Thursday, April 8, 2010

“Love Is Blind” – Koi Kaze (Manga) – 9/10 Sugar Cubes



When love is not madness, it is not love. ~Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Genre: Romance/ Drama/ School

Review Status: Full (5 Volumes/ 5 Volumes)

Licensed: Unlicensed in the US

Art: Simplistic, but merely because this is a simple story, not because it’s childish. There is great detail and attention paid to the character’s expressions.

Summary: Saeki Koushirou works as a wedding planner, but his own love life is a shambles. His background makes it difficult for him to commit himself wholeheartedly to love. The child of a divorced couple, he lives with his father. He has a mother and a sister, but he has not seen them in years. After being dumped by his girlfriend, a chance encounter with a female high school student shakes Koushirou's calm and awakens new feelings in him - but he learns that the girl is in fact his sister, who will now be staying with his father and him. Yet, the feelings in Koushirou's heart... (From ANN.com)

Review: First of all: Yes. This is a story about incest. It’s not your usual fodder of “oh we grew up together and I lurve u lots!” No, this utilizes and actual, documented scientific phenomena of genetic sexual attraction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_sexual_attraction), where two siblings of the opposite gender who meet as adults find each other sexually attractive.

And that’s where everything goes wrong for these two- they meet, have no idea that they’re siblings, and find themselves falling for each other. And when they do meet, well… it’s not like they can live happily ever after. They both know that their love is wrong, and try to deny their attraction, but even so, end up together.

Don’t get me wrong- this manga doesn’t try to say that incest is okay or normal. Nor does it have its characters condemned to fire and brimstone. It doesn’t moralize the story, though one of the side characters that figures out what’s going on does openly show her disapproval (though, out of respect for her coworker, doesn’t share her knowledge).

Overall, this manga handles the subject of incest in an intensely tasteful, delicate way. It doesn’t use it merely as an excuse for porn, or say it’s right, only that between the two characters in the story, it exists.

Recommended: Yes. This is an excellent, tasteful, realistic story. However, as it is a sensitive subject, it isn’t for the family. So if you’re 16 and over, folks! Implied sex between a minor and adult, and it is (obviously) incestuous.

Other series you might like: Bitter Virgin (manga),
Alice 19th (manga),
NANA (manga and anime)
Ayashi no Ceres (manga)
Solanin (manga)

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