Ciao everybody!After the introduction with the first instalment of the BL for Dummies Guide, let's finally kick off the first 'proper' article of the Lab introducing my favorite Boys Love author and, following, I will talk about one of the hip & hot, or up & coming, or veteran & evergreen but in any case unique & special or representative & interesting authors I had the pleasure to study during my Boys Love research. Very passionate research! Yes!
But anyway, bando alle ciance, 'nuff of chitchat! Let's rock'n'roll!
SIMONA'S BL RESEARCH LAB
Special, unique, interesting Boys Love authors.
SAKAE KUSAMA
BL's Mondrian
Professional manga debut: 2003
Manga titles so far: 5
Dojinshi activity: yes
Dojinshi circle name: soft_machine
Sakae Kusama has a very distinctive and unique drawing style that reminds me of certain European comics of the seventies, especially regarding the page layout; we got accustomed to very "free" layouts since the shojo manga of the 70s, with oblique, even triangular panels, and nowadays a neat layout full of nice (?) squares like the classic comic books looks almost boring, so Sakae Kusama reintroduces the square look with a twist: her layouts are like Mondrian's paintings: there are no white gaps around the squares and rectangles (if there are, their presence indicates a gap of time in the story) and the panels are separated only by thick black lines. Also, the drawing style almost gives the impression of a sketch, especially in the early days, making her manga really stand out from the classic "bikei" [美形 beautiful men] manga that we are accustomed to. Her uke don't have big puppy dog eyes nor look like pretty girls, and the stories are pretty realistic, but always permeated by a fantastic sense of wonder; it is like living in the real world as if it were a different dimension that we do not know and wonder at.
Her
strength is in the choice of characters, who are always quirky and a
bit tormented, and also the stories she creates are very fresh and
interesting; after reading a certain amount of boys love manga, one
starts individuating, and getting a bit bored with, the clichés, deus ex
machina, and narrative mechanisms of "classic" BL, but Sakae Kusama for
some reason manages to free herself of any genre chains and delivers
new emotions every time, even with the classic, used "childhood friend"
or "professor and student" clichés.Irome, her monographic published in 2008 by Shinshokan, is very unusually (for Sakae) set in a high school and it is a collection of stories, interwound in places, that depict the liaisons between some students, ex students and some professors, with her usual quirky realism, and... of course, the ever-present megane!!
As you might know, megane [眼鏡 literally "glasses", indicates also a person who wears them] are a big hit in Japan; we have the meganekko fetish [眼鏡っ子 girl with glasses], the kichiku megane fetish [鬼畜眼鏡 evil guy with glasses, generally an appreciated main dish in those BL manga with a bit, or a lot, of SM. It is even the title of a videogame], the inteli megane fetish [インテリ眼鏡 intellectual guy], etc etc. Sakae Kusama draws a lot of different and interesting characters, of all ages, but in my personal opinion, she is the High Priestess of the Megane Oyaji* Uke Cult! (if any... :D)
* [親父 lit: "father", means "middle aged man" but in manga world it can be referred to someone who is as young as 30 or about].
Her trademark is in fact the older uke, generally spectacled and a bit clueless but good-natured. Yagisan Yubin [A letter from Mr Goat
reference to a children's song about a letter sent by Mr White Goat to
Mr Black Goat that gets eaten before being read, see manga page above]
started with Tokyo Mangasha (the publisher that revolutioned BL by
introducing hip & cool authors and new depth to the genre)
serialized in the bi-monthly anthology BGM (Boys Guys Men, which turned
into the current Anthology Cab, that unites the Catalog series with BGM)
then moved to Libre's new label Citron and got finally published in
2010 under the title Macchi Uri [The Match Seller (in
Japanese the title sounds similar to The Little Match Girl)] presents
another unusual setting: in last century pre-war Japan, a young and very
tsundere president of a company + a righteous high school student + a
wonderful kichiku megane secretary + a wretched bishonen get entangled
in a love (? erotic?) net because of a love letter that was never sent.
Tokyo Mangasha publishes also her two earliest works Saiki no Tebiki [Hazard Handbook], one of the very few Shota manga in her professional work, and Hatsukoi no Shirei
[First Love's Ghost, see second icon on top and first manga page],
which is my first Sakae's manga and still my favorite (sorry I just
cannot have enough of megane suit oyaji uke!! gyaaaah!!). Her other
works Nikushokuju no Table Manner [Carnivorous Animals' Table Manners, see first icon on top], serialized on Core Magazine's Drap and Yume Miru Seiza [Dreamy
Constellation] on Libre's legendary B-Boy's Comics are probably more
famous, especially the first because of the personality of the main
character, who is a real Mistress from Hell (I am sooo sorry for his
poor boyfriend...) which is quite a novelty in the BL world; while the
latter is much more romantic. Having said that, Sakae Kusama's works can
be pretty erotic and explicit at times, but they never really are
pornographic, at least in my opinion. Then of course, if you don't like
sex scenes I would not suggest you to read them (^o^) but sex is
definitely not the main dish here. In a way, Sakae Kusama goes beyond
the boundaries of BL, playing with the clichés without being outplayed
by them.She started publishing nice and innocent tales on Shogakukan Flower Comics since 2007, a "proper" shojo magazine, proving that she is an all-round author (who happens to like megane suit oyaji uke, but hey nobody's perfect! :D) and can thrill you even telling the story of a cat and a goldfish. Brava Sakae, we want to see more of you!!
From BL Lab Update #1:
In 2009, aside from the Zero-sex Kurofune Zero by Libre which publishes her not-yet yaoi manga in installments that will take a while be compiled in a monographic volume (since Zero comes out twice a year) she has been publishing on Shogakkan's Flowers shojo manga magazine and finally the tankobon is out! Sayonara Caravan is a collection of short stories, some connected, some not, that happen in a small town. We have teenager love stories (non-yaoi), a missing goldfish and a little girl, a mysterious megane watch-repairer and his even weirder talking black cat and a little kid who comes to poke his nose around, plus a 14-pages yaoi-themed manga but totally innocent. Well I guess that innocence is a general theme for this book, and even though it is not really yaoi, I'd recommend it to whoever needs a bit of dreaming in his/her everyday life. Like me!
I also hope that, thanks to Flowers, this author manages to be published abroad because she is a genius.Latest Update:
2010 has been a great year for Sakae with 3 graphic novels published by 3 different publishers, and she's been drawing other episodes of Irome wich are going to be collected in a tankobon in March 2011 and some more one shots on Be-Boy Magazine, Chara and Flowers again. And the best thing about all this is that she has not lost one bit of her magic touch. Great Sakae.
Bibliography:
1. Saiki no Tebiki [災厄のてびき Hazard Handbook]
Shobunkan 2003 (out of print)
New Edition: Tokyo Mangasha 2006
2. Hatsukoi no Shirei [はつこいの死霊 First Love's Ghost]
Tokyo Mangasha 2004
3. Nikushokuju no Table Manner [肉食獣のテーブルマナーCarnivorous Animals' Table Manners]
Core Magazine, 2007
4. Yume Miru Seiza [夢見る星座 Dreamy Constellation]
Libre, 2007
5. Irome [イロメ erotic/sexy eyes/look]
Shinshokan 2008
6. Sayonara Caravan [さよならキャラバン]
Shogakkan 2009 [shojo manga, not BL]
7. Chikatetsu no Inu [地下鉄の犬 The Dog in the Subway]
Core Magazine, 2010
8. Macchi Uri [マッチ売り The Match Vendor]
Libre, 2010
9. Mahiru no Koi [真昼の恋 Love in Broad Daylight/Midday Love/Mahiru's Love]
Shinkosha 2010
Images copyrights:
All © Sakae Kusama and: Core Magazine, Tokyo Mangasha, Shinshokan, Libre, Shinkosha, Shogakkan
