Egoistic Blue

Egoistic Blue © 2012 Mio Tennohji/Libre Publishing Co., Ltd.

“The best way of reproducing the ancient Greek temperament would be to cross the Scots with the Chinese.” – Hugh MacDiarmid

SuBLime, the yaoi imprint for Viz Media, releases a lot of titles that are only available to purchase digitally. This, Egoistic Blue, a story of gay love between two people from entirely different continents is one of them.

The leads of the story are Chiaki, a concierge at a five-star hotel in Japan, and Greek millionaire Harry Christophoros. While Harry is in the middle of tracking down a relative, he issues orders to Chiaki that he should be his private concierge during his stay. However, as the story moves on, so does the romantic relationship between the duo, and it is discovered that Chiaki is the relative Harry has been looking for (Chiaki’s grandmother had a relationship with Harry’s grandfather.) There is also a shorter story, “Say You Love Me,” featuring Harry’s assistant Carl re-encountering a former boyfriend, Morris, whom he broke up with seven years ago.

Regarding the main plot, it is arguable that it is not very realistic. This is not concerning the scenario as such, but more the character of Harry. Firstly, in these troubled financial times the idea of a Greek millionaire is stupid – unless of course Greece causes the Euro so much trouble that it results in hyperinflation. Secondly, “Harry” does not sound much like a Greek name. Having said this however, the most famous Harry in Britain has a Greek grandfather so maybe there is something in it after all.

In terms of the production of the book, there is a lot of switching of fonts, to represent the switch between the characters speaking Japanese and Greek. This is OK for the most part, but at times there are short passages in which Harry says something in Greek, which is written in the original Greek, followed by the Japanese translation underneath. I fail to understand the reason for including the original Greek, mainly because it is written in the Greek alphabet. As a result the sentence, “I love you”, is written above as, “Σαζ αγαπω”.By this point you will have already spotted the big problem. If the original language shared the same letters as English then you would have at least a vague idea of how to read that particular sentence, but unless you know the Greek alphabet then you are stumped.

Concerning the actual romantic and sexual aspects, it is mixed. There is plenty of action and a fair amount of scenes to get the average reader excited, although some short scenes are spoiled to due censoring, with certain bodily parts being whited out. Some of the better scenes are in the “Say You Love Me” story. Quite a lot of the action is rough and ready, although the plot in that is not as strong as that of the main story. It does not have a chance to expand in such a short space.

Overall, then, this one-shot yaoi collection is nothing special. The art is good, the plot is passable, and some of the more romantic pages have strong appeal, but it is let down in other parts here and there. An average outing.