Hidebu Takahashi manga I read recently
I'd like to post about other stuff, but this has been the most chaotic month all year and I haven't really been doing much, so that's what I got for now. Even when I don't have time or energy for movies or games, this year I've began the habit of reading a little bit pretty much everyday. It started with manga but now I'm even reading books more frequently, which I really needed to do more but always struggled with for some reason. I know it's all on me, I just happened to make it work somehow now. Kind of. Anyway.
(I was planning on writing about more stuff I read, but I ended up writing a lot about Takahashi so I'll leave it at that.)
Yuki to Matsu and Stigmata
I found out the Pixiv account of BL author Hidebu Takahashi recently, where she has posted some absolutely amazing art of a bunch of stuff. Some gorgeous Gundam pieces, she loves her Black Jack yaoi, and most importantly I found out she's really into tokusatsu, in particular she drawns Kamen Rider V3 BL. Which I think explains a bit about the guys she draws in her manga, as some of them kinda look like the way she draws Hiroshi Miyauchi in those comics. This tangent isn't very relevant, I just want everybody to look at her art.
I read Stigmata, one of her supernatural investigation BL manga. It starts off as a simple procedural starring two cops, the older division chief who's a really experienced investigator, and his partner, a younger, less experienced guy who's less of an ace detective but possesses the power to relive the moment of death of murder victims. The first volume is sort of a case-of-the-week scenario, where Takahashi draws a bunch of blood in surprisingly fun ways. Every chapter has the younger cop generating these ghost wounds that explode pools of blood whenever he uses his powers, and she somehow makes it look really beautiful all the time. That's something that stuck out to me while reading.
The cases themselves are fine. Not particularly thrilling mysteries or emotional payoffs, but it's a decent read, with the notable exception of the last case, a two-parter that has a couple flashes of the protagonist's past as he absorbs the memories of another murder victim. That one is fantastic and really left an impression on me.
That comprises one volume. After that, Stigmata got a new life in a BL magazine and then it becomes gay, which you'd think would make me like it more, but not really. It's not bad by any means, but while you still do get the procedural stuff — it's a big case that gets its whole arc —, the victim this time around is the chief's ex-wife, and you know the whole thing is a build-up to having both protagonists fuck, that's the whole endgame. Somehow a little less interesting to me. I don't know if I care less about the focus on romance (I was the one who chose to read BL, I know) or if I simply don't like the chemistry between the two, but it just didn't land as well as I expected. I don't want to say it's bad by any means, cause I had fun the whole way through, but usually I need something more to really hook me. Maybe if there was a really gripping, interesting mystery, more wild visuals (although the art is all-around excellent), or something of the sort. Last year I'd also read Takahashi's Psychedelia, another supernatural cop series, and I can't say I remember much about it for the same reason. I know it's silly to read BL and say you don't care about romance specifically, but really there's more to it that usually hooks me in these kind of comics.
Yuki to Matsu on the other hand was just fantastic. This one is about a doctor and a former yakuza living together during the Edo period. This is one where the couple really worked for me, and it had some exciting blasts of violence occasionally and plots that hooked me way better than the mysteries in Stigmata (which, again, weren't even bad). It's always character-focused, very dramatic and often very sweet as well. It was very easy caring about the titular characters. There's even some stuff about gender there, dealt in an extremely interesting way that at least feels true to the time. Obviously there have always been different expressions of sexuality and gender throughout history, and this story presents some of those that feel very real and unique.
I guess what makes Stigamata and Yuki to Matsu so different to me is that the latter is, from the get-go, about two guys living together and gradually falling in love with each other. Their relationship evolve and they start to care more about one another, plus there's an interesting backstory, some exciting action sometimes. It doesn't feel like I'm just waiting for the payoff of "they're gonna fuck," like Stigmata's BL magazine phase, which made it easier for me to get involved.
I hope I don't sound too cynical cause I liked both of these series, as I said before, and I think Takahashi is a fantastic artist. But one of the two I liked way more, and that contrast was very fascinating to me. I'm always thinking about what appeals to me in BL because I generally don't go out of my way to read romance, so I can't tell at a glance what interests me or not. It's been interesting when I do occasionally find a BL series that catches my attention.
And well, about those two series in particular, there's also the important factor that the period piece, yakuza stuff from Yuki to Matsu appeals way more to me than the modern cop procedurals of Stigmata, but this is the kind of thing Takahashi has been writing about the most. She's got a third gay cop series being published at the moment, and I can only hope she'll go back to something like Yuki to Matsu one day. She is just extremely good at that kind of thing.