Book 66
Ai no Kusabi Vol. 1: Stranger by Rieko Yoshihara
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Let me preface this with the fact I know the anime and I’ve been told that the novels get better as they go. Good thing since this one is just a hot mess. There is so much wrong with volume one it’s hard to know where to begin. I came into this knowing it was dub con, BDSM and sexual slavery. I knew who Iason and Riki were and what they meant to each other because from book one, I would have no clue what was going on otherwise.
A bit of context. These novels were first serialized in Shousetsu June back in the 1980’s before being collected. That explains the terrible choppiness of the text. But think about that date, this is practically first gen Boys’ Love stuff coming out of Japan and how dark it is, is surprising for this time period.
But the first complaint is translators need to understand that you can’t just translate. Sometimes you need a little bit of poetic license because my god, the direct translation is either ridiculous in English or nonsensical and there is plenty of that. I could be wrong. Maybe it’s just as purple of prose in the native Japanese. Mostly it wasn’t erotic. It was just laughable. It reminds me of erotic fanfic by a young, unpracticed but enthusiastic fan. And outside of chapter one there isn’t really any sex and even that was mostly alluded to or fingering. And without seeing the anime first you might get a clue the young man being bound down and sexually tortured by some device is Riki but you’d have no way of know who his master is until the end of the book.
Basic plot, Riki, the fifteen year old head of Bison, the Ceres slum’s top gang, disappears and the book picks up three years later when he mysteriously returns and his lover, Guy, takes him back in. At this point, Bison is a shdow of its former self. The Jeeks gang is in power and within Bison, a young buck, Kirie is trying to be the head but he’s mostly an over eager brat (whom the members think was a lot like Riki used to be). For that matter, Riki is a shadow of his former self, no longer outgoing and bold. No one, not even Guy knows why. Frankly you’re not really going to find out in this volume.
Another huge complaint beyond the questionable translation and very choppy sentence structures and plot, is the info dumping. There is just so much of it. But basically Midas is where the rich live, Ceres is the slum. Hair color and genetic engineering is important. It tells everyone where you are in society and freaky colors like blue are in the mix. Riki is a dark haired slum mutt. Iason Mink is the top of the top, a Blondy, genetically engineered for perfection. Iason only makes a brief appearance beyond chapter one. Also there is a huge sexual imbalance. There are almost no women in the slums and women are elsewhere (but you get the idea that it’s for breeding purposes). This explains why literally everyone in these gangs are gay. It’s like you take a man or you take your hand. You’re not getting a woman in the slums. Also there is a sexual trade, the Pets, some are chimeras, human and something else. Others are the Academy Pets, perfect men and women who’ll be bought by the Blondies and whoever else can afford them. There are also androids renting people (Kirie starts making money pimping for them). I have no idea why androids are horny.
The two biggest things that happen, besides Riki’s return as a flat personality with no joy in him (showing some classic signs of PTSD) is Kirie making them go to the pet show and the gang battle which happens off screen. Oh and another member of Bison trying to get up a rape gang session for Riki that goes nowhere then it just trails off.
This could have been trimmed completely and put together with volume two and maybe it would be better. That said, this is a BL classic that hangs around. Maybe the others are right, it gets better with volume 2.
View all my reviews