BLog: The Song of Yoru & Asa
BLog reviews recent boys love, yaoi and LGBTQ+ English translation manga.
The Song of Yoru & Asa
Story and art: Harada
Translation: Mike Wolfe
Publisher: Kuma
Release Date: March 22, 2022
(◑_◑) CW: Discussion of sexual assault (◑_◑)
SPOILERS
Save for ten pages, The Song of Yoru & Asa might have been one of my favourite BL manga of all time.
The keyword there being “might have been.”
The manga follows quiet, dopey, tall, long-haired and painfully attractive frontman turned bassist Yoru and hotheaded, horny and hardheaded shorty singer Asaichi. Yoru’s singing and beauty was central to his first band’s popularity, so when he joins the band of Asaichi and his friends the insecure frontman teases and belittles him constantly. One night after their first solo concert together, after taking some groupies back to their hotel room, a drunken Asaichi slips into bed and has sex with a besotted Yoru.
Oh, actually, did I mention the intro of Yoru… with the thug-type, morally dubious “businessman” and his host sister? How the morally dubious “businessman” falls in love with Yoru? If you’ve read any BL, you may see where this is going.
In fact, as I was reading this manga, I started coming up with a BL Trope Bingo card just to put The Song of Yoru & Asa to the test. Play along at home!
So already we’ve crossed off a couple there: tsundere and, my personal favourite, inexplicable yakuza/organized crime involvement–Bad Boys, Happy Home anyone? The second organized crime’s involved in a BL manga, you can be pretty sure we’ll tick off “gratuitous rape,” with a little lite kidnapping/blackmailing thrown in there for good measure.
But before we get that, let’s start with the good: The Song of Yoru & Asa is one of the hottest manga I’ve read–save for those ten pages. After his “convoluted entry into homosexuality”–Ehh? Ehh?–Asaichi protests his virile heterosexuality perhaps a bit too much. This is exacerbated when he hears Yoru sing, which heightens his obsession, and then immediately proceeds to fuck his sweat-drenched bandmate in the bathroom in between the closing number and the encore. I thought that was a really fantastic moment, great use of the band setting. The sex is hot. Like, crazy hot. It’s always nice to see sex in a manga not be this tender, vulnerable thing, but just… filthy. The manga is explicit, nothing is censored, and the sex is just sweaty and nasty and hot. The fact that the art is utterly gorgeous, the story and romance decent, maybe not great, but it kept me turning the pages, just makes the ten pages that much more jarring.
The bad: the most harrowing rape scene I’ve ever seen in a BL manga, and that’s saying something. I actually had to put the book down and walk away for a few minutes, I almost didn’t finish it.
I’ve written ad nauseam about my feelings of depictions of rape in media/manga and, as I usually call it, mangaka/Japan’s somewhat cavalier attitude towards sexual assault. In brief: I think being able to explore sexual assault in art and stories is extremely important. If it serves a purpose, a depiction of sexual assault can be warranted. If that’s someone’s kink, hey, people get off to stranger things; as long as no one’s being hurt against their will, live and let live. I suppose if there’s a redeeming quality about the extreme rape scene in The Song of Yoru & Asa is that, at least at first, it genuinely depicts the horror and devastation that one would reasonably feel after being raped.
And then it kinda just laughs it off. Ding dong…
So it’s gratuitous, violent, extreme, thematically jarring–even the nasty sex at its nastiest is all consensual–and doesn’t really mean anything in the end. Victim just kind of has to get over it and the perpetrators get to traipse around without consequence. The rapists actually show up to the band’s next show and meet up with the victim and kind of just go, “Oh, ha ha, remember that time we quite violently physically assaulted, tortured and raped you? That sure was a time, huh?” Again, if any of what’s on those ten pages is someone’s kink, go to town, but in the story it was a device of cruel punishment, and as a romance trope to bring Yoru and Asaichi closer… through shared trauma, I guess. How romantic. It turned what could’ve been a favourite horny manga into a frustrating, eye-rolling, complicated, jarring experience.
That and they very explicitly do the whole, “Neither of us are gay, except for this one guy” throughout the entire manga, clung to until the bitter end. Commit to the bit, you disaster bisexuals.
So BL Trope Bingo. How’d we do?
Ooh, so close. Should’ve popped in an age-inappropriate relationship for good measure.
As I was writing this I realized they never talk about a band name throughout the entire manga. “Inexplicable Yakuza Involvement” would make a good one.
Level of Problematic: The Song of Violence & Violation; Ay yay ya…
Level of Adorable: The Song of Tol & Smol; THAT’S THE WORST PART. I SHIP YORU AND ASAICHI HARD. WE COULD’VE HAD IT ALL.
Level of Spiciness: The Song of Sweat & Sin; Like, nasty, filthy, dirty, sweaty, aggressive, primal, obscene sex. Woof.
