Dec 7, 2020
This one had a decent premise, but an absolutely horrible execution. Dear gods, where to begin? Y'know how BL from a certain era just had to make every little interaction vaguely noncon? That's this manga in spades.
Art 5/10
The art is honestly the easiest thing to critique, as it's disconnected from everything else for the most part. The characters are cute-ish, and the lineart's clean enough I suppose, but it's dreadfully generic. There's really not much about it to differentiate it from literally any other work from 2015 with regards to the art. I could probably look past it, if it weren't for the...
Story 3/10
For something
...
about a literal alien coming to Earth to find his mate, they sure did make it boring. Like, you have free reign to make this some weird, trippy romance, with language barriers, cultural misunderstandings, or just plain biology, but no, we can't have any of that. There's some really halfhearted glimmers of the above, but for the most part it's just not very well written. Like, I'm honestly not sure what either of these characters see in each other, because our glimpses into their psyches are very minimal, and they lack really basic romantic chemistry barring a few vaguely cute moments. Other than a badly paced and executed romantic arc, there's nothing else going on, and that suuucks based on the premise. Like, call me dumb and optimistic, but I was picturing some sickeningly cute romance between an astronaut and an alien visitor based on the cover, which I'd consider an absolute goldmine of romantic potential, and apparently ignored the red flags.
Character 3/10
Did I mention that they made the alien really boring? In another work, he could have basically been a foreigner from Belgium for all the difference it made to his character. He and Minoru are very two-dimensional, they don't really talk about much, and it's hard to really get a feel for who they are as characters. Minoru doesn't have cute character moments, like... idk, showing his alien bf his model train collection. He's a lump. The alien, Sora, doesn't really have any cool anecdotes about his planet, or seemingly any culture of his own, because that would require the author to display some form of imagination. In a work about aliens. Speculative romantic fiction. With no culture clash. Simply boggling. If that was too much to ask, they could have at least made the alien sexy, with like... idk, a three foot tongue, or a vibrating butt, or god, anything alien about him. Nope, basically a human, no, make the nasty imaginations go away. What a fuckin' waste.
Enjoyment 2/10
The above elements combine in a way I just really don't care for. But what's worse is the sexual elements. BL still struggles as a genre with a long history of sexual assault played for comedy or drama, or even worse, played for romance. Afaik, this is inherited from its roots in the shoujo genre, which has similar problems. Uchuu has some problems with making every interaction vaguely noncon, generally due to what the characters say, and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, as it was completely unnecessary. Really, it undermines the characters even worse than their 2d nature. I have little to say beyond that. The story and characters bored me when they weren't being dickheads, and maybe some of it was the translation, but translators only work with what's already there, so the underlying writing was still way below par.
Overall 3/10
If you're a fan of rapey, old-style BL, then there might be some glimmers of that sweet, sweet noncon you're craving, but not much tbh. If you don't like rapey, old-style BL, then there's just a big pile o' nothing here. Like, maybe if you were trapped in an airplane bathroom, and this was the only reading material on hand, it'd be passable. But you might want to save the pages for other uses, if you catch my drift.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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