Hero Heel Volume 1 (Yaoi)

The build up of the story was fascinating. It moved quickly but took the growing relationship slowly, well slowly for a yaoi manga, which I liked. I like it when a story builds up to something special. I didn't like how Hero Heel 1 ended but now I can hardly wait for Hero Heel 2. At the end I wanted to cry along with poor Minami! The sequel looks promising and I hope it arrives soon, though it looks slated to come out June/July 2008. My suggestion is, purchase HeroHeel#1 but don't read it until you get the sequel, that way, you don't have to wait another 7 months for the cliffhanger to be answered. :D

I love this manga and have reread it several times, so I was surprised to find a lot of the reviews were fairly negative. This is a yaoi manga by women for women, not a story about real life gay issues. The hero's behavior is childish at times, but his life is transforming--he is trying to deal with (1) reevaluating his opinion of fantasy children's tv shows as inferior and (2) reevaluating his sexuality from straight to gay. And, of course, after some drinking with friends, a lot of people don't make very mature choices. What do I love about this yaoi so much? I think the way the straight uke and gay seme who play hero and villian respectively in the tv series interact is excellent from the start. There is challenge and conflict, tinged with admiration, from their first interchange, and the tension and attraction builds from there. The seme's feelings are unclear--we don't see into his mind, and we, like the hero/uke, are confused by the mixed messages. The costumes for the tv show are very hot, actually the characters look amazingly sexy all the time. The sexual tension and sex is excellent. Both seme and uke act like hero and heel, which makes what could have been an unbalanced relationship more equal. I look forward to seeing how the two work out their relationship.

In case you were wondering, yes, Hero Heel will be a multi-volume series, as glaringly evident in the sadistic cliffhanger Tateno throws at us at the end of the volume. However, when we will see the next volume is in question. Hero Heel was published only last year in Japan, so the fact that we received it so quickly here, as wonderful as that is, only means that we now have to wait for the subsequent volumes to be released there before we will see them ourselves. Anyway, this Yaoi series is Makoto Tateno's follow-up to her widely popular (and one of my favorite) series, Yellow. This is evident in the character and panel designs, as well as in her unique style of arranging dialogue and thoughts. This is essentially where the similarities end, though. Minami (the Taki of Hero Heel) is quite different from the uke character in Tateno's previous work. He comes to terms with his attraction to Sawada (the Goh of Hero Heel) much more quickly, and is actually the one who pursues the relationship. Sawada for his part is a colder customer, and while he is equally as open about his sexuality as his Yellow predecessor, he is not nearly as charismatic (so far, anyway). If you haven't read Yellow and have no clue what I am talking about, not to worry. These two series have nothing to do with each other aside from having the same author (though I wouldn't complain about seeing any of the Yellow cast show up in this series; like maybe Kazuki, the actor from volume 2? *nudge nudge?*). Hero Heel is about a young actor, Minami Masaki, who on a whim auditions for a role in a super hero TV series, and suprisingly for him, gets cast as the lead. His co-star, Sawada Kazuomi, is an experienced actor who sees right through Minami's apathy about the role and works to bring out Minami's talent as an actor, however coldly he goes about it. Minami is subesequently drawn ever closer to Sawada, despite the fact that he has never been attracted to a man before. The writing is a testament to Tateno's skill in creating serious emotional tension with not only action sequences and dialogue, but also self-reflection of the main character. My complaints are few. First, there is the presentation of Minami's playboy image. This is not drawn out at all, only sort of thrown in at the end to explain his coming to terms with his feelings about love and sex up to this point. It could have been done better, and I hope Tateno has plans to flesh this aspect of the character out in future volumes. Second, is the repetition of character designs. For those familiar with Yellow, the character designs are very much the same, and while I like the style very much (the way Tateno draws eyes is simply gorgeous), Sawada and Minami look basically like Goh and Taki with different hairstyles. It is also difficult in parts to distinguish some of the characters from each other. The two supporting actors who are introduced later in the volume look very similar to Sawada and Minam