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Mix Mix Chocolate is a collection of Hoshino Lily's short stories, generally connected by being hard and plotless. Does that sound a little surprising to readers who know her as the creator of androgynous, shag-free fairytales? Perhaps it shouldn't; Hoshino's work is never mundane, and plot-what-plot BL is just as eccentric as Hoshino-style fairytale BL. With one exception, the shorts in this volume are generally the plot-what-plot type, some being more indulgent than others. On the other hand, although the volume is not particularly story oriented the better shorts in this volume have interesting scenarios that frame all of the shagging. Make no mistake, though. Mix Mix Chocolate is Hoshino Lily's dirty side, and it will appeal mostly to fans who like their shagging uninhibited.
Hoshino has a unique style that is immediately recognizable. Her characters tend to have softer, rounder faces than the more angular prevailing style, with big mouths and narrow eyes. In her fantasy stories her guys, especially the uke, are typically androgynous, but in this volume the men and boys are more masculine. Her panels and pages are easy to read but occasionally she will do something a bit different or original, which is always a treat when the reader notices. I particularly love the busy, colorful cover on this volume, designed by Shoichi (there is a sweet winter picture of Ogasawara and Kakiuchi on the back); it really reflects Hoshino's original and playful style. Hoshino's manga gets mixed reviews. Readers tend to love her work or hate it, which will certainly be the case with Mix Mix Chocolate. The shorts in this volume are all about the bonking, so readers who want an actual story will get nothing out of this volume. Interesting though the individual vignettes may be these are still plot-what-plot stories. Girls who simply want to read man-sex will get the most out of this volume and enjoy the pretty, uncensored young boys. As for myself, while I fall mostly in line with the latter camp, I do enjoy a bit of shagging in my BL manga. Mix Mix Chocolate is enjoyable in that kinky, mindless way hard BL is meant to be, but only if kinky and mindless is what you're looking for. { boys love reviews - reviews - main } |
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In "Mix Mix Chocolate", the headliner, Ogasawara and Kakiuchi play a game
called Mix
Chocolates with the girls in their class. Both guys and the girls pass around a bag of regular chocolates containing one designer chocolate. The girl who picks out the
designer chocolate gets to make out with Kakiuchi, but if Ogasawara picks the designer chocolate he can make out with any girl he chooses. Once, Kakiuchi picked the
designer candy and went much further with Ogasawara than simply making out. This time around nobody picked the designer chocolate. What are the odds that one of the boys
rigged the game? In "Tomari ni Oide (Preparing to Sleepover)", Akiyoshi shows up at Kouichi's front door to sleep over yet again. Kouichi tells Akiyoshi that he should spend
the night with his other friends instead of staying at Kouichi's so much. Upset, Akiyoshi goes straight to bed, but Kouichi can't leave Akiyoshi alone to sleep. "Gokun Milk" is a
short piece about a cat-boy named Jam and his master, Asahina. You can guess what the milk refers to. In "Kiss no Chikara (The Power of a
Kiss)" the spirit of Shirou's potted plant takes human form at night. When Shirou gives the spirit a kiss, its human form becomes permanent. Shirou isn't too sure how he feels
about living with a fairy, but the more he gets to know the spirit the more he warms up to the idea. "Yasashii Kokoro wo Dare no Mono (Who's Kind Heart is This?)" is about the
secret relationship between Taniguchi and his daughter's tutor, Suzuki-sensei. "Hito Hada (Skin)" is about Emori, a student who works a secret job at a brothel, and Kojima, a
classmate who comes to visit him at his job. The collection ends with "Hakushukassai no Naka de (Within the Applause)", in which Matsuura finds Kisaragi caught in the
middle of a storm hunting for a special item he lost in the mud. When Matsuura discovers that Kisaragi's special item is a pen Matsuura lent him, he is immensely curious to
know just how much that pen means to Kisaragi.
With the exception of "Kiss no Chikara", which is just a straightforward and sweet fantasy short, the stories in Mix Mix Chocolate are hard and
uncensored. You'll find no cones of glowing light here, but plenty of man-parts, man-fluids, and close-ups. Some are harder than others; "Yasashii Kokoro" is relatively light (a
few fluids, no genitals), while "Gokun Milk" is downright slutty. The sex is not completely random, as there are some simple, usually convincing relationship dynamics in each
short that give the bonking some context. The more interesting stories have curious scenarios, such as the Mix Chocolate game in "Mix Mix Chocolate", Emori's part-time
traditional brothel job in "Hito Hada", and Taniguchi and Suzuki's rather inappropriate relationship in "Yasashii Kokoro". In contrast, Matsuura and Kisaragi's somewhat
drawn-out pen-sex in "Hakushukassai" and Akiyoshi and Kouichi's slumber party shagging in "Tomari ni Oide" have been done before, or at least approached from a similar
angle. The shorts in Mix Mix Chocolate may be first and foremost an excuse to draw man-sex, but being framed in an interesting situation makes the stories a bit
more enjoyable and memorable.