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.

Comments

[musouka-manga.livejournal.com]

Eroica really isn't a BL manga at all, since any romance it has is in the eye of the beholder, and its plots really do center more around Cold War intrigue. It's also published in a shoujo magazine, not a BL magazine.

As far as characters go, Eroica falls quite squarely into "musouka's law of comedies" in that the characters are likable enough to watch, but not likable enough to feel bad when something bad happens to them. I love Klaus, mind you, but it'd be boring without Dorian around to piss him off.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Aye. I'd technically label it as shounen-ai (which is lighter on that front than BL) as any romance would be m/m, and all the crushing so far has been m/m, but it's pretty clear that what qualifies as the "main pairing" is never going to actually happen.

Klaus would be unbearable without Dorian to annoy him. Dorian would need to be strangled every 5 minutes without Klaus to insult him. And if I hadn't been promised Caesar would go away quickly (his friends were dull, but unannoying) there's no way I would have been able to finish the first volume.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Yep, and also don't forget it dates back to the late 70s, when shounen-ai was just getting started as a shoujo subgenre -- supposedly June was the first magazine strictly focused on shounen-ai, and it began publication two years after Eroica's debut. (Most of Yasuko Aoike's other series, including ones with more overt/serious BL elements, all ran in Princess magazine too; the few things that didn't run there came out under a different imprint of the parent company, so they may have her under some sort of exclusive contract.)

[mekosuchinae.livejournal.com]

....HAHAHA, OMG. What timing! I just finished volume one of From Eroica With Love last night with the intention of posting a review sometime tomorrow. *slightly weirded out*

I think part of the reason why I like Dorian and Klaus (separately, though I suppose together as well) is because they're such awful people. I find them hilarious, though if they were real, I would probably want to beat them both. (Poor James! DORIAN, YOU JERK.)

Also, I feel like you aren't giving LEOPARD SOLID the respect such an unspeakably awesome name deserves. I can't type that name in lower case; it's just too awesome. LEOPARD SOLID.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I find I can't really feel sympathy for James, actually.

Vol 2, though, was a lot better than Vol 1, I think.

[mekosuchinae.livejournal.com]

I'm not very fond of James, either, but I still wish Dorian would cut him a break. *g* (On the other hand, I also wish Dorian would fire his ass. Trying to kill teenagers is not a good idea.)

Yay! That's reassuring. Hopefully I'll find the time to read Vol 2 in the next day or so. :)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Vol 2 makes you wonder why Dorian hasn't fired him. I guess it could be a "not really that bad" thing, or something in their past, but I suspect James is just there for the comedy.

[iamthemurderer.livejournal.com]

Haha, I showed this manga to a couple of friends way back and they are hooked. Me? Well, I don't mind 70's art styles but Eroica is a little too outlandish for my tastes.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I doubt i'm ever going to obsessvely read it, but it's fun enough for small doses of the outlandishness.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid the closest we ever get to a recurring female character is G, who spends so much of his time convincingly cross-dressed that you can almost forget that he's actually male. But yes, story-specific minor female characters do come through pretty regularly -- I'm particularly fond of the story where Dorian and Klaus wind up surrounded by nuns...

If you ever wanted to see if Klaus without Dorian as a foil would be maddening, she's actually done a Z-centric side series that's just straightforward serious espionage, low on comedy and high on angst and violence, and a similarly dark standalone focused on Klaus. Trying to combine the two universes mentally, it's rather easy to see why Klaus is so annoyed all the time -- he's from a hard-boiled noirish world, and Dorian keeps dragging him into farce instead.

(I'm not aware of any translations of the Z books, but Der Freischütz has been scanlated at foolsandmadmen.)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I was actually surprised when Dorian established that G was, indeed, a male.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

G takes to his little "impersonate long-lost teenage heiress gig" so enthusiastically, one wonders if he was perhaps a closet crossdresser beforehand, or contemplating gender reassignment surgery after leaving NATO. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if someone had even managed to fic this with G as a girl who's been crossdressing as a boy all along in order to work with Iron Klaus -- it wouldn't stretch credulity much worse than most Eroica plots. (He's certainly much, much more passable than the times when Eroica and his gang wind up cross-dressing for reasons of plot...)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

This, of course, sent me off to The pit to see if there ere any fics based around this idea, but alas, it's there only if it's hidden as a subplot in a "Klaus finally give in" or "Dorian and Klaus admit their feelings as one is dying" fic.

Dorian crossdressing scares me. Then again, I manage just fine with Basara and Kyo Kara Maoh, both of which regularly have a tall, strpping, obviously male major supporting character crossdressing with semi-regularity...

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Dorian cross-dressing is about as convincing as you'd imagine a six-foot-tall, square-shouldered, long-faced man in drag to be. At least he doesn't need a wig?

(Mind you, wait until you get to book three, which features JAMESIE cross-dressing...)

As for fic, there is actual decent Eroica fic out there, although the Pit is sooooo not the first place I'd go looking. Much of it's shippy, no surprise, mostly Klaus/Dorian with a smattering of Klaus/Z. I've yet to find any "G is really a girl" fic, but I've seen people manage to pull off "Dorian is actually a virgin" and "Klaus really is Leonard's imagined Emperor of the Hamburg Night" scenarios...really, when your canon is so cracktastic, it's really hard to come up with a fic premise that's too silly to work.

(Although I've long found it rather interesting that while the canon here is pretty much light comedy crack with teasing romantic elements, an awful lot of the good fic is *extremely* dark and violent, with a lot of focus on the espionage side and a tone closer to Der Freischütz or the Z side-series instead. There's still usually some humor in all but the bleakest pieces, because Dorian is made of camp, but light caper plotlines seem relatively uncommon, especially in the really long, plot-intensive ones.)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Dorian cross-dressing is about as convincing as you'd imagine a six-foot-tall, square-shouldered, long-faced man in drag to be. At least he doesn't need a wig?

And "with an eyepatch," and you're describing Ageha from Basara. (Who is either bisexual but disinterested, or asexual but willing to put out either way, i've never really figured out which.)