Koi ga Ochitara

I am holding this up as an example of how good BL can be. If you, like me, put this off because you were fooled by the horny cover into assuming that this was just PWP — purge the thought from your mind and go read this manga and the sequel. We have seduction. We have a good pace. We have romance. We have consent. We have fantastic art. And —holy shit— do we have passion. It all starts from a fairly goofy and idealistic scenario, but not one extreme enough to be unrealistic, and progresses at a good, steady pace. The intimate scenes are beautifullydone, too, and Ueda does a wonderful job of conveying Yuuki and Takafumi's emotions and feelings through them. I cannot overstate how good Takafumi is. The man just knows how to seduce. Did he date women until falling for Yuuki? Sure. How does he work out that he's attracted to Yuuki? Actual quote: "It seems that gender doesn't matter very much in my eyes when it comes to love." Beautiful, immaculate. Is he a bit corny sometimes? Oh hell yes, and it's adorable when Yuuki gets flustered about it because he isn't used to being treated with so much care and love by a partner. And Takafumi isn't perfect, either! Despite his age and experience, he still gets insecure and jealous, though it's treated with actual more common sense and realism here, rather than the usual high-drama, zero-brains approach of jealousy in BL. That being said, there are some relationship problems here and there, and it's not all smooth sailing and wholesome fluff. But there is no truly dark or depressing content, and those problems are the mature kind that you see in real life all the time — work getting in the way of private life, struggling to express how you feel, struggling with self worth and feeling like you don't deserve to be happy (not because of your orientation! this isn't one of those "I deserve to be unhappy because I'm not straight" stories!), feeling like you aren't doing enough to show your partner that you care etc. — and it's great to see the characters work through them, on their own and together. Goddamn, I feel like these two volumes destroyed all my expectations for BL to come. I can only hope to find more as good as this story.