Hot on the heels of last week’s Mission!! comes another powerful title! It was honestly the “zettai” in this one that had me walking to the register with the first volume of the series in hand. A world where BL is absolute vs a boy who absolutely does not want BL. A clash of wills! Over who will get BL’ed! And then the obi boasts that this is an absurd BL gag manga, and reader, I was sold. The whole premise is that the protagonist lives in a BL manga world, but as the title informs us, he does not want to become a BL manga character. He’s his parents only chance for grandchildren after his younger brother succumbs to a classic BL move—the person he thought was his best friend confesses his undying love—in the very first chapter. Our nameless hero (anti-hero?) realizes he’s in a BL manga world due to a variety of factors. At the top of the list is the improbable number of hot guys populating all areas of the town at any given time. But there is also the fact that the faces of most girls are pretty generic without any really distinguishing features. Unless that girl happens to be the older sister of a boy about to get into a relationship with another boy, or a girl who appears to be in competition for the affections of such a boy. The boy who would not BL is determined to do whatever it takes to avoid another boy falling for him and keep him from falling for a girl (when one with distinguishing features comes along) and giving his parents a grandchild. Konkici obviously knows their BL tropes and does not pull any punches. This is a gag manga in the vein of Nozaki-kun . But while Nozaki-kun gently pokes fun at shojo manga tropes and occasionally turns them on their heads, Zettai is taking jabs at our beloved boys who love boys. As someone who is perhaps a little too familiar with the BL genre, I can attest to the fact that Konkici’s punches land hard. Each chapter takes aim at and pulls apart a painfully common BL cliché. In addition to the high school best friend declaration of love, there’s the androgynous names/nicknames that generate misunderstandings, the guy passed out on the side of the road who gets taken home by a kind stranger, the night out with the guys where two (or more) of the guys are secretly dating, and even the guy who is a ghost who clings to the boy who can see him (which I really feel like is a shout-out to harada’s One Room Angel , perhaps the best of these stories). Where Zettai differs from Nozaki-kun is that the latter is a yon-koma manga with a punchline at the end of every page, while the former is more of a story manga. But the chapters are all short, only four pages each, so they end up feeling like slightly longer yon-koma manga with a little more space devoted to the set up of each silly BL situation. Nozaki-kun also pulls apart its beloved shojo through a shojo-esque story told in those four-panel pages, but Zettai has more of an explainer feel to it with our protagonist laying out the BL situations he notices and narrating his own techniques to escape being the hero of any of those stories so that he can remain a happily uncoupled mob character. He’s like an omniscient narrator at times, recounting the whys and wherefores of the new love springing up around him like flowers in bloom. The nice thing about his narrative voice is that there is absolutely no judgement of BL or the men constantly falling in love everywhere he turns. The book is clearly crafted from a place of affection; he is completely accepting of the love between boys. He just does not want to be a lover of boys himself. So when the guy next to him in class at university asks, with starry eyes, to copy his notes from last week, he realizes he’s in danger and deflects the guy’s attentions toward the guy in front of him, creating a new couple. Or so he believes. But it turns out that this scenario is the one where the first guy has a jealous non-student boyfriend, so it turns into that classic push-pull triangle. It’s no surprise that Konkici is well-versed in the beloved BL tropes given that they are a BL artist. They actually did a short-short for this jam-packed BL anthology I translated, Five Seconds Before We Fall In Love (a fun treat of a book that also has a story by Brain favourite Tsurutani Kaori ). If you’ve ever read any BL, you will recognize the tropes that fill these pages. But by having a narrator dissecting them from the outside, they become silly in the most loving way, making for a very fun read. I laughed out loud more than once. Even if you’re not a BL fan, you’re bound to at least giggle at this one because of the deadpan way Konkici presents ridiculous scenarios. You don’t need to know BL to know that an excessively polite and extremely hot high school boy with a background of roses wherever he goes is absurd. There’s also a “BL file” at the end of every chapter, which cracked me up for some reason. Like the BLers are subjects of criminal investigation, but the charges are “cool as a cucumber at work, but a big baby with Hakamada.” These BL files also lend a kind of distance to our hero’s assessments of the situation. He’s a third party, just calling the BL like he sees it. And he sees a lot of it. UPDATE: You’re in luck, friends and fujos of all genders! This got licensed by the great people at SuBLime , so now you can read it in English! 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Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email 3 thoughts on “ Zettai BL ni Naru Sekai VS Zettai BL ni Naritakunai Otoko: Konkici ” I watched the dorama last year and it’s so funny lool Reply I’ll have to check it out, thanks! Reply I watched the dorama last year and it’s so funny lool I’ll have to check it out, thanks! Reply I’ll have to check it out, thanks! every time the cat appears I get nervous 🤣 thanks for the review! Reply every time the cat appears I get nervous 🤣 thanks for the review! Leave a comment Cancel reply Subscribe Subscribed Brain Vs. Book Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now. Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now. Brain Vs. Book Subscribe Subscribed Sign up Log in Copy shortlink Report this content View post in Reader Manage subscriptions Collapse this bar Subscribe Subscribed Report this content View post in Reader Manage subscriptions Collapse this bar