Bronze: Zetsuai Since 1989

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Even though I've tried, I haven't been able to find a story as tragic as Bronze. Bronze is all about desperate love. I love it. Sometimes it really feels like the characters are crazy. I've read many manga with better stories, art and characters but Bronze beats them all. Bronze is just so full of feeling it can't be called anything else but a masterpiece. Bronze is better than its prequel Zetsuai but I still recommend you read Zetsuai first. Some things are pretty hard to understand if you haven't read Zetsuai. Believe me, I know, since I read Bronze first and after that found ... out about Zetsuai.

So far this is great. It is moving a little faster than "Zetsuai" did at the first part of the series, but I am only up to Volume 3 so we will have to wait and see what happens next. People have said that "Bronze" is better than "Zetsuai", but I don't agree with that assessment. "Zetsuai" was a slow agonizing pain, whereas, "Bronze" as the feel of a continuous stabing pain that is unending, faster and unyielding. They both have their merits and are both masterpieces in their own way. I do not know if this was the author's intent, but I can see ... the logic in the pace of the two stories. (Next Part very minor spoiler so don't read if you don't want to)

In "Zetsuai", Izumi soccer career and emotions are somewhat at a standstill because of his past. Therefore, the story moves at a slower pace. In "Bronze", Izumi's soccer career is speeding ahead so maybe there was the need for the story to follow in his footsteps, figuratively and literally.

Like its predecessor, there isn’t much to talk about with this one.

The most striking aspect of this manga is its art. Not in a good way. The art is absolutely awful, hurtful to look at, low effort where most of the pages look like they were drawn in 5 to 10 minutes. It is not something that is excusable by calling it a “style”, it is just flat-out bad. Of course, it suffers from the usual BL bad art symptoms too, mainly bad anatomy. Absurdly huge and sharp chins, noodle people that are unnaturally tall and thin, disproportional yaoi hands that look more like claws ... and drawings that are off model so often you don’t even know what the original model even is.

The characters don’t fell like people, but rather artificial aggressively angsty gays. Unless you’re here just for the BL, the story doesn’t attempt to draw you in with anything. If anything, it actively tries to deter you from reading it by the forementioned terrible art that just makes reading this an awful experience even if the story was good (it isn’t).

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this even to people that like yaoi.