Fake, vols. 1-7 (Sanami Matoh)

[chomiji]

At the beginning of this police buddy series, handsome young Caucasian-Oriental investigator Randy MacLean has just been assigned to the same New York City precinct as brash, good-looking detective Dee Laytner, who is told that this is his new partner. Dee, who is obnoxiously confident and decisive, forcefully romantic, and pretty completely uninhibited, begins crushing on his new partner almost immediately. Quiet, steady Randy - whom Dee quickly starts calling by his Japanese name, Ryo - is extremely confused by his partner's displays of affection, which rapidly escalate to stolen kisses, but doesn't seem to be able to get mad at him. As they solve crimes (yes ... they - fight - crime!), often risking their lives, Dee's interest in Randy remains fierce and steady, while Randy is gradually forced to confront the truth about his own romantic preferences.

The story is further complicated (or enriched, depending on your point of view) by the two orphans Randy takes under his wing. Bikky, the mixed race son of a drug lord who dies during Dee and Randy's first case together, is ferociously protective of his new not-quite-father and resents Dee's advances. He also has a puppyish crush on Carol, the young blond pickpocket who joins Randy's household a bit later. Far more unlikely is the fact that Carol - at 13 years old to Bikky's 10 - actually takes this quite seriously and seems to return his affection. Bikky and Carol's adventures with their school friends - and sometimes with criminals - often intersect with Dee and Randy's work.

Let's face it - as a crime series, Fake is pretty damn silly. The portrayal of New York City is often so far off that it's utterly hilarious. The way that the other cops tolerate Dee's over-the-top demonstrations of affection for his partner - and the equally showy antics of another young officer who has a crush on Dee - is ridiculous. The Bikky-Carol storylines sometimes have some rather squicky elements, especially when they flash forward to where Carol is 18 and Bikky 15. But the relationship between Dee and Randy has an emotional intensity - and even realism - that completely appeals to me, and by the end of this short series, I was definitely in my happy place.

Potential readers should note that this shounen-ai series becomes yaoi toward the end of the final volume. The rating is "Older Teen - 16+" - but not everyone's parents will be equally calm about what's shown "onscreen" at that point.

Fake, vols. 1-7 (review)

Actually, those Dee/Randy sex scenes - especially the last one - are really interesting in terms of storytelling technique. If you know what's likely to be going on, it's pretty clear what's happening, frame by frame, but a naive reader is not likely to be able to get more than the basic information that they take their clothes off (well, Dee mostly rips off Randy's - he's like that) and have sex - somehow. That's probably how the publisher got away with the rating.

As noted, the BIkky-Carol flash-forward love scene, which stops before any clothing is removed (well, she's in a demurely sexy nightie the whole time), is rather more disturbing to me. OK, Carol, you waited 'til you were 18, and I doubt Bikky is about to complain - but he's a child of 15, young lady! You're now an adult, and you need to learn to think with your brain instead of your crotch ... . (Got news for you, Matoh-sensei: it's still statutory rape in most jurisdictions even if the junior partner is the boy.)

Another thing that's interesting about the series and my reaction to it is how little lingering angst there is. Yes, there are angsty situations - where Dee is trapped in a school building that's rigged to blow up and Randy has to wait for him outside, for example, and when Randy has the chance to confront the man who was responsible for his parents' deaths - but neither character has a lot to regret about his past decisions, and their self-images are in pretty good shape. So although I enjoyed it immensely, I don't think I'm going to be spinning Fake stories in my imagination the way I do Saiyuki and SDK stories. There's simply not much left to resolve, and therefore no story.

The drawings are a little odd, probably because of the time in which they were drawn (original publication was in Japan in the mid 1990s) - they're slightly stylized in a way that jars a bit with the NYC setting and police theme.

If you've read and liked the series, you'll probably enjoy the author's little "two years later" special, which smillaraaq pointed out to me. Thanks, smilla! The drawings in this more recent piece are noticeably more refined (to my eyes, anyway) than those of the original series.

Comments

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I read the first volume, but couldn't take it because the art style means all the faces bear a decided resemblance to a guy I knew at the time who was a huge jerk, and I refused to read a manga that reminded me of him with every panel. :)

[chomiji]

Yeah, that would be pretty off-putting, wouldn't it? It's too bad - it has a very sweet ending.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

Fake is a case where the key relationship worked for me, even if pretty much everything else didn't. I mean, seriously "DEEE-SEMPAI!!!!!!"?????????

Can you imagine -- not even real cops -- how the cast of Law and Order or NYPD Blue would react?????

[chomiji]

Actually, I have to smack the translator for that - they could have come up with some kind of workaround for that scene instead of having him doing something so terribly Japanese.

But yeah, the whole "above and beyond gay-friendly" workplace was pretty bizarre. Even here in Tacky Park, where the mayor is gay and out, I doubt the police - or anybody else - would think that was how you act at work ... .

There's something appealing about Dee as a fictional character, even though in real life, I'd have to smack the snot out of him. His constancy in the face of Ryo's non-reacting confusion was somehow gallant by the end of the series, and I felt like he'd earned the final encounter. I liked Ryo's true confessions scenes with Diana, too - I've had very similar conversations with gay friends, and it made me wonder the mangaka had also.

[chomiji]

Caroline, with a teen's forthrightness, declared flatly "I hate Berkley Rose!"

[chomiji]

So did you talk to me about Under Grand Hotel already? Sounds vaguley familiar.

[chomiji]

Hmm ... maybe I'll look at it at Katsucon.

SDK had one hideously cartoonish black character (Black Scorpion) and one plausible, noble-looking one (Taihaku, which ironically means "Great White" - he had white hair and wore white and was a "noble enemy"-type ...). But aside from that, I can't say I've run into too many black characters ... Oh! Tōsen in Bleach, of course. But he's pretty nicely drawn.

[chomiji]

Heh, try finding a Jewish character in any of the genres we've been discussing ... both the Young Lady and I are tickled by the canon fact that Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat (X-Men) is Jewish, and even though Spike Spiegel in Cowboy Bebop isn't played as Jewish, his name and appearance shout "Jewish boy!" to me ... .

[chomiji]

Yeah, I found that list! I was just gently trying to open the issue about whether it's worse to be considered interestingly exotic, so that people try to represent you in fiction etc., or whether it's worse to be either competely left out or even worse, typically demonized. All the choices are pretty unattractive, actually.

(I just remembered another book you might well like: The Sword of Winter, by Marta Randall. Also her SF duology, Journey and Dangerous Games. Her people are as badly messed up as the Saiyuki boys, and use that comparison very deliberately. Incest, mad science, abuse ... .)

[chomiji]

Well, the thing is, it doesn't make me think so much of our Saiyuki boys because Dee's instant and unrelenting crush is so much the defining factor of the whole thing. With 585, it's like both of them are Ryo, unable to decide whether or not they're attracted to each other. Dee's constant optimism and brashness is somewhat Gojyo-esque, but he's much more confident than Gojyo allows himself to be when it counts - that "Don't worry, dude, I do!" line when Ryo is protesting up'til the last minute that he doesn't know what to do ... it strikes me as very realistic and very Dee, but Gojyo faced with someone he really cared about would probably be a little less smugly self-assured at that moment. That's how he'd talk before things got serious, if that makes any sense ... .

Yeah, I'm still getting used to the various manga drawing styles. It's a miracle that I persisted at all, starting with SDK, where Kamijyo crams little teeny reaction shots into the corners and stuff.

Yup, I think the reason that I rarely feel like doing any fic with Diana Wynne Jones, for example, is I usually feel very satisfied that she's run through all the important bits. (But I'm actually working on a bit of DWJ fic right now, following a suggestion of bad-mushroom's, because The Homeward Bounders has a somewhat open ending.)

Errr, do you have any clues about what day that stuff showed up on yaoi_daily? That's the most gods-be awful place to find anything. If anyone ever wondered whether there was such a thing as too much smut, I'd point 'em over there!

[chomiji]

Well, you can tell how much BL reading I've done, then! Gravitation was pretty much the other way 'round, with Shuichi pestering the crud out of Yuki, and in Legal Drug, it was both of them sort-of interested in each other but neither really acting on it.

Re Bikky as Goku: well, yeah, but Goku wouldn't consider interfering in the 585. Plus Ryo is really Hakkai plus Sanzo to Bikky.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was getting at - it would be much easier for Gojyo to use those kinds of lines on his usual pick-ups, rather than on Hakkai.

[chomiji]

Well, Shuichi's such a little twerp that I don't know if he'd ever given serious thought to what gay sex could mean ... .

Ryo's not so active, not so quick-tempered, slightly shorter. But if I remember, he's actually slightly older, isn't he? (It's trivial, IIRC - like a year or something.) And he's certainly not girly.

The age/height thing is one of the things that makes me snicker about my Kyo/Yukimura fixation: Yuki's 37 to Kyo's 28, but he's either 4 or 6 inches shorter (you know about the Kyo/Kyoushirou situation, right?), and it's arguable who's the bigger perv ... .

[chomiji]

Yeah, I can't quite picture Shuichi and Eiri's life together. Neither of them has enough common sense ... they'll have to hire a housekeeper, and maybe someone to do the finances as well.

[chomiji]

Yeah, he probably does! They are so massively dysfunctional ... .

I think you're probably right ... mind you, 1 inch in height is not an awful lot of difference at approx. 6 feet! I think it's probably Hakkai's speech and his domesticity. I don't know that the contrast between youkai!Hakkai and housefrau!Hakkai is as spicy - genderfuck-wise - in the Japanese cultural context as it is here in the U.S. Certainly many 585 fangirls find the image of Hakkai in youkai form doing anything domestic - like the dishes - irresistably kinky and sexy.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Ah, here you go, I conveniently still had them in history so I didn't need to go trawling through the subject lines month-by-month...

http://community.livejournal.com/yaoi_daily/4616594.html

That's the most recent posting, from last October -- there's an index of all the older links at the top of it so you can go back and start from the beginning. There's some nifty little bits of backstory from Dee's rookie days and memories of Ryo as a young teen on summer vacation, all wrapped up in a new case and their relationship moving along to a new level...IIRC there's really nothing much racier so far than a few kisses, although it's nice to see Ryo getting to be the instigator some of the time now! There's a bit of gore in one of the crime scenes, though.

The lack of tags does make it pretty frustrating going through the archives, doesn't it? Have you explored there much beyond the Antique Bakery DJ? The one other nifty thing I've found trawling through there recently is a gorgeous, obscure Holmes/Watson series, complete with a mangafied version of The Adventure of the Three Garridebs!

[chomiji]

Finally got a moment to go through all those! Yeah, too bad it wasn't a bit naughtier - I really like her when she gets naughty. She has the best-looking kisses I've seen so far in manga. The last scene in vol. 7 was really awfully good that way - very sensual. (I can imagine Ryo was protesting at various points, though, until the sensations got the bets of him - I mean, he got really freaked out that time Dee was licking him all over ... .) But those were interesting stories she was telling.

[chomiji]

(Heh, clicked the wrong button.)

Yeah, the lack of tagging is such a pain! I'm going to have to do a post on the AB DJs at some point - I was going to link to a post on someone else's site, where she had them all organized, but she never wrote back, so I'll have to steal her work and duplicate it.

And you know, I'm so dumb - I never thought of doing the subject lines. I was flipping through screen by screen, which is why I finally went "There's too much of this smut!!!"