BLog: Teach Me, Tutor
BLog reviews recent boys love, yaoi and LGBTQ+ English translation manga.
[image error]Teach Me, Tutor
Story and art: Sakira
Translation: Valeria Paolini
Publisher: Juné Manga
Release Date: June 19, 2020
High school himbo Mitsuhashi Minami comes home one day to the news that his mother has hired a tutor, former neighbour and cunning university student Arakawa Uta… but is schoolwork the only kind of teaching Uta has in mind?!
Twentysomething (ostensibly heterosexual) beautician Asari Soushi finds himself with a new roommate when his elderly landlady moves him and kindly, beefy, divorced Momoi Atsumu into the same apartment. Soushi wants to save up money so he can buy a nice house for his future (but as yet fantasy) wife. Is a candidate for his heart closer than he realizes?!
Two childhood best friends/rivals, black-haired, mildly hirsute Shou and blond-haired smooth twunk Tatsuo, realize they have feelings for each other, share a romantic first kiss, and then beat the shit out of each other over who loves who more. They compete for the right to top the first time they have sex, who will take the honour?!
Teach Me, Tutor is three yaoi short stories, with the titular tutor story being the longest. While the stories are unconnected, there is a central thread: the biggest, thiccest, beefiest man tiddies and the puffiest, pinkest, most glistening man nips you can imagine.
Imagine them.
Now imagine them bigger, thiccer, beefier, puffier, pinker and more glistening.
That’s basecamp.
So we’ve established manga artist Sakira’s yaoi kink, although stir in sexy, horny, big beefy boys with sometimes dubious sexual politics and you’ve got Teach Me, Tutor.
We’ll start with dubious sexual politics. The most egregious is first story about Minami’s tutor. They hook up, if that wasn’t obvious, and far from being the intelligent, caring tutor he appears to be, Uta is controlling, manipulative and obsessive–like with my review of The Cornered Mouth Dreams of Cheese, I can get on board with obsession, to an extent if it serves the story, but jealousy doesn’t do it for me. Maybe Uta’s “If you found someone else I would kill him and then kill myself” intensity is supposed to be funny or romantic, but this is fluffy, smutty, sexy yaoi, not a psychological horror, so it doesn’t mesh well. Uta also doesn’t take “slow” or “no” for an answer, and an entire chapter of the five part “Teach Me, Tutor” is about a university friend of grown-up Minami drugging and sexually assaulting him. Sigh.
Strangely, despite being taken advantage of by an objectively abusive boyfriend and a creep from school, the story gives him agency. He confronts Uta about his stalking and obsession (unsuccessfully), and tells him what he wants in terms of sex. He frees himself from his eventual sexual assault, even though Uta tries to intervene. He’s not a damsel in distress that needs saving. Beyond that, it’s unfortunate because “Teach Me, Tutor” has some extremely smutty (consensual) sex, including rope work, blindfolds, vibrators, nipple play (see above), and Sakira’s art is gorgeous and filthy. Too bad it occasionally gets dragged down by noncon, dubcon and weird emotional beats.
The following two stories fair better, and are much more consistent in terms of smutty, hilarious stories, as absurd as they both are. “My Dear Teddy Bear” is domestic romance that becomes hardcore twunk-on-bear action after dark. There’s just something glorious about the reversal of the big, beefy guy getting topped by the slim young twunk. My personal favourite of the three and, tragically, the shortest, “Our Cowgirl/Riding Situation”, pits two romantically entwined best friends against each other, literally competing for the top. The last story helped me discover a new kink; lovers who are lifelong rivals, who will fight each other to prove who loves who more. This one was a smutty joy to read from start to finish. I would read an entire series about Shou and Tatsuo’s hilarious, competitive, adorable relationship.
This is the first title I’ve read by Juné Manga, as far as I can recall. There were a few little editing errors here and there, noticeable enough to mention, but other than that a beautiful little manga package. It’s too bad their backlist isn’t more widely available. Like Melting Lover, it’s nice to be able to sample a manga artist’s range with a series of shorts to see if they can… tweak your interest… get it? Tweak? Like nipples?
Level of Problematic: Nipple torture; I was having a conversation with my roommate about the use of sexual assault in BL narratives, as one does. Like I said in Caste Heaven, I think depictions of sexual assault have their place in media, however with Teach Me, Tutor I was thinking about how the characters justify rape. There’s plenty of the “Rape To Love” trope I considered in my Caste Heaven review, the “I’m doing this because I love you and I have to own and control you,” that’s how Uta justifies it. The second egregious instance uses the “your body feels so good when I do this so it must mean you want it”. It’s like there’s a separation between act and intent, if the character can justify it to themselves it makes it okay to put on the page. Again, this ends up feeling exploitative and gratuitous, as opposed to sexy or key to the story. “Teach Me, Tutor” could have been told just as easily without sexual assault. ANYWAYS, I spend way too much time thinking about rape in BL/yaoi, THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS, MANGAKA!
Level of Adorable: “Even if he’s a man, his chest is soft and it smells nice”; the latter two stories are as cute as they are sexy. Honestly, “Our Cowgirl/Riding Situation” was such an inspiration I want to write my own.
Level of Spiciness: Teasing your best friend/rival/lover’s nipples; even with the aforementioned dubious sexual politics… I kept having to put Teach Me, Tutor down for… reasons…
