PLOT:

Chisato is a single father who is beyond overprotective.  He fears that every boy that comes into the life of his innocent, waifish son Riju will try to assault him, so Chisato routinely scares away his son's classmates with harsh words and the occasional laxative-spiked snack.  The only boy he hasn't been able to detour is Shunsuke.  Things only get worse when he discovers that this annoying teen boy also moonlights as a novelist, one that Chisato has admired for years.  Can Chisato come to terms with this revelation and his own changing feelings for Shunsuke?

STORY:

When I first read this, I feared it would take a turn for the incestuous.  Mercifully, it did not go that far but that doesn't make Kirepapa any better.  It's still a very annoying, forced romance with an extremely problematic premise.

It's a bold strategy to center your BL story on someone who is kind of a wreck.  Chisato is neurotic, paranoid, clearly has a lot of internalized homophobia, and has serious temper issues.  At time he verges upon psychopathy.  You would think that because of this it would make me happy to see Shunsuke flout and fluster Chisato at every turn, but it's not that simple.  Shunsuke is the seme to Chisato's uke, which means that he's dickish and aloof at most times and pouty and resentful whenever he actually has to emote.  These two have plenty of tension, but none of it is romantic and it undermines the entire plot.

The twist about Shunsuke is bizarre and forced, as it requires the reader to accept that somehow Shunsuke has been a celebrated novelist since he was in junior high.  This in turn makes Chisato's turn of heart all the more inexplicable.  Let's not even get into the fact that Chisato's rape complex comes from the fact that Shunsuke's father assaulted Chisato when he was a teen, and that this is meant to justify Shunsuke's pursuit of a man who is practically twice his age.  There's no build-up to any of this - it's just Tanagi pulling anything she can out of her butt to bring this deeply flawed and wholly unsympathetic story to an end.

ART:

Tanagi's art is all too typical of 2000s-era BL.  It's full of boring bishies permanently stuck with expressions of dull surprise.  The most anyone can manage is a bit of a blush and that little forehead "X" that is used as a visual shorthand for anger in anime.  While their bodies are gangly and awkward, they're not so badly drawn that it falls into the uncanny valley of Yaoi Hands.  Tanagi clearly has no skill or interest in drawing backgrounds, so the panels remain uncomfortably close to these homunculi.  She's no better at smut, as all the sexy scenes are laid out in a way that makes them super vague and focused almost entirely on faces.  

RATING:

The only thing Kirepapa has going for it is an outrageous premise, and even that is probably a bridge too far for most BL fans.  The characters are annoying, the plot is stupid, and the art is thoroughly mediocre.  It was rightfully forgotten in its time and deserves to stay that way.

This series was published by Aurora Publishing.  It is complete in Japan with 4 volumes available.  1 volume was published and is currently out of print.