Ze

As I finish reading the last chapter of this series, I kept on thinking: How could I never even heard of the title of this amazing book? HOW. COULD. I. [STORY] In the beginning, the story focused on Raizou, a somewhat happy go-lucky guy who had to move to a mansion filled with 6 unique strangers after his last living relative passed away. Here, he immediately fell for one of the resident, a quiet pretty boy called Kon. Little did he know that his life in the mansion will not only revolve around his attraction towards the mysterious boy, but also around the secret business that the wholeresidents were keeping. Oh hell no, they were not drug dealers. Ze did not only focused on Raizou's and Kon's relationship, though. As it progressed, the story revealed the heart-wrenching, tragic, and beautiful stories of the residents of the mansion and of those that Raizou met in the business. Each pairing were presented a different arc, consisted of 5-10 chapters long. To put it simple, even though the series began with Raizou's story, the main focus of it was actually the story of the fate of the people involved in such violent and tricky business, about how they thrived for their happiness in such limited freedom, and about the bond of the masters and their kotodamas. I have little expectation for Ze because I have never even heard of it before, but what I read definitely threw me off. The story was not the typical mainstream yaoi. I was amazed by the concept of the business and the strong bond of the pairings. I was also in love by how the author, Yuki Shimizu, arranged the pairings' story arc-by-arc, with the last arc being the climax of the entire series. I saw many people were complaining that the ending was not enough, but to me it was perfect; a neat conclusion that did not reveal nor conceal too much. The only thing that bugs me with the story is that there were too much flashback. The timeline was actually moving back and forth and the reader needed focus to understand where it was currently on. Even so, I ended up amazed too by how some arc were connected to one another in some way. [CHARACTERS] Like I've said before, the story covered more than the relationship of Raizou and Kon. Amazingly, despite the quite large number of characters in it, none of them were just a mere shadow. Every character have their own minds and contribute to how the story goes, even just slightly. They affect each other, even to those in a different arc. I actually did not care at first with the other characters, but when I read their arc. BOOM. I love everybody. My favorite was Konoe and Kotoha's. Their relationship began as something innocent and adorable, but when Kotoha finally bestowed his painful responsibility, they tried so hard to find a solution where none of them needed to get hurt. The amount of love and care they shared for each other was a tear-jerk for me. My second favorite was Shoui & Asari's arc, only because Asari was a bit of an asshole to me haha. Third was the whole Rikiichi + Waki + Magane arc, followed by Genma & Himi's, Raizou & Kon's, and the least was Ryusei & Moriya's. Some other pairings were available in the book too, but did not have an arc on their own. [ART] The main reason why I did not bat an eye to this book was probably because of the artwork. The book was published 12 years ago and it has an old-yaoi artwork vibe to it (you know, like the era of Junjou Romantica). But now that I've finished the whole thing, I realized that there are other books with older vibe to it haha. And Ze's artwork is actually pretty decent, if not really beautiful. To me, one of the most beautiful visual of this book was Asari's flashback just after he was revived. The memories of him and Shoui together were drawn in a 2-pages spread, with those blurry-kinda-lines. It may be quite a minor thing to point out, but the visual there supported the situation beautifully and had successfully made me cry seeing it. The only complaint is that I had trouble differentiating some of the characters because they either shared a similar hair-style or because they changed their hair-style in some point of the story (especially those with a backstories arc). [OVERALL] I regret just reading it today. I really dunno why this book is never mentioned in yaoi forums or other websites that I've visited before. I just wish more people would read this book. The story was excellent, the characters were all special, and the bond of the pairings... damn, everything was just so beautifully done. 10/10 without no doubt.