Makoto Tateno’s Hate To Love You is the author’s first BL work; she would later go on to pen the very-popular-but-unread-by-me Yellow. All in all it’s a work that may not be terribly memorable on its own, but is a promising start as a first effort.

The story, billed by English-language adapters Deux-Press as “a yaoi version of Romeo and Juliet”, revolves around two rival families who are both in the construction business, and the sons of those families who (of course) fall in love despite their fathers’ rivalry. The comparison isn’t exactly apt, though, since no one in this book is trying to kill each other… they simply don’t get along.

 

The art is servicable but not spectacular, though Masaya’s large eyes are very expressive and sometimes downright adorable. Deux-Press apparently decided to leave asides in the dialogue in Japanese and translate them just above or beside the Japanese text, a rather odd decision that sometimes makes the panels a bit overcrowded, though the physical quality of the book (binding and page weight) is quite high. Also, I occasionally found the speech bubbles confusing; sometimes it’s difficult to tell who’s saying what without rereading a few times. The “explicit content” tag on the cover is a bit misleading, since the sex scenes are far from graphic. Yes, I admit I was a little disappointed.

 

After Yuma and Masaya, the main characters, initially confess their feelings, much of the tension is unfortunately removed from the story. I ended up finding myself unexpectedly liking their female friend Akiko more than either of the male leads; she’s perceptive of her friends’ true feelings and occasionally manipulates them without their realizing it. She also slaps Yuma a good one at a point where he truly deserves it, which earns her a few bonus points with me.

 

In the end I found myself more interested in the one-shot bonus story at the end of the volume, titled You Can’t Call It Love.  Pretty high school student Kyoichi sees a random older man at a bookshop one day, is enthralled with the man’s coolness, and decides he wants to be like him… which leads to him becoming a bit of a stalker as he gets more and more obsessed with the mysterious stranger. This story is a little strange and doesn’t have the neat, fluffy ending one might expect, but it certainly stuck in my mind far more than the predictability of Hate To Love You.

 

Overall, I found the book decent but not fantastic, though the weird little one-shot at the end almost makes the whole thing worthwile. I know that predictable fluff does have its fans though – if you’re into that type of yaoi you’d probably enjoy this more than I did.