I write a bunch of book reviews, and review-ish writings on my Pillowfort.  Maybe I should port some of these over?  I picked out a review I wrote in 2024, and applied light editing.  If readers engage with it, then I might do it more often.

I Want to Be a Wall, by Honami Shirono

Yuriko is an aro ace fujoshi.*  Gakurouta is a gay man in love with his straight childhood best friend.  They just got married.  Bam! Premise established in 2 pages.  What follows is a dramedy where they deal with Japanese-style amatonormativity.  They think they’re fake-married because they’re not in love with each other.  But the manga wishes to show that the marriage is real despite their own belief otherwise.  They really are close partners who love and support each other, bringing each other happiness–just not in the specific way demanded by society.

*”Fujoshi” is the Japanese term for fans of boys love (BL) manga, especially female fans.

This type of marriage (a lavender marriage?) certainly seems like a rich vein for conflict and catharsis, it’s a bit of a wonder that you rarely ever see it in English ace fiction.  I think in US culture, the lavender marriage has a lot less cultural currency, and is perceived much more as a compromise–incompatible with a happy ever after.  And so, in our culture we ask “How do you even write good drama centering an aro ace character????” while ignoring the perfectly obvious answer.  We should be telling stories about relationships like these, and having them in real life too.

But that’s just my reaction to the broader details of a Japanese story from a US perspective.  To talk about the more specific details of this story…  The main dynamic is Yuriko’s manic pixie to Gaku’s quiet serious.  It also shows a lot of their interactions with friends and relatives, who provide a source of amatonormativity, as well as examples of how amatonormativity can negatively impact even people who seek more conventional relationships.

Yuriko being a fujoshi feels like one of those things that’s counter to preconceptions of aces.  But the story compellingly argues that it makes perfect sense.  And if you’ve been around ace spaces long enough, you may have already known that it makes perfect sense.  For Yuriko and other BL fangirls, BL is a form of escapism to a fantasy world where women play no part.  Her role in the story is that of a wall, only observing from the outside.

There story also has a bit of juxtaposition between BL fiction and gay men IRL, but my biggest disappointment is that it’s not interested in exploring that conflict.  It is mostly grounded in the fujoshi perspective.  Gaku has a permanent unrequited rush, and to me this reads more like a BL trope than a grounded depiction of real gay men.  I mean, it serves the story well enough.