Art and Character Design: This is Yukine Honami’s artwork and I’ve always found her sweet, sketchy style appealing. No real surprises here, though, except that her boys look a little older than usual — and by that I mean late as opposed to early teens. Their appearance really doesn’t seem all that [...]

Art and Character Design: The kind of art my good pal Bill S. loves to pieces, yet most often leaves me frosty cold. Sketchy, ragged, messy are all the unfair words that spring to mind when I gaze upon the pages. And yet, even though I much prefer clean lines and naturalism, [...]

A conversation with Simon Jones of Icarus Publishing.

So, last time we talked about the difference between manga and porn, what it means to be a successful publisher of erotic comics and what challenges face those who choose to publish this material. This time we’ll talk about working with Japanese publishers and bring the [...]

A conversation with Simon Jones of Icarus Publishing. (Part 1.)

Recently, there’s been some discussion about how some small yaoi publishers have been struggling despite offering quality yaoi titles to their readers. With DramaQueen in particular, it saddens me to hear of their difficulties — I’ve enjoyed their work, found their enthusiasm infectious and [...]

All right — it’s just two cute guys messing around in a bed in a short by an independent film director whose work I’ve enjoyed, but I thought I’d share. (Very, very Not Safe For Work, but you knew that, right?)

(Right now, my YouTube plugin does not appear to support Firefox [...]

Art and Character Design: The character design is a bit more Western and naturalistic than some yaoi, and while not outstanding, was compelling enough to get me to pick this book up out of a sea of other titles sent to me by the same publisher. Every now and then, the eyes look [...]

You can read a review of the first Little Butterfly book here.
Art and Character Design: More of the engaging and beautifully rendered shojo-style we’ve come to expect from Takanaga-sensei: The panel layouts are ambitious and interesting, adding to the emotional impact of the story, while only very rarely becoming slightly difficult to follow. [...]

Art and Character Design: Yumeka-sensei uses simple character designs and lots of white space — in its minimalism, the art is somewhat reminiscent of Yukine Honami’s work — and the effect is often beautiful and striking. The panel layouts and framings, in particular, are well chosen and do a great job of [...]

Art and Character Design: Quite good in places and, in others, confusing and lackluster. For the most part, the character art is excellent — with beautifully drawn bishonen characters in striking poses, framed with flowers and bubbles. The chibi art starts off in the first chapter as some of the weakest I’ve [...]

Art and Character Design: No one does adorable, boyish character art quite like Yukine Honami. She could draw a quick pencil sketch of your worst enemy and I swear you’d want to hug him. Thus, her work is completely appropriate for this story and a pleasure to view. There’s rarely much [...]