This was a good story with gorgeous character art that lacked some necessary context which would have made this great.
We are given enough glimpses of Satomi's past to know how much it has affected who he is today, but not enough to feel like I know him. I think some of it is cultural. Tattoos are perceived very differently in Japan than here in the US, so some background may have given me a better understanding of him.
I did love how supportive these two were of each other's dreams. They each were able to give something to the other that they deeply needed, and ended up very sweet together.
Could've been structured better, but it was interesting.
I honestly never really understood the point of Chikara's research. He's building a robotic bird so he (and others) can fly. (There's an adorable and funny flashback with him being sick in bed for three days as a chid once he found out that people can't turn into birds.)
Once he becomes an adult, his professor and classmates scoff at him, because humans can't fly, duh! What an absurd concept. Which made me think at first maybe this was meant to be some alternate universe where airplanes haven't been invented yet...except not only are airplanes specifically mentioned later on, he's in an aeronautics program at university. So why is everyone so disdainful of his project?? Why is he reinventing airplanes?
I guess, with his backstory about his grandmother being trapped on their little island and unable to visit their grandfather in the mainland hospital before he died, it's meant to be a single person flight device, for someone to jet off in at a moment's notice. Which brings up some issues that I think should've been his professors' and classmates' main concerns...like adequate training for the pilots and air traffic control safety measures for all these people up in the sky...plus what's the fuel source?
But I don't even know where the humans were supposed to go in the bird he was designing. Inside it? On top of it? And since he was designing it at a drone-sized level, would the calculations really hold up to a larger version with a human passenger?
It was kind of messy science that I found pretty distracting. Plus I don't get how Satomi was doing medical research (?). How did his sensors cross from the medical field to controlling the wings of Chikara's bird? How were the two of them running into each other at school to begin with? I think maybe it was supposed to be a general engineering school with an aeronautics program, but even so, Satomi was specifically stated to be presenting at an aeronautics conference.
So overall, while the mechanical bird and Chikara's flight dreams were really cute, it didn't make a whole lot of sense and could've been adapted into something that'd fit the story better.
If you sweep that aside and focus on the characters themselves, the plot still struggles a little, but the dynamic holds up better.
While it's sort of built up as a slow-unveil spoiler, it's really important for the entire plotline to understand that Satomi's tattoos are meant to be shocking upon their first reveal, early into the story, when Chikara sees him through their adjacent windows.
While I know that tattoos are generally looked down on in Japan, due to their connections to the yakuza, etc, it still wasn't connecting for me until pretty late in the story that they were supposed to have basically ruined Satomi's entire life up until this point.
He was raised by an abusive, alcoholic father who sold him off to some debt-collectors, who seem to have just used little Satomi for fun tattooing sessions. (...Weird, and would anyone do this? Plus if you tattoo a child, how would that actually show up on adult skin? I don't know that much about tattoos, other than how they change on aging/sagging skin, etc, but wouldn't it stretch a lot with that much growth?)
Other weird part: it's kind of a half-finished tattoo of a phoenix, cut off at a clear line halfway across his back. At first, when I was misunderstanding what this story was about, and thinking it might've had some supernatural elements to it, I'd thought that maybe the rest of the tattoo would bloom as he was healed by his relationship with Chikara or something, and he might even sprout actual wings...
But no, it's just a normal human story about terrible human parents.
Chikara is the first person to ever be intrigued by Satomi's tattoo and to call it beautiful. Satomi has a ton of trauma around his tattoo - because as the author's note states, he would've been left out of a lot of activities during school, like swimming and class trips, and was always forced to hide himself from others. And adults who knew about his family history whispered about how it was in his blood to grow up to be like his horrible father - something that Satomi believed.
So when he met beautiful, bright, sunny Chikara, who had big dreams and a friendly attitude and who did brave things (like confronting a stalker on a train) while being terrified out of his mind, he got hooked. He loved being around Chikara. Chikara's presence and chatter calmed him down and drowned out that trauma-sound of the tattoo needles that's stuck with him since he was a kid.
Once you have all that backstory, the fast progress of their relationship makes more sense, as well as a decent amount of Satomi's actions. But I do think all of this wasn't conveyed as well as it could have been, so the story suffered some.
I liked the art, though, and their intimate scenes were done really well - uncensored, too. I liked how, by the final chapter, we were well past the "oh no was Satomi really a stalker all along" red herrings and got to see more of Satomi intentionally being so gentle and careful with Chikara because he was so afraid of being like his father. More of that type of content would've done a lot to bring this up to a four star story. It just got bogged down by trying to do too many things without really knowing how to accomplish them all.
So this feels like a lot of half baked ideas that don't feel fleshed out. List of things I don't get: the stalking, the tattoos, the bird invention, why those around him made fun when that was his area of study, what the practical application of his invention is, the sale of a child and more!
The cover art is better than the art in the manga IMO.
IRgendwo zwischen 3 und 4 Sternen. Es war keine besonders tiefgründige Story, aber beide Chars fand ich recht gut ausgearbeitet. Leute, die obsessives Verhalten nicht mögen, sollten den Band aber nicht lesen :D denn der Seme kommt sehr stalker-ish rüber, auch wenn es Storygründe dafür gibt. Generell haben wir hier wieder den Fall von "Jemand hat eine utlra traurige, schlimme Vergangenheit und kann deswegen nicht normal sein" Backstory, die alle Reaktionen usw. motiviert hat. Der Uke hingegen ist halt sehr ... einfach gestrickt :D aber naja. Ich fands trotzdem ganz unterhaltsam.
Ihan vetävä yhden pokkarin BL-tarina. Piirrostyyli on anatomiallisesti vähän tönkkö, mutta muuten perushyvä. Tässä olikin yllärinä aika unhinged juoni ja semisti kyseenalaiset hahmot, mutta toisaalta se teki mangasta mielenkiintoisemman.
Comme en romance traditionnelle, je trouve qu'on voit assez peu dans le boys love de romances se déroulant dans le monde des sciences. J'ai donc sauté sur l'occasion d'en découvrir une.
Tends les mains et vole est le deuxième titre de Nonono Yamada à qui on doit également A genoux suppliant d'être aimé (que je n'ai pas lu) et Rhetoric dont je vais bientôt vous parler et avec qui il y a des similitudes. L'autrice semble aimer les histoires difficiles avec des personnages heurtés.
Dans celle-ci nous sommes dans une fac de sciences avec deux étudiants chercheurs très différents. L'un assure et correspond à tout ce qu'on attend de lui, tandis que l'autre est plus fantaisiste et travail sur un prototype d'oiseau mécanique pour préfigurer le vol humain, ce qui ne plaît pas forcément à ses professeurs qui attendent autre chose de lui.
L'autrice oppose ainsi, ici, avec Chikara et Satomi, les rêves d'enfants contre les traumas. Le premier étant encore très pur, naïf et porté par ses rêves, alors que le second est au contraire marqué par la noirceur de son passé, ce qui l'a figé dans le temps. Mais la rencontre des deux va faire bouger les lignes et questionner.
Sur le papier, je trouve la rencontre très intéressante mais je n'ai pas été fan de la mise en scène et des choix scénaristiques faits. L'autrice accumule un peu les clichés, depuis la caractérisation des personnages jusqu'à leurs actions, et je ne suis pas une grande fan de ceux présentés comme de froids psychopathe qui dévoient les gentils garçons angéliques... Cela me met très mal à l'aise. Et si, hormis la fascination pour le tatouage de phénix de Satomi qui rappelle la passion de Chikara pour les oiseaux, le démarrage de leur relation n'est pas sain, il est même perturbant et dérangeant. La poursuite également.
En revanche, le volet scientifique et l'entraide qui nait de leur relation, leur permettant de trouver et réaliser leur rêve est touchant, même si un déséquilibre, cette fois inverse, persiste. Il y a donc de l'idée mais le choix d'aller vers une fausse noirceur m'a dérangée surtout que celle-ci repose sur des éléments bien trop peu développés pour avoir une vraie crédibilité. Là, ça fait artificiel... C'est dommage parce que l'ambiance mélancolique du titre, les blessures des deux garçons avaient tout pour me plaire.
Malgré des idées originales, ce fut une lecture en demi-teinte du fait des choix d'aller faire une fausse noirceur et de bâtir une relation sur des bases non saines. Alors certes, on a une belle évolution, de l'entraide, de la compréhension de traumas, de la réalisation personnelle et professionnelle mais cela ne compense pas tout. Mais si vous êtes amateurs de dark romance soft cela pourrait vous plaire.
Always a bonus when I’m struggling not to cry on the bus because of a manga!
We love a small dick king.
It might be a little overkill for me to criticize the more intimate scenes - but I’m going to anyway!
But still! Loved it for what it was, even if I would have liked a more balanced approach to how the characters explored that side of their relationship.
overall fairly cute. I liked the characters and loved the designs. the story was a bit confusing. as in it more so just didn't make much sense rather than it being all over. like Chikara's research made 0 sense to me through the whole thing. I do not have a single clue as to what the hell he was trying to accomplish. flight for people? but how that was going to be accomplished through a mechanical bird, I can't understand. and Satomi's tattoo would be wildly confusing if you knew nothing of Japanese culture. the tattoo is essentially suppose to be a stain on his life since tattoos have been frowned upon in Japanese culture due to the Yakuza. though from my understanding, that stereotype has eased up quite a bit with the rise in tourism? I could be wrong though. even still knowing that about tattoos, I was still confused for a good chunk as to why it was such a massive deal. the tragedy the author tried to put on their back stories just really made no sense. though I do still think it was a neat story and had a cute relationship.
3.5 stars I enjoyed it, but I do think there were some problematic things in it. One, I did not like the force with which Satomi treated Chikara in the beginning. And two, it was also a bit toxic of him to force them apart. I know this was due to trauma, but you cannot treat another person like this without explaining it. I'm glad he did so in the end and I also felt sorry for him about all the glimpses we got of his past. However, I really liked Chikara and his immense passion for his research. In general the combination of research and bl felt very fresh, because I feel that there aren't many mangas which deal with research out there, especially bl. Would recommend, but beware of some triggers!
I love Nonono Yamada's art so so much. It's so beautiful. I really liked this, although I do wish there was more that could've been explored and built upon. Plus there are some things that don't make sense. There just seem to be a few continuity errors in general. I enjoyed the art and the relationship, though and I'm so happy this is getting an official translation.
I felt like this was a hot mess express. The art was good - beautiful, even. But the story was really out there, and jumped around so much it was hard to follow. Too much going on and not alot of time/context.
I really liked the beginning but it seemed to lose a bit of structure and continuity near the end. I wasn't expecting quite a dark/twisted backstory for Satomi but it all worked out for them in the end.
This was interesting. The grad students bits reminded me of my friend’s struggles with academia, aha. It was interesting to see a neurodivergent seme of this variety get with your standard sunshine puppy uke.
Read:June 27-28,2025 This story for the most part was surprisingly sweet. My only problems were the unnecessary continuous drama towards the end of the story that I feel was a distraction from the development of both characters and their relationship.
I didn't really understand how Chikara could fall for Satomi with no build up at all, simply a "well, he's hot and says he likes me so, okay" but the many twists and turns of the story after that made it interesting.