ボーイフレンド 1

ボーイフレンド [Boyfriend] #1

by Fuyumi Soryo, 惣領冬実

不朽の名作、堂々復刻！！
「同じ学年。同じクラス。同じ沿線。あなたのやさしさが偶然からでもいい。錯覚でもかまわない。あなたが好き……。」

「ふれたら悲鳴をあげそうな傷口を持った人だと思った。わたしと同じ傷口を」――。高刀柾と結城可奈子。2人は出会い、そしてどうしようもなくひかれていく。それが愛という名の奇跡と悲劇の始まりとも知らずに……。永遠に煌めく青春グラフィティ決定版！！

Genres: Manga

Paperback Bunko

About the author

Fuyumi Soryo (惣領冬実) is a Japanese manga artist from Beppu, Oita, Japan. She is a graduate of the Oita prefectural Geijutsu Midorigaoka High School.

She was born into the home of a master of the Kanze school of Noh. In her childhood she liked to draw pictures of horses and things but had no special interest in manga. While enrolled in fashion college, she happened across Shogakukan's Rookie of the Year Contest and applied to raise money for the Sōen fashion contest. There she received an honorable mention, and debuted with "Sunspot Visitor" (Hidamari no hōmonsha) published in the April 1982 edition of Bessatsu Shōjo Comic (now Bestucomi).

Her works translated abroad include Mars and Eternal Sabbath. In 1988, she was awarded the Shogakukan Manga Award for shōjo manga for Boyfriend. Currently her last manga series is Cesare which centers around the infamous Borgia family of the Italian Renaissance and Cesare Borgia himself.

Reviews

[Cam *tactile seeker*]

Sōryō sensei is by far the best Japanese mangaka in my opinion.

The first time I had the pleasure and honor to read one of her brilliant works, was in the year 1999, when her probably most known manga, "Mars", was published in my country.



My reading experience was life-altering, mind-blowing and stress-inducing, too, because back then every volume used to be published every three months and in more than one occasion I feared the wait was going to kill me.

I never found a manga as mature and overwhelming and exciting since then. Mars will always be my favorite in everything: favorite hero, favorite heroine, favorite plot, favorite art and message. It's been my loyal companion during awful times and I'm not exaggerating in saying that it basically saved my adolescence from becoming even more angsty than it already was.

I read other works from Mrs. Sōryō and even though I liked them all, no one in particular made me feel as emotional and ecstatic as Mars did.

"Bla, blah, bla, what's the point of all of this, if this manga's called Boyfriend?" you might think, and here's the answer: it reminds me a lot of Mars.

The hero, Misaki, is just as rebellious and lunatic as Rei was.



He's the 3rd of four brothers, and guess what?! All his older brothers are respectful and diligent and smart, attending the best universities. Even his young brother, an elementary schooler, seems wiser than him and often gives him advices.



Misaki has a difficult relationship with his father, who's a strict and stubborn man. It doesn't help that he was kicked out of school after he had a fight with another guy. His father threatened to kick him out of the house, too, if he didn't change his attitude.
But he can't help being who he is. He even wonders if he's really his father's son, since his brothers' natures are completely different from his.
He can't help but lose his temper often, can't seem to make friends, always feels like he'll end up having another fight with someone else, because he's this cold-hearted bastard.

His real problem is that he cares too much about things and doesn't know how to cope with disappointment and disillusionment. He feels like a huge fuck-up because everyone around him has convinced him to be one.

He has one big love, though: basketball. He's so good at it that he competed in the national championship and the members of the basketball club at this new school would kill to have him in their team.



He refuses, until a new coach arrives. A coach that will change everything. (I'm still at the beginning of the second volume, but the importance of this new character is clear enough)


The heroine, Kanako, looks just as frail and innocent like our Kira did.



Fuyumi Sōryō has this thing with her heroines. They're all apparently hopeless and fragile. And I mean it in the "puppy-eyed, can't even look at a fight without starting to cry", fragile.
BUT, they're really not that annoying. In fact, those girls are the most brave and strong-willed you could ever find in a manga.
They'll step up to defend another girl on the train, from a drunk pervert.



They'll keep attending school, even though a serious illness has made them lose two years of high school already. They'll follow the apparently violent and brooding hero around, until they've convinced him that his talent is so big, he should really become a member of the basketball team. And they're so strong and beautiful that they'll risk everything for love, even if they had their heart broken already, in the past.

Kanako does just that, makes you think she's the worst of the Mary Sue around, and then bam, leaves you speechless with her stubbornness and wit.

The two of them meet on the train, when she helps that other girl and the pervert tries to molest her, too. Misaki intervenes and neutralizes the man, earning Kanako's gratitude and admiration.
Their unlikely friendship soon turns into something more, but there's nothing rushed or indelicate about the way they fall in love.





It's sweet and slow, because before recognizing how good-looking they both are, they're drawn to one another by the same sense of loneliness and turmoil they see mirrored in the other's eyes.




I really think this manga is going to be as amazing as Mars.
There's something about both the main characters that made me fall in love with it, after only one volume.

The art is captivating. I can't say it's beautiful in the literal sense of the word(and this one in particular is from the 80's), but there's something about Sōryō sensei's style that makes her works unique and fascinating. I LOVE her characters' profiles, they're simply breathtaking. And the stories she crafts are always realistic and so deep. I think this is the element that made me chose her as my favorite author: the way she talks about ordinary people with ordinary problems, the ones everyone has, though. The teenagers' characterization is nothing short of a masterpiece, the way she analyzes their needs and fears, it makes me wish I had a mother who understood me even half of the way she does.

It is for all these reasons that I recommend this manga, even to those who've never read one. I assure you, you won't be able to stop, once you start.


N.B. The banner belongs to shoujo-manga.net and all the images belong to Fuyumi Sōryō. The scans were taken from mangafox.net.

[Dennise]

I love everything fuyumi writes,her characters always feel so deep and her sense of humor is top tier.