manga: From Eroica With Love Vol 1-2

[meganbmoore]

From Eroica With Love is a 1970s shounen-ai for (A) having none of the shounen-ai and yaoi tropes and standards that annoy me and (B) punching said tropes and standards in the face a lot. *slight rewording involved in (B)* Thankfully, I was also warned about the horrors of the first volume.

Caesar, Sugar and Leopard (the full names are even worse) are college students and best friends. In Peru, they somehow acquired superhuman abilities. I think there was an old man in a cave involved. I’m not sure. The three have a telepathic link, Caesar is a supergenius, Sugar can see the future, and Leopard has the generic physical enhancements. They have adventures and stuff. Sugar and Leopard were ok, but I’m trying to forget Caesar existed.

During the course of their adventures (or something) they come across Earl Dorian red Gloria, a flamboyantly gay aristocrat with an interest in art who fixates of Caesar. Because Caesar is pretty. Dorian is also Eroica, head of a gang of art thieves. Dorian decides to make Caesar his latest acquisition and kidnaps him. Sugar and Leopard charge to the rescue, but not before Dorian has turned Caesar into we weepiest, girliest uke to ever weep and employ the full force of a dozen stereotyped shoujo heroines.

*Megan clenches book. Megan eyes apartment door. Megan wonders if it is possible to throw a manga with enough force to break through a door.*

Thankfully, I was not misled, and the mangaka soon realized that Caesar would drive any sane person to hurling books through doors, and replaces the trio with Klaus Heinz Von Dem Eberbach, a NATO agent who often finds himself after the same work or art and Dorian. Klaus is an equal opportunity hater who applies his hatred to any group he encounters if they cross him, and loves to exile subordinates who displease him to Alaska. He and Dorian are both surrounded by incompetents. Both characters are annoying. While Dorian is definitely flamboyantly gay, he doesn’t code as anything but male even remotely, tends to make poor young things fall for him and ditches them the second they do (and shamelessly uses the blatant affections of his skinflint accountant, James, though he never follows through on the tease) and lives to aggravate everyone he meets, especially Klaus. Klaus, as mentioned before, is an equal opportunity hater, and that applies to nationality (probably race, too) gender and sexual orientation. And likely other things. Though, to give him more fairness than he really deserves, he’s surrounded by incompetence. Except for Sorian. Who actually tries to make him mad.

Individually, they’d be unbearable, but they complement each other well. I’m not sure I’ll ever strictly “like” Dorian-most tropes that involve using people, especially his “use and discard when through with,” hit my “*bleep* no” buttons-but he’s very entertaining, and at least, unlike most with that trope, he’s honest about it. I’m more inclined to like Klaus, even though he probably doesn’t deserve it.

It is shounen-ai, but, based on these 2 volumes (and what I’ve been told) not in the romantic way most shounen-ai/yaoi is. More accurately, it’s an adventure/comedy/chase caper that just happens to have a gay lead. I’m not sure it’ll ever be near a favorite, but it’s entertaining enough to read more of. And while I realize it’s probably far too much to hope for a regular female character, I hope we continue with the steady stream of female spies and thieves in Dorian and Klaus’s various adventures.