MY SECRET AFFECTION

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REVIEWS

• 

  raifuresu

  30/100
  In a world where everyone has turned gay, a girl struggles with being straight. What could go wrong with this premise?

  Everything. Everything could go wrong.

  (This review contains spoilers!)

  For starters, the only half-decent way a premise like this one could MAYBE work out, was if the target audience were homophobic straight people and the author had as their goal to make those people put themselves in the place of LGBT people so they could, maybe, yank some empathy out of them, so they could start seeing LGBT people as... you know, people. Even then, something like this could easily backfire for many reasons that I assume you can imagine.

  Well, this clearly wasn't the goal anyway, so let's start from here.

  Kazusa is a girl who lives in a world where same-sex attraction is the norm. When I started reading this mess I thought the world simply was like that from the beginning, but nope. The world turned that way around 30 years ago when, I kid you not, a meteor hit Earth and due to the effects (?) of said meteor's influence, suddenly straight people's sexuality was swapped and now everyone is gay. Many divorces happened.

  At that time, there was an astronaut in a mission to space, so when he came back he was not influenced by the meteor's energy (?) and continued to be straight. That man is Ayumu's grandpa. Ayumu is Kazusa's childhood friend. So grandpa became their town token straight person.

  Back to the present, Kazusa is struggling with the fact that she's heterosexual and oh-my-god-what-will-people-think?? and she's in love with her best (male) friend, Ayumu. She wants to confess her feelings to him but is scared of judgment and such. Later she gets to know another boy who's also straight, and everything ends with a lesson about how the world is filled with all kinds of different people and that's okay and love matters more than sexual orientation. That would be okay if it weren't for the fact that after Kazusa confesses her feelings to Ayumu, he says he's not heterosexual, but she's still the one he loves most and wants her to be with him until the end of his life. That, after Ayumu's grandma, who had divorced his grandpa because she was in love with a woman, showed up saying she had divorced her wife because despite being a lesbian now, she realized Ayumu's grandpa was still the person she loved most (even though he's dead now). No matter how you look at this, the only bs message I could take from this ending is that you can still be with someone of the opposite sex even if you're gay because love and sexuality aren't that deeply related and love is stronger anyway. If this isn't homophobic (and overall stupid), I don't know what it is.

  That's it, this manga is absolutely ridiculous. Even if you don't consider the homophobic premise, why the hell would a world where everyone was straight 30 years ago suddenly get mad at the few people who are straight now? It makes no sense. And I didn't even tell you how reproduction in this world happens yet! Well, I'll tell you now: "Since the meteors fell, same-sex couples are able to conceive, too. Well, like, science hasn't been able to explain it yet. But they say the one whose love is strongest gets pregnant." That's it. It's the power of love, fellas. And did I mention the meteor has the shape of a heart?

  I rest my case.

  Story - 1/10 absolutely terrible
  Characters - 2/10 as bland as you can imagine
  Art - 7/10 kinda generic for a shoujo manga, but pretty. Definitely this manga's only strong point.
  Overall - 3/10 it was so ridiculous it made me laugh at some parts so it wasn't a total waste of time I guess.

  Continue on AniList
• 

  Namifui

  35/100
  A series I didn't expect to have as much lost potential as it did

  Quick bias disclaimer: I am queer(lesbian) myself and I initially picked up this manga for a hate-read to make fun of because of the absurd premise, but was pleasantly then unpleasantly surprised by it.

  For clarity(and to save myself losing my mind typing parenthesis) I'm just going to call out the metaphors, but in the original story all instances of gay and straight are reversed.

  Overall I have mixed feelings about this manga but they're mostly negative. I do think it should be given credit for doing a couple things well.

  +I really liked the way it portrayed the isolation and alienation experience by closeted gay/lesbians in a heteronormative/homophobic society and the way that can lead to internalised homophobia and self-hatred. I know it's memed but the "I am heterosexual" panel is like weirdly similar to how I've felt at times about my own sexuality.

  -I do feel it is a bit like it's too obvious portraying the straight grandpa as a literal astronaut often in his spacesuit. It's also pretty stupid as to why he's still straight even though the 'substance' emitted by the meteorites is likely still in the air.

  +It's also really good at showing the pain of falling in love with someone incompatible (Tsukiko and especially Shiina's crushes), though this is kinda diluted by the awful ending.

  +The portrayal of seeking comfort and relatability in "forbidden love" tropes in media, even if it's heterosexual media also really hits close to home. Especially given that the main couple are some of the people that worked on that specific play scene. And in general just seeking representation in art is pretty realistic.

  +The art is pretty cute. It's not phenomenal but it was nice to look at.

  Sadly that's kind of all it has going for it for the pluses. Now the bad…

  -The story is incredibly cookie -cutter shoujo. It'd be fine if it pulled off its message but the writing isn't good enough to allow that.

  -The characters are incredibly bland as well. Tsukiko was the only one I liked and even then she had like a minor bit of extra complexity.

  -The main premise is just stupid... A meteorite that fell only 30 years before the main story just feels too recent to change society that strongly.

  -It also felt disgusting having people become gay because of "a substance" that the meteorites emanate in the air. At best insensitive at worst offensive. I genuinely don't understand what the author was thinking making the meteorites be heart shape and appear as a laitmotif in so many panels. I think every chapter shows them at least once. And just
  having a one-off line that homosexual couples can just get pregnant and the one that does is the one that "loves the other more" felt so out of left field. at least just say like top and bottom even that would've made more sense.

  -It also feels wrong(at least to me) to completely treat gay and lesbian couples as the same. Yeah that meteorite might have made everyone gay but those gender roles are not going away that easily.

  -I also don't get the point of this manga as a whole. I thought it's trying to dumb down the gay experience for a straight audience, but the ending just disproves that... And even then would a straight audience pick up on those metaphors for those experience without knowing of them? Would someone unwilling to read a queer story even try to look for that parallel?

  -The story is incredibly inconsistent. It does some things well that lead you to expect it to get better and then it slaps you in the face with incredibly poor execution or a stupid plot point. it was so bad I wasn't even surprised by the awful ending since i expected things to go downhill again.

  -Finally, the ending: the story ends with the homosexual male mc mulling over the female mc's confession and ultimately deciding that "actually sexuality is bullshit. """love""" is what actually matters" which is so stupid. literally in the scene before his grandpa's wife comes back to visit his grave. the grandparents got divorced because of their incompatibility which was really well displayed until she just divorces her wife for no reason decades after because she remembered him telling her to love who she truly has feelings for???? I expected this to be bad, but I didn't expect it to have so much failed potential. The intentions were there, but they were poorly researched, poorly written and poorly executed.

  Overall I think it's a 3.5/10 and not worth reading

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