Product Description: Minami is a young actor who has been cast as the main character of a super-hero TV program. Although he takes the job half heartedly, thinking of it as a mere children's show, he's soon taken by the talent of his costar, Sawada. One day, Minami stumbles upon Sawada kissing a man! Deeply confused, he's unable to hide his growing attraction for him. A hero's love is always filled with trials!
Exciting! Fascinating Read! 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
"Hero" or "Heel"--the tv actors in vol. 1 of this story are both! 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.
So, so While the story had an interesting premise I found that I wasn't drawn into the story as in other works that I have read. So much happens so fast that one can not really get into the characters and why they do what they do. There seems to be little forshadowing so the actual reason behind the characters actions is confusing. Hopefully the next volume will be better (if there is one).
Not too promising! First of all, I hated Tateno's YELLOW, so if you liked it, ignore this review. If you didn't, this looks somewhat better.
The first half really raised my hopes. Minami is a struggling young "serious" actor -- one year from his "succeed or give up" deadline -- who nabs a one-year stint as the hero of a kid's superhero show. His condescending attitude towards the material earns him the contempt of the "villain" Sawada, a five-year veteran of such shows who takes his work seriously. Minami realizes the work is harder than he thought, and struggles to live up to his role, wondering why playing the hero is so hard for him. He is inspired by his desire to become Sawada's equal as an actor, and earn his acknowledgement and respect. His youthful arrogance, ignorance, and bigotry are balanced by self-reflection and a willingness to take correction and improve, which makes him - at first -- likeable and worth rooting for. The story focuses a lot on the actual work of making a super-hero show. We learn little about any but the two leads, but the "Show Must Go On" commitment of the cast and crew is well conveyed and infectious.
So infectious that, by the ending, TRANS DIMENSIONAL AIR WARRIORS was the only thing I still cared about. The moment Minami's flustered interest in Sawada's homosexuality turns to love, we start getting smirkingly implausible scenes that read like junior high school fan-fic. Sawada's behavior starts to look more like demeaning, co-dependent gamesmanship than reluctant mentoring, and Minami laps up his contemptuous treatment with creepy obsequiousness. The ending leaves poor Minami completely gutted of credibility, neither hero nor "heel", merely a scribble on a page being jerked around by a manga-ka.
DISCUSSION of ENDING including SPOILERS
In another manga, there is an actor-hero who criticizes a director for "belittling human emotions for effect". Exactly my problem with this ending. It's designed to produce maximum angst, but is so painfully contrived as to be devoid of any honest emotion. The serious issues of sexual coercion and the vulnerability of gay men to blackmail and discrimination are served up spicy for a spot of sadistic fan-service; after which the victim wags his finger and says; "Don't do that again, young man. That . . . hurt my feelings. No more sex for you till BOOK TWO!" That instantly induces horrible remorse, because men capable of true remorse in the first place commit sex-crimes all the time - especially after one whole beer. Yeesh! The incident is taken seriously purely as the requisite excuse to make the hero SUFFER HORRIBLY, yet the fact that it is at the same time portrayed as a temporary glitch in the dating game makes such hand-wringing impossible to endure with a straight face. BTW, this is same manga-ka who, in YELLOW, offered an unrepentant rapist as hero, and teen-prostitution as casual fan-service. But NOW coercion and exploitation are really really bad, huh? Till when - Book 3? Like Minami at the press conference scene, it is so transparently insincere it's hysterical. It's a forty-five minute drive from the bookstore to my house, and I was still laughing when I got home.
Future developments could render some of this retroactively plausible. (Mental illness? Alien mind control? Poisoned beer?) But the manga-ka has her work cut out for her. How did Minami go from manfully trying to EARN Sawada's regard and then love, to bootlicking submissiveness and contemptible blackmail? How did his idea of "love" go from a yearning for equality and respect, to abject desire for a one-time quickie, and then back again? What limited explanation we DO get for Minami's behavior here - in the final flashbacks -- makes things even more ridiculous. Which doesn't exactly raise one's hopes.
A bit disappointing ,more like 3.5 I was excited to get this one since I really like the YELLOW series by the same manga writer.But I am a bit disappointed with this one.I feel the story is rushed and character development is left out.It feels as if Minami is a girl.If he wasnt gay before, I dont think he would you know.I have gay friends and most of them noticed that that charater is a not a male.
What I do like is the illustrations and the size of the manga itself.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Not Available Comics
Trevor
