Product Description

Kei is on a quest to find his missing grandfather. He traces him to his last known address, an isolated island, where he enrolls in the local university. In class, he chances to meet Michiru, another boy from his hometown. Though extremely anti-social, Michiru says he's going to help Kei find his grandfather! After this unexpected kindness, Kei finds himself being drawn to Michiru...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #376635 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 200 pages

Customer Reviews

A story about friendship: This is NOT Yaoi, and not even BL
I bought this book as I liked the cover, and I expected it to be Yaoi, or at least "boy's love" story (BL). It's marketed as Yaoi but it's nothing like that. Also, June's rating of "16+" must be a joke: this book is about friendship between two boys (and not boy's love), with absolutely no adult or even romantic content, so can be read by anyone, of any age. At least, I couldn't decipher any romantic content here, no matter how hard I looked, especially in the first / title story.
There are two stories here: "Sea View" and "Thou of the Blossoms". The first one, "Sea View", is more or less readable, and has some plot. I found it OK, and touching in some places. It's a story about two friends: one boy who lives on an island learns about the other from his old architect - teacher (whom he respects a lot), as this teacher is a grandfather of the other boy. Two boys eventually meet, and their touching friendship follows. I can hardly imagine any reader who can see ANY reference to yaoi / BL in the story. Two boys definitely like each other, but nothing in the story implies that they're in love or have any type of romantic feelings towards each other. Or maybe it's just way too subtle for me...
I didn't really like the second story, it hardly has any plot. A young photographer gets permission to take photos of the garden with rare flowers. The garden is owned by a high school kid (who seems to be about 16 -17 years old or so). If it were not for the word "yaoi" on the cover, I bet no one would ever think that the photographer actually likes the kid "in that way". All I see is that he feels sorry for the kid, as the latter had been attacked in his childhood by some reporter who wanted to take photos of that precious garden. Again, just a short story on tender friendship / non-romantic interaction between two people. (Well, there was a very brief, friendly semi-hug in the last panel of the story - the way people hug their friends. Maybe, it's different in Japan...)
My rating of 2.5 - 3 stars is NOT influenced by the fact that I was fooled and this manga is mislabeled as "yaoi". When I bought "The Day I Become Butterfly" by Yumeka Sumomo, it turned out that two stories in that collection are on heterosexual relationship and also have nothing to do with yaoi. Nonetheless, I absolutely loved all stories in that book. Contrary to that, the plot and art in "Sea View" are quite average, nothing memorable here (at least, not to me).