Comics / Manga / Yaoi Manga

Reversible: Volume 1 (Yaoi Anthology)

By Leroy Douresseaux
March 16, 2010 - 10:44

Reversible Volume 1 cover image is courtesy of Anime Castle Books

Rated “16+ for Young Adult”

Reversible is a boys’ love and yaoi manga series featuring manga (comics) from doujinshi (self-published and sometimes amateur) manga creators.  Reversible, Vol. 1 contains 11 short stories from a varied group of creators, some of them making their U.S. debut.

All the stories share a common theme – that of the aggressor and the submissive, which boys’ love readers will recognize as the seme (the boy on top) and his uke (the bottom).  The stories in Reversible flip that, and sometimes the boy who is supposed to be the bottom (the smaller one, the effeminate one, the bishounen one, an angel…) ends up being the aggressor or at least the initiator of romance and sometimes sex.

By far the best of the lot is the opening story, “Tell Me You Like Me” by Saki Takara.  It’s the tale of Nakahara, an office worker who is in love with his stern supervisor, Chouno.  The story has wonderful dramatic intensity and conflict because the “happy ending” is in doubt until the end of the story.  In “Catch,” the younger guy, Mochizuki, is the one who puts the movies on the older, but clueless, Tsuruta.  Some of the stories are a little shallow (Goroh’s “Perfect Age”).  The prettiest art is in “Happiness, Fun, Kindness” by Midori Noshiogi, the story of a human who seduces an angel visiting this world for the first time.

Anthologies (from television series to books) have been described as difficult to sell precisely because they offer too many smaller pieces instead of one larger piece by the same creator(s) or instead of focusing on one narrative.  Reversible is one of those anthologies that is like a box chocolates; you never know what you will get, but if you like chocolate, you are bound to find several piece that you like.  Reversible will make you want another box of this boys’ love chocolate.

A-

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Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12