Puberty is a time when a lot of people (be they real or fictional) explore their gender presentation. This particular manga is not the best representation of it, though.
YUBISAKI MILK TEA (Yubisaki Miruku Ti), by Tomochaka Miyano. First published in 2002 and first published in North America in 2006.
PLOT:
Yoshinori isn't entirely sure what to do. First, his childhood friend Hikari starting acting weirdly around him. Then he finds himself drawn to his brainy classmate Kurokawa. When Kurokawa starts tutoring him, jealousies flare and Yoshinari has to come to terms with himself, his friends, and his fondness for cross-dressing even as growing up makes all of these things more complicated.
STORY:
I was initially drawn to Yubisaki Milk Tea because of the fact that is a straight seinen romance about a guy who cross-dresses. That's an unusual angle for a manga that ran in the same magazine as Berserk and Detroit Metal City, and if handled well could be really interesting and progressive for its time. Unfortunately the cross-dressing mostly takes a back seat to the love triangle in this first volume, and all that love triangle proves is that Yoshinori is just the worst.
I'm not a fan of love triangles in general and god knows that Yubisaki Milk Tea isn't making a good case for its own version. You've got Hikari, whose childish looks and sexualized teasing bely her growing feelings for Yoshinari. Then there's Kurokawa, whom Yoshinori has the hots for (and she in turn feels the same for inexplicable reasons). Meanwhile, Yoshinori most of this volume giving these girls nothing but mixed messages. He chides Hikari to act her age and insists on dressing her like a little girl, but he has no problem with peeking inside her panties while she sleeps or stealing a glance at her budding boobs. He's happy to pin Kurokawa to a wall and steal a kiss from her, but then rejects her romantic confession immediately afterwards. It all settles into a stalemate as Kurokawa cries over not being as cute as Hikari, Hikari and all of the reader's sympathies are supposed to be with poor, indecisive Yoshinori.
Frankly, Yoshinori got a lot of sexual hang-ups when it comes to girls and sex. Part of his conflict with Hikari is that he seems to fetishize her purity and innocence. Meanwhile he's all too happy to slut-shame his older sister, who seemingly exists only to sexually tease him and strut around their house naked. Funny enough, the entire reason Yoshinori got into cross-dressing was because of her, as she had to bail on a modelling job and he could pass well enough as a girl to be useful. One might think his continued pursuit of it might be a way for him to grapple with his gender identity or even his relationship towards women and femininity at large. Instead, he (and the mangaka) treat it more like a kinky hobby where the thrill comes from passing as a girl in public for as long as puberty allows him to do so.
Maybe I could give the messiness of this manga's story a pass if Tomochaka Miyori was willing to acknowledge the inherent queerness of Yoshinori's hobby and explore it a little. Maybe I could care about the romantic drama if any girl in this series was allowed to exist outside of Yoshinori's orbit or if he suffered any consequences for his shitty actions. As it is, Yubisaki Milk Tea is mostly about making excuses for one shitty teen.
ART:
God knows the artwork doesn't do this manga any favors. There's a fair bit of fanservice in this book, and it gets particularly creepy whenever it focuses on Hikari. That being said, the thing he fetishizes most are legs. Yoshinori and others can't help but comment on girls' legs throughout this book: how beautiful they are, how they shouldn't scrape them up, even kissing them reverently.
The sad thing is that Miyori can't draw clothing to save his life, which is far more distracting than the fanservice. Every dress, skirt, and shirt hangs on the characters like a worn paper sack, baggy and full of wrinkles. Yoshinori's clothes are handled slightly better, but only slightly. His character designs aren't much better, as they are too are awkwardly angular and stiff which only serves to further undermine all of the attempts at fanservice.
RATING:
This series was published by Tokyopop. This manga is complete in Japan with 10 volumes available. 9 volumes were released and all are out of print.
No comments:
Post a Comment