Review of Junjo Romantica
This is a totally guilty pleasure for any Western fan with the slightest concept of "consensual sex", because it is a prime example of what sort of stuff passes for successful relationships in BL land. I have to constantly remind myself that as a gay man I am not the target audience here, but that this functions as self-insert fantasy for Japanese women, and actually fulfills a useful role in having them play with gender and sexuality. The characters are not gay men, and they are not meant to be. This isn't a part of the "rape culture" (which is indeed areal thing and a serious thing), but rather it's an example of nonconsensual fantasy. We don't get to see that in the West in mainstream entertainment, except badly done in porn, but it exists here too in niche genre markets because it fills a need for some people.
When ranked against good non-BL anime, this is really terrible. But among other BL anime, this is a fun romp because it never takes itself too seriously. There are sex scenes here, but nothing at all graphic, and it's mostly the voices that make a scene sexy. Seriously, the drama CDs are hotter.
Story (5/10): There isn't really one; it's more a slice of life thing, though each relationship depicted makes some slight progress during its arc. There are 3 couples, A =Usami Akihiko x Takahashi Misaki (famous literary author who also moonlights as a BL mangaka and his pupil / boarder who so happens to be the younger brother of Usami's unrequited love), B = Kusama Nowaki x Kamijou Hiroki (medical student and college professor who was previously in love with Usami), C = Miyagi You x Takatsuki Shinobu (college professor in the same department as Kamijou, and high schooler who is Miyagi'sex-wife's brother). With all three couples there is an age difference, which is most pronounced for the third couple. While there are only 4 years separating Nowaki and Hiroki, interestingly enough the difference presents the largest problem to the relationship. This is also the odd one out when it comes to the seme/uke setup -- Nowaki, the younger one, is the seme. No, wait, C is also unusual in that the uke does all the pursuing and the seme is resistant. Couple A starts out with the two characters being kind of randomly thrown together, couple B meet when Kamijou is mourning his lost love, and Kusama comes across him in the park and it's love at first sight for him; couple C is basically Takatsuki interpreting a random encounter during which Miyagi helped him as "fate". There is a slight supernatural potential here, but nothing ever comes of it.
Art (3/10): Atrocious. I cannot stand Nakamura Shungiku's art; it's ugly -- heads are often too small for bodies, as are hands, facial shapes are unappealing, mouths look like the characters are in a bad mood, eyes are often dull, and worst of all, she has only two character types, seme and uke and they all look alike within type. The backgrounds are decent, but I bet Nakamura doesn't do them herself. I do like her chibi and SDs. The animation is stiff and wooden, the usual victim, I imagine, of low budgets for BL anime.
Sound (7/10): I didn't care for most of the BGM, and the OP and ED are generic JPop. The voice talent on the other hand is mostly superb -- Sakurai Takahiro voices Misaki; he is still a favourite seiyuu of mine. It's a perfect portrayal, but he also has some range to play with, since Misaki is easily the most expressive character. Inoue Kazuhiko also does a great job with Miyagi; I could listen to that man read the phone book and probably get aroused.
Character (5/10): The primary character, the one in whose head we spent the most time, is Misaki. And I constantly vacillated between being utterly frustrated with him and kind of rooting for him. Because he has to be the most naive and idiotically dense character I've encountered in a long time, and he is also the typical tsundere uke who completely denies his feelings and is unwilling to ever say the L word; he fights every bit of affection with tooth and nail, while secretly liking it but also being horribly ashamed of it -- Japan is fucked up, seriously. But while he always instinctively acts like a cactus, he also thinks about everything, and though he often settles temporarily on a naive answer, eventually he works his way around to what is actually going on. He is also hampered by his back story, which has made him into a person who never wants to be a bother to anyone, and he likes to please people -- but his tsundere nature works against that in many ways which he doesn't even recognize.
Usami is a cantankerous, crotchety egotist, and I never warmed up to him, even when he goes all lovey-dovey later. He pushes Misaki into intimacy (we'd call it sexual assault here), but it's hard to deny that if he didn't, Misaki would never ever do anything on his own. I don't like that sort of setup and I'd never get involved with somebody like that, but yeah, it's not my culture.
The other two couples don't have the same unpleasant dynamic going on because while Kamijou is also a tsundere, at least he is basically willing, just also embarrassed. The problem with Nowaki is that I completely lost any liking for him when he disappears for a whole year. It was also Kamijou's fault for not paying attention, but the justification for Nowaki pulling that stunt was garbage. Couple C interested me primarily because I was watching for signs of Shinobou being Miyagi's first love's reincarnation.
Enjoyment (7/10): The humour is what makes the show. It's a strange mix, but with relatively little sexual innuendo humour; most of it comes from Misaki struggling with everything in his life in amusing and often unexpected ways. I'd really like to hang out with Nakamura Shungiku some time. ;)