That’s why I was surprised and delighted by “Bad Boys, Happy Home.” Akamatsu and Seven feel like real people to me. Unlike other BL couples, their romance isn’t conventionally soft, cute, or beautiful. The two of them are rugged, obnoxious, gross, and hilariously moronic. They don’t solve their problems with melodramatic declarations of love, but with ungraceful attempts at communication. Their deepest emotions aren’t conveyed through expository inner monologues, but through quiet scenes of pensive solitude. And when they share intimate moments together, their maneuvers are clumsy and uncertain.
This is not to say that Akamatsu and Seven are superior to other BL characters because they’re more traditionally masculine! Rather, their unique flaws and understated approaches to conflict resolution humanize them in a way that is rarely seen in stories like this. The same thing could be achieved with more feminine characters too, but most manga portray gender in a binary, idealized fashion that leaves little room for the nuance required to make a character feel “real.”
“Bad Boys, Happy Home” doesn’t completely transcend the bounds of the genre, though. Familiar tropes and archetypes are still sprinkled throughout the narrative here and there. In particular, the subplots involving Seven’s criminal past aren’t as interesting as they could have been, in my opinion. There are a few too many side-characters in these instances, making it all a bit hard to follow. Also, though the art is generally very well done, there are times when facial proportions can look unintentionally awkward. It’s infrequent, but it was enough to break my immersion at a few different points.
Despite those few complaints, I really enjoyed this manga and it’s definitely one of the best works of BL that I’ve ever read. This is the first time that I’ve seen myself, my relationships, so accurately represented in the pages of a story like this. It’s astonishing that it isn’t more popular given its quality and the novelty of its main characters. As it stands, “Bad Boys, Happy Home” is a hidden gem and I feel extremely lucky to have experienced it. Hopefully even more people will discover this manga as time goes on!
