Comics / Manga Reviews / Yaoi Manga

Thirsty for Love (Yaoi)

By Leroy Douresseaux
May 27, 2008 - 14:36

The June manga edition keeps the image, but changes the title lettering.

Rated “M” for “Mature Audiences 18+”

Yuka Sarai, a high school girl, loves three men.  There is the arrogant, dark-haired Tatsumi Kuwabara, and the painfully honest basketball player, Suguru Suenobu.  When she meets another basketball player, Orie Nakano, she takes the passionate young man’s virginity.  Tatsumi and Suguru are aware of each other, but when Orie discovers that he shares Yuka with other guys, he feels betrayed.  However, the three young men must come together when they learn that Yuka is dying.

Thirsty for Love is from the manga-ka team of Yukine Honami & Satosumi Takaguchi, creators of the Can’t Win with You! series.  This stand-alone graphic novel is more of a high school drama than it is yaoi manga (manga that features explicit sex between male lovers).  There are a few sex scenes in Thirsty for Love, but they are gentle, even discreet.  The narrative emphasis of Thirsty for Love is about anger, confusion, and grief of losing a love one.  It also deals with issues of betrayal, particularly in the case when the betrayer dies and the wounded party cannot get closure.  Honami’s soft, almost minimalist art – with its evocative figure drawing – hits the right note for this engaging and unusual love story.

B+

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Comments

This is a terrible yaoi!

I'm a hardcore yaoi fan and will give anything a try, but this, in my opinion, shouldn't even qualify for the title "yaoi."

It's about three men who are in love with the same WOMAN! The sex scenes are fairly explicit, but they either involve the woman, or the men pretending each other is the woman because they miss her once she dies. It's actually pretty morbid; the three men have an orgy in the woman's bed once she's dead, so they can remember her. They have no emotional attachments to each other; there is no male-male romance, and in fact they rather seem to despise one another. If you like yaoi with a male-male romance and plot, don't bother with this book!

#1 - JoonHee - 06/28/2008 - 12:38

I agree that this is morbid...

Any negative feelings they have for one another has to do with grief. Out of that grief and loss they build emotional attachments. No, there isn't male-male romance, but I like the fact they can screw each other out of need that has little or nothing to do with romantic love.
Perhaps, there should be another subset of BL other than yaoi to describe something like this. But Thirsty for Love is something unique and readers who want unique will find it here.

#2 - Leroy Douresseaux - 06/29/2008 - 22:05

Hated it!

I loath this book! The whole time I was reading it, I thought "How stupid is this? Why is that dude imagine Orie as Yuka? Why is there a sex scene of straight people when this is supoosed to be a male x male thing?" This is NOT a yaoi book. I absolutely agree with the person who wrote the comment below. Seriously, this book would have been so much better WITHOUT the girl! Anyone who loves yaoi, I recommend for you to NOT read this crap!

#3 - Lisa - 09/15/2009 - 02:35

...

I don't know what to say.. When I was halfway through the book, I thought it was horrible! And now I've just finished reading it, I think it is a good book but I wouldn't really call it yaoi-not completely. I mean there are sex scenes of guys in there but still, I dunno. I wish there was a genre that could explain this book.

And also, this is the first book that I've read with sex scenes with straight people AND gay. I don't think a hardcore yaoi fan would like this book. I'm a yaoi and straight manga fan so it's not really that bad for me, though I really didn't like the idea of how they imagined each other as Yuka and starting fucking each other. That was just...disturbing.

Overall, a good book with a pretty deep plot. Just doesn't really fit in the yaoi genre.

#4 - Joanne - 09/15/2009 - 03:14