Someone Else's BL Comic

It's become harder with age to find school-based-romances compelling. Characters are young and fraught with emotions that I have become increasingly distant from with age (I'm currently 27, and thus at least a decade out of high school). But sometimes they do scratch an itch. I see a glimmer of a past self in these adolescents. The pains, awkwardness and lack of self confidence that I once felt all the more starkly.

"Someone Else's BL Comic" has such moments, while also weaving a "Cheese in the Trap" type plot progression. The unveiling and reintegration of mysteries and relationships which ultimately kept it engaging. It's a hermetically sealed container of school, a smallish cast of boys and a dash of out-of-school life. Little else is explored in full: Seunghee's family for example is really only used as a peevish anathema, constantly applying meek pressure in the background of his life. They exist to hammer home a point about Seunghee's isolation, and how that can breed it's own potent tincture of despair. One that may have once been based on genuine grievance, but from it's lack of exposure to external factors, eventually becomes something it isn't. Or at the very least, continues to exist and thrive when it may not need to.

As a result, this work does lack a certain dramatic depth that "Cheese in the Trap" has. It also isn't nearly as long, but I do feel more could have been accomplished within 122 chapters to really flesh out the context. Seunghee's family are flat caricatures who fulfill basic stage prompt actions. We are meant to feel he is vilified by his family so his brother appears spontaneously to act like the outline of douche, but there is nothing that breathes life into that character beside that. He doesn't exist outside of this fleeting wisp of plot relevance. As a result, the characters don't progress from simply being suitable. It all works well enough, but it lacks the character, flair and depth that would make me rate this higher. The boys have their moments - rage, despair, levity etc, and so to does the story, but I wasn't gripped.

The first coupling in Kyubin and Seungtaek was definitely the most interesting, and an out of left field detour from the cross dressing MC who appeared he would take center stage from the very beginning. The relationship between Seunghee and Suhyeok then only filling the void of a romantic partner for our MC, who had the rug swept out from under him by the aforementioned detour. Suhyeok's actual plot relevance is more to do with him being bundled with his cousin and his relation to the main pairing, rather than his romantic interest in Seunghee. Which is probably why the justification for Suhyeok being romantically interested in Seunghee felt somewhat forced and hollow to me.

Overall, competent and entertaining enough. But it doesn't strike me with pathos in the way other school-aged-romances have in the past, nor does it contain the mature complexity and high drama of something like "Cheese in the Trap". Teens will probably get a lot more out of this than me.