Gravitation

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I strongly recommend watching the series before reading the manga for the following reason:

The story. Due to Murukami Maki’s rather undeveloped art at the beginning of the series it had also hindered the flow of the story telling; so it is rather difficult to understand or get into the story. From own experience, I had tried to read it first but the art had threw me off completely and I dropped it after the 2nd chapter.

Now, onto the review...

Gravitation is often called the gateway to the shounen-ai genre because of its appeal. What separates this from every other of its genre is ... its diversity. For once it does not focus solely on the character’s (in this case Eiri’s and Shuichi’s) relationship but on everything going on around them – the side characters, the music, their careers, them as an individual and most of all – the gags.

Comedy is the widest appeal this manga has, and it does a good job giving laughs to the reader. Most of the comedy relies on over-the-top shenanigans, references to the music industry (such as N-Sync) or sexual innuendo. Another thing that it makes it so approachable is the lack of typical lovey-dovey or corny scenes. If there are any present, it is usually used as a gag itself as Murakami mocks this for the reader’s enjoyment.

The first few volumes’ art is - to put it bluntly - quite horrendous. As previously stated, it’s enough to repel readers, and the story-telling is sloppy. However, readers see a drastic change in art during the latter of series and it first becomes noticeable around volume 6. Murakami also introduces a neat way of using panels to better the flow of the story telling. Although ultimately her art has changed for the better I wasn’t too keen on the new character design for Shuichi. One of the good points of Gravitation at the beginning was Shuichi’s more masculine physique, but as the story progresses Shuichi becomes shorter and eventually has a physique that downplays readers imaginations (for either better or worse, up to the reader really) so in the end, he would fit the stereotypical uke.

The cast of Gravitation all play significant roles in the story – whether it is to meddle, to be the shoulder to cry on or part of the past, they all have more or less something to give, again giving this the sort of edge that other shounen-ai’s don’t have.

I find it unrealistic how every accepts Shuichi’s and Eiri’s relationship; but then again a manager who uses a gun for persuasion and a giant robot panda chasing Shuichi through New York isn’t exactly realistic either.

All of Gravitation has been licensed under Tokyopop, who has done a spectacular job at translating. However the first couple of translated volumes may cause some to cringe with their attempt of using ‘hip’ phrases; often backfiring by employing tacky lines such as “take a chill pill”. Fortunately it gets better along the way, and I appreciate how they make it appeal to Western audiences by using our entertainment industry like MTV (“Oh, I get it I’m on Punk’d. Where’s Ashton?”)

Both versions of Gravitation are light-hearted, filled with humour and entertaining. The manga does make you appreciate how well the producers of the anime adapted it - it’s one of the best adaptations of a manga I’ve seen in fact. And the manga has got to have the silliest content I have ever read - but it’s the stupid shenanigans that make me laugh so much.

Gravitation to me feels to be a bit of a hit or miss. Some anime and manga fans love it, and some of them do not appreciate it. For me I was a bit skeptical upon purchasing it. Although I wanted to broaden my horizons in the realm of shounen-ai I couldn't help but wonder if it was worth it. As the story started out I found myself curious as to how a music based manga would end. So I bought the first two volumes and had a go at it. I have to say I am thoroughly impressed with Murakami-san's ability to create an ... engaging story. My skepticism started first with the quality of the art. It wasn't all I was hoping for but, as the volumes go on the art gets better.

Another aspect that had me hooked were the characters. Each person is distinct in his or her own way. Their personalities are so vastly different, and yet when they interact it gives us a treat. Shuichi's over the top personality, Yuki's sober one, Tatsuha's obessive streak, Tohma's darker side, Sakano's spazz attacks. All of it was so intriguing, and I was surprised how they all meshed with one another. If I had to recommend a series to dip your feet in the water for the newbie shounen-ai fans, this would be it right here.

Gravitation is a romance (allegedly) music (allegedly) BL manga. It’s one step away from being a great parody of the yaoi genre, but unfortunately it’s wholly unironic.

It suffers from many problems. The first and the most obvious is that the story just doesn’t make any sense. Both plot-wise and character-wise.

The main problem with the duo of main characters is that they have absolutely zero chemistry. They have no reason at all to like each other, it’s as if Shuuichi got hit by a fujo brainwashing tech which makes him fall in love with the first bishounen he sees and so he did. Both Shuuichi ... and Yuki are also extremely annoying characters, but for such creatively different reason. One of them is a crababy. No, really, that’s like the main emotion you’ll see here, get ready for it. He’s also *really* dumb, to the point it makes you question how he even survived so far. Yuki on the other hand is the the cold one, to the extent of just not giving any signs of affection at all. He gives off the vibes of tryhard, but I’d say this is just author’s failed execution of writing a “cool” character. Author’s failure is what also seems to be behind the lack of chemistry, as it seems like she heard “opposites attract” and went with that, while forgetting that it’s because the opposites are supposed to complement each other, not repel.

Regarding the plot, it’s only for the first few volumes at most that the story maintains at least some sort of coherence. After that, it’s wild west of random bullshit. And not in the funny entertaining way, but in the “huh, the author really didn’t plan any of this through”. Conflicts that should have been main focus of the manga are solved within few pages while whole volumes are spent on filler as only once in a while the manga remembers it’s supposed to be about music.

Talking about music, it’s very obvious that the author did no research regarding the industry. And of course, don’t expect any interesting band scenes like an actual music manga would have.

Another awful thing is just the frequent tone whiplash. You get unfunny gag jokes inserted into what seemed like a serious scene, the characters randomly start being dumb, and sexual assault is treated as serious life long issue when it happens to one of the characters but as a minor inconvenience and almost a punchline when it happens to the other one. It's also pretty weird that the characters keep trying to convince others and themselves that they are not gay, they are totally straight but just happened to fuck dudes?

Unsurprisingly for the genre, the art is terrible. The characters suffer the most, as they are drawn inconsistently, a single character frequently looks differently through the whole manga (seriously, just compare even the volume covers alone) while other characters area easily mistaken with another whole different characters, and that’s across genders. The “le random faces” drawings is a cringy humor while backgrounds are almost non-existent, making this into really low artistic effort.

To summarize it, expect a wattpad story written by 13 years old level of quality.