Boku wa Imouto ni Koi wo Suru

[Irenicus]

On the contrary I agree with 2H-Dragon's post from 3 years ago. One chapter was enough to know I would hate this manga with all my heart had I continued.

No, it's not the incest. Forbidden love spices things up in fiction more often than not. It's the fact that the guy's a fucking asshole who practically rapes his sister and pulls jealousy tricks, and the girl's a weak failure of a girl. Apparently we're supposed to feel the "passion," yet all I get from it is a very disturbing sense of emotional abuse. Even incest hentai isn't usually as bad. There is no subtlety, no delicacy, not even a sense of desperate passion driven by loneliness -- just injury, abuse, and wangst, wangst, wangst.

Oh, but people can translate what they want, so...congratulations to the fans?

[DeX-kun]

I'm not quite sure how this post:

Originally Posted by DeX-kun

Well it seems like this thread has been dumped about 3 years ago. Well since I'm pretty sure there are some people out there that actually care about this manga, someone at MangaFox stated that they will be continuing the translation of this manga. (Although it's been about 3 months since they announced that, I just thought I should inform those here that have been out of the loop.)

While I myself don't condone incest of any sorts, there is nothing people can do about certain feelings and views. While I think it's wrong in the sense of genetic problems if an incestuous couple decide to have children, who are we to judge their feelings. Of course this is just my opinion on the matter.

Either way, I ran across this manga and I've read up to chapter 29 which is the latest chapter to be translated as far as I know. As cliche as this series can get at various moments, I can't help but be drawn in by both main characters.

Ends up with a response such as this:

Originally Posted by Irenicus

On the contrary I agree with 2H-Dragon's post from 3 years ago. One chapter was enough to know I would hate this manga with all my heart had I continued.

No, it's not the incest. Forbidden love spices things up in fiction more often than not. It's the fact that the guy's a fucking asshole who practically rapes his sister and pulls jealousy tricks, and the girl's a weak failure of a girl. Apparently we're supposed to feel the "passion," yet all I get from it is a very disturbing sense of emotional abuse. Even incest hentai isn't usually as bad. There is no subtlety, no delicacy, not even a sense of desperate passion driven by loneliness -- just injury, abuse, and wangst, wangst, wangst.

Oh, but people can translate what they want, so...congratulations to the fans?

I think you might have misconstrued certain events in this series because Yori never "raped" Iku and neither was it implied. Injury? Abuse? I'm not sure we read the same manga or I'm not even sure how far you got but apparently you're not interested so I guess this is where our discussion hits a dead end.

Just for the sake of discussion though, Yori's feelings came across pretty realistic to me. He didn't "force" her into making any decisions she didn't want to, although he was pretty aggressive in how he vented those feelings to her. Initially from Iku's perspective, it was just that, a "desperate sense of passion driven by loneliness" yet she still ended up falling in love with him regardless. How can you trick someone into being jealous? If someone feels jealous, then there must be a reason. Just like you can't force love onto someone, you cannot force jealousy on someone either.

Admittedly, Iku is far from being a strong female character but her determination regarding her feelings for Yori are not unfounded. Yori himself has said it before, as long as Iku's feelings are mutual, he won't let her go. Meaning, he would have left her alone if she didn't feel the same which is why he gave her time to decide on her feelings and didn't sleep with her when he first had the opportunity. Yori wanted to make love to Iku, not just have sex with her, there's a difference.

Claiming your interpretation of a character as fact doesn't make it as such. Especially when the manga itself proves otherwise.

[Irenicus]

Originally Posted by DeX-kun

I'm not quite sure how this post:

Ends up with a response such as this:

That's because I was not attacking your post, but the manga.

I think you might have misconstrued certain events in this series because Yori never "raped" Iku and neither was it implied. Injury? Abuse? I'm not sure we read the same manga or I'm not even sure how far you got but apparently you're not interested so I guess this is where our discussion hits a dead end.

Forced kiss, forced actions. Emotional abuses. Oh sure the mangaka also wrote him to be "in pain" as well a lot of the time, but I didn't buy it. At all.

Not every sexual/emotional abuse has to be with penetration.

Just for the sake of discussion though, Yori's feelings came across pretty realistic to me. He didn't "force" her into making any decisions she didn't want to, although he was pretty aggressive in how he vented those feelings to her. Initially from Iku's perspective, it was just that, a "desperate sense of passion driven by loneliness" yet she still ended up falling in love with him regardless. How can you trick someone into being jealous? If someone feels jealous, then there must be a reason. Just like you can't force love onto someone, you cannot force jealousy on someone either.

She falls in love with him because it's the shoujo convention and because he's hot. I don't even sense a real connection between them beyond the omg he sparkles and makes my heart beats except for the very first part of the first chapter when it still seemed like it was going to be a decent manga. Love, even dangerously faulty ones, can be a lot more than this...cheap sequence of infatuation and angst.

And the jealousy part? He kisses other girls because he wants to make her jealous. Apparently that's considered acceptable behavior regardless of whatever emotional pain he causes his "beloved" sister in the meantime.

For something that is supposed to be about twins (ignore the spoiler ending for a moment) -- people who are supposed to be so deeply intertwined as to have something unbreakable that no one else can interfere -- it comes off as pure shoujo wangst 101 between a hot, abusive guy and a weak female lead.

The utter loneliness of having someone who might as well be you (yes yes they're different genders...and the spoiler), someone so close that you never truly had to be alone and separate, grow apart, grow different -- that should have made the romance incredibly moving, that's what I meant by utter loneliness. I didn't even sense an inkling of it here. Can you say disappointed? Angry even?

Claiming your interpretation of a character as fact doesn't make it as such. Especially when the manga itself proves otherwise.

It doesn't prove itself otherwise. It says it's otherwise, but that doesn't make it true. Manga has to do a lot more than say, "and this is what she thinks, and this is what he does" and then pass it off as true; it has to convince the reader that she really feels it, that he really does so-and-so with this motivation. It did not convince me. There's a world of difference between the best shoujo manga -- which can be incredibly sensitive to genuine human emotions, even less conventionally admirable ones -- and angst-filled teenage fluff like this.


Oh, but I really shouldn't be ruining anybody else's time because of my little pet peeve. Forgive me, but it'll be my last post here before I drag on too long and make this a rant thread on my part.

[DeX-kun]

Originally Posted by Irenicus

That's because I was not attacking your post, but the manga.

Well forgive my defensive response considering how old the last reply was, I assumed that it was directed at me.

Originally Posted by Irenicus

She falls in love with him because it's the shoujo convention and because he's hot. I don't even sense a real connection between them beyond the omg he sparkles and makes my heart beats except for the very first part of the first chapter when it still seemed like it was going to be a decent manga. Love, even dangerously faulty ones, can be a lot more than this...cheap sequence of infatuation and angst.

And the jealousy part? He kisses other girls because he wants to make her jealous. Apparently that's considered acceptable behavior regardless of whatever emotional pain he causes his "beloved" sister in the meantime.

Ignoring the common shoujo conventions, I completely disagree. The whole point of this manga is the fact that she was already in love with him but because of her naive outlook, she looked at Yori as her brother rather than a man which is what caused him to take actions such as what you described. Naturally I don't agree with his methods either and this doesn't justify Yori's actions by any stretch of the means, but it opened Iku's eyes. I'm also confused as to how you reached the conclusion that she was attracted to Yori in a superficial sense, but she sought after him just to simply be with him. Just his presence was enough to make her happy. That sounds like it's more than just his "hotness."

You're exaggerating. Yori kissed a girl, not a number of them. You're misconstruing the events once again. Yori kissed Tomoka because he was trying to fall in love with her since he was fully aware of the repercussions that would follow a relationship with Iku. Of course, he just couldn't succumb to have feelings for her and that's pretty understandable, at least in my opinion. Tomoka was also the first girl he had ever kissed and naturally the first girl he ever slept with.

Like I said earlier, I don't agree with Yori's methods for making Iku jealous but the point of that scene is that she did feel jealousy. I don't know about labeling that as emotional pain, since jealousy is an emotion in itself. The angst is there because of the topic of incest but even that simmers down in the later chapters.

Originally Posted by Irenicus

For something that is supposed to be about twins (ignore the spoiler ending for a moment) -- people who are supposed to be so deeply intertwined as to have something unbreakable that no one else can interfere -- it comes off as pure shoujo wangst 101 between a hot, abusive guy and a weak female lead.

And this of course is based off the first couple of chapters. Your rant doesn't hold much merit when you have barely been exposed to their relationship. Yori is different from what you make him out to be although I do agree Iku is a weak female lead.

Originally Posted by Irenicus

It doesn't prove itself otherwise. It says it's otherwise, but that doesn't make it true. Manga has to do a lot more than say, "and this is what she thinks, and this is what he does" and then pass it off as true; it has to convince the reader that she really feels it, that he really does so-and-so with this motivation. It did not convince me. There's a world of difference between the best shoujo manga -- which can be incredibly sensitive to genuine human emotions, even less conventionally admirable ones -- and angst-filled teenage fluff like this.

Yet you don't represent the whole audience and you've yet to read this manga in it's entirety. If you want your opinion to contain some merit, then at least have the same knowledge as the other readers.

While this manga is far from being the best, it's at least decent in my opinion.

Originally Posted by Irenicus

Oh, but I really shouldn't be ruining anybody else's time because of my little pet peeve. Forgive me, but it'll be my last post here before I drag on too long and make this a rant thread on my part.

Oh you're not ruining my time at all but I usually don't appreciate false interpretations of characters. I don't mind discussions at all, but at least make the effort to read the manga in its entirety if you wish to continue this discussion.

[KaoruLia]

I'll probably be killed at stake for reviving a dead topic, but I had just watched the live action movie recently and just wanted to drop my opinion on the matter.

It's definitely an incestuous relationship, but I like the way the relationship in the movie was done objectively and not romanticized like the manga. I felt like the manga used the twincest plot device as an excuse to create a typical shoujo manga love angst. If we take out the incest, it basically becomes a common lust-filled boy + weak-willed girl story we see everywhere. The movie has shades of that, but what saved it from being typical was the dynamics/chemistry between the actors that played Yori and Iku.

For starters, they made a great choice in casting the lead characters -- Jun Matsumoto and Nana Eikura. Matsumoto's known for taking challenging roles; playing a pet, an unrelenting womanizer, a despicable rich boy who terrorizes his school, a half-filipino experiencing racism in Japan, etc; yet exudes so much charisma in his acting that you end up loving all his characters. So naturally, he manages to pick up such an unrelatable character such as Yori and make you sympathize with his turmoil. His chemistry with Eikura is also spot on -- hesitant, slightly protective, and very sweet at times. I hated the premise (incest) and hated the manga characters, yet Eikura and Matsumoto had me rooting for them at the end. Plus Eikura's portrayal of Iku had hidden strength in it; I did not feel like she was wishy-washy or angsty at all.

But the best part of the movie is the ending. Honestly, the movie had many flaws: slow-paced, lots of uncut scenes of silence, etc; but the ending made it up for me. They both realized that the relationship is going nowhere ("We can't go back"), so they spend their last time as lovers in the fields where they first made the promise. The movie ends with them holding hands and walking away, making it as an open ending. But honestly, I prefer the way its been handled. In the manga, it was more focused on 'overcoming obstacles and hardships to be together' (but sadly did not touch on the social/moral implications of an incestuous as much as it could because of the half-assed twist ending), but in the movie, it was more of a 'some relationships are just not meant to be'. Not because it is forbidden, but because if it causes more pain than happiness, then it's not worth continuing. I assume Yori and Iku put away those feelings but remain close to each other, which is sad but happy at the same time (there's still together, but just not as lovers).

Plus, having such an eye-candy as Jun Matsumoto definitely makes the story more palatable to me xD