My Dearest Patrolman

It’s quite fascinating how higly praised you can become in this circle for not including literal rape and for the characters few joke-y dialogue options instead of just queernager brooding lines. The bar is on the floor. But to be fair, numerous other works managed to dig under the bar still, so this manga definitely isn’t the worst option out there. It’s just a bit too… plain. Shallow, perhaps. We start with some basic introduction and then we have the classic “self-proclaimed straight guy gets rehabilitated into a gay” turn of events. Then the story pitches an extremely barebones “sad” backstory about how the delinquent hasa bad home situation because parents aren’t at home, trying to build up relationship between the cop and the hunk as meaningful as if we haven’t seen this story bazillion times already. Are the most basic tropes really enough for you as a reader? “I’m not like the other adults, I’m not like the other cops, I actually care about you as a person” boooooriiiing what’s next teacher captivating class of rowdy young people by being hip and cool? What is this, the 90’s? Look, I’m not expecting complex character studies in every work, and certainly not in comedies, but still please make your main characters at least a bit distinct, it would elevate the work so much regardless of the genre. Anyway back to story, or at least, the plotline. We then get some bantering, then sex, then some more bantering, then some more sex. Then a slight drama because remember, the characters are cops, might as well throw in a knife-wielding attack as a bit of action piece that the protagonists take down in a team-up since we haven’t filled our cliché quota yet. Then some more sex and that’s volume 1. If at least the banter was written with and actually entertaining, but no, it’s quite milquetoast. But hey we have two more volumes, surely things will get better, right? Now why would you even think that. Lol. Lmao. Volume 2 is about living together and of course, about a cat, you can’t have wholesome reddit chungus without a cat. But to give at least some credits, here it depicts the ways of gay couple living together more realistically, with stuff like colonoscopy exam and such. But yeah the structure still feels like just a filler towards sex scenes. No, seriously, does every cute interaction have to lead to fucking? Well no, it wouldn’t, because the last volume comes the closest to not feeling like just a smut. For a few chapters at least, so not for long enough to save the manga in my eyes. Also the claim of fluff is quite funny when the first chapter has a scene that goes like this - A: „Do you like men?“ B: „No, but I helped my gay friend find a boyfriend. Maybe I could consider being bi.“ *A proceeds to show his tongue down B’s throat unprompted* This is what passes as consensual vanilla fluff in these circles, be for real. You could have confessed your love and wait for the answer first without the assault man. And look, while I appreciate the *attempt* of greasing up the dialogue a little bit so it’s not so dry (as there is not much content beyond the flirting and then the sex), but it reads like wholesome chungus tumblr millennial posts. Like yeah I guess the characters are 30 and 40 so it fits, but man I almost audibly groaned when reading this manga. There are zero original thoughts in this manga, zero non-cliché situations, it is only good for when you want to jack off but you don’t want to feel bad for reading just straight porn so you require romcom filler present between the sex scenes. And the romcom bits aren’t even good either! The only benefits is that it doesn’t feature badly drawn grotesquely wrong anatomy but is that really what we should be praising BL for nowadays? Aim higher dear audience, I promise you there are way better stories out there with way more interesting characters. You don’t have to keep yourself tied up by low standards, if this manga feels well made to you I implore you to read more manga from more genres. But as much as I might sound like I’m dragging this manga through mud, and I am, it’s still among the less bad ones in comparison. So if you really insist on reading gay smut, you might as well read this one, sure.