Heartless

A quick rundown at the start: 1) Will you enjoy this if you like BL? Most likely, unless you can't stand graphic violence. 2) Can you enjoy this if you don't like BL? Certainly a possibility, if you can get over some gay sex scenes. 3) How much of a porn is this? When present, the sex scenes are very explicit, as much as hentai would be. But main focus of this work is story and majority of the pages are non-porn.What made me pick up this manga was the cover picture. Immediatelly I noticed high quality art, something with has noticeable contrast to the usual illustration quality of average yaoi. Now of course, this could have been a clickbait and the actual art of the manga could have been shit, but the drawing is indeed great. So much that I wish the author would work on some regular manga too. I also find it interesting how the author is able to portray both beauty and a gore - even as a straight guy I have to admit that the two protagonists are handsome - tastefully so, not just the typical exaggerated bishounen features. The combination of beautiful and repulsive is also the main theme of the work, both visually and metaphorically, as as the story offers a different point of view at a more playful/helpful side of a demon generally considered evil, while the exorcists that present themselves as morally superior have their own inner demons (*ba dum tss*). Admittedly, portraying devils as protagonists and the church as the bad guys by itself isn't anything new, but this manga has a knack for creating interesting characters that help reinforce the themes. That said, I could very much do without the cliché scene of "the villains are also gay so we can have rape fanservice", but other than that part it manages to dodge the usual cringy bad yaoi tropes (or as you could call it, yaoi in general tropes). It's unfortunate that the author's previous work depend too much on shock value instead creating more interesting stories as she is obviously capable, proved by this manga.