Comics / Manga / Yaoi Manga

Duo Brand's Kiss Your Hair (Yaoi)

By Leroy Douresseaux
June 7, 2010 - 10:16

Kiss Your Hair cover image is courtesy of Anime Castle Books.

Rating: “18+ Mature Content”

Kiss Your Hair is a yaoi manga from Duo Brand (Shards of Affection).  This short story collection focuses on bizarre and outrageous master-servant relationships – from fetishes to forbidden pleasures.

In the title story (“Kiss Your Hair”), Suiren is a long-haired gardener who satisfies his master’s hair fetish, while another servant, the cold-blooded and aloof butler, Suzaka, spies on them.  When Suiren discovers that Suzaka is curious about his gardening skills and maybe even attracted to him, he becomes determined to make the butler… warm up to him.  In a lot of ways, this is both typical yaoi and a typical love story.  The hair fetish gives it a unique slant, which in turn makes it an interesting read.

In “Acorns Awaken the Night,” a young servant and cook named Ryuu watches the strange relationship between an older servant, the grouchy Hourai, and their master, Akari.  Akari is a magician who collects acorns he hopes will help him grow a forest in a nearby desert.  When he discovers the true nature of Hourai and Akari’s relationship, Ryuu becomes determined to put a stop to it.  This is a sort of strange fantasy story, but it is good enough to be an entire graphic novel.  The characters are wonderfully drawn, their situation intriguing, and the desert is a brilliantly mysterious, romantic setting.

“Sometimes You Have to Put it into Words” focuses on Kio, who works as a contract model to Hazuki, an artist who is also the son of a rich family.  Kio is not only Hazuki’s model; he is also the young artist’s muse/sex toy, which leads to complications.  This story is edgy, even dark, but there is a sweet and sentimental twist at the end which goes down like a butterscotch candy after bitter tea.  Not only is this a good story, it actually works as a short story and doesn’t feel like an incomplete graphic novel.  There are also some beautifully drawn panels that look as if they belong in a pin-up calendar.

As “No Names” begins, the smart, handsome, and popular Student Council Vice-Present Ruka Hayama has already declared his love to Kouya Kiyokawa.  Kouya is not sure if he loves Ruka, but Kouya is willing to have sex with Ruka.  The story is really kind of silly.  Duo Brand (the pen name of the manga-ka duo, Haruka Akatsuki and Nobuyoshi Watanabe) depict Ruka and Kouya has having the kind of passionate, no-orifice-off-limits, love-making that suggests some kind of intimate bond between the two.  Still, one of the characters just can’t say, “I love you, man.”

Another interesting selection is “Escape,” which is about Nagisa, a man who runs an “escape house,” a place people can go when they’re on the run from people wanting to hurt them.  Nagisa gets a surprise when Rei, a former acquaintance who is now an assassin, comes knocking on his door and sporting a bullet wound.  Now, Nagisa has to confront his feelings for Rei.  “Escape” is nice read, mainly because of the element of danger involved in both Rei and Nagisa’s line of work, but the story’s romantic element is not strong.

The final story, “Sweet Brunch,” focuses on a waiter named Hiuchi who experiences love at first sight with a customer, a lawyer named Uragasumi.  Hiuchi even studies to become an attorney so that he can work at Uragasumi’s firm.  “Sweet Brunch” is short and relatively without plot.  The main attraction here is the eight pages of huffin’ and puffin,’ sofa-rocking sex.

Overall, Kiss Your Hair is a good collection with quirky ideas, strange scenarios, and sometimes passionate sex.  Yaoi readers who look for short story collections that offer diversity instead of uniform seme-uke bump and grind will certainly want Kiss Your Hair.

B+

 

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12