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Zankoku na Kami ga Shihai Suru 72 02-18 15:15
Jeremy is a sensitive teenager who is happy for his mother when she remarries. However, the sweet-talking man who is his new stepfather turns out to be a serpent in disguise -- he's a sadist and a pedophile, and it isn't long before he makes Jeremy his target. After months of horrific, systematic abuse, Jeremy's mind becomes unstable and his thoughts turn vicious. He decides to murder his stepfather in order to get rid of him -- but the plan goes awry, and when he sabotages his stepfather's car, his mother also dies in the crash.
Shocked and wracked by guilt, Jeremy's reactions seem strange to the average onlooker. His brittle and bizarre behavior isn't just that of a grieving son's. This is when Ian, the free-spirited son of Jeremy's stepfather, begins to suspect Jeremy of murder. He finds several clues that tie Jeremy to the crime, but in unearthing them, Ian also discovers the fact that Jeremy was abused.
What should Ian do with his evidence? Caught in a moral dilemma -- between punishing a criminal and atoning for his father's sins -- Ian begins to be haunted by lust for Jeremy. Is it lust, or is it love? Ian wonders whether he shares his father's proclivities, and despite his best efforts, he is drawn into a passionate and painful relationship with Jeremy.
A Cruel God Reigns is a true BL classic written by Hagio Moto, one of the founders of the BL genre. In seventeen intense volumes, A Cruel God Reigns traces both Jeremy's and Ian's journeys towards redemption. The story-telling is rich and unique, and the art is breathtaking. To this day, A Cruel God Reigns remains one of the most powerful BL epics ever written.
- by The Pink Panzers
Winner of the first Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize's Award for Excellence.
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Marginal 12 02-25 08:49
From The Pink Panzer:
In the year 2999, only eleven cities still survive on Earth. The climate has changed drastically, and a biochemical apocalypse has made women extinct. For centuries, the male population of Earth has survived by depending on only one woman, called the Holy Mother, whose ova are harvested to create genetically engineered children. By now, any concept of a world in which women exist as ordinary people is long gone. Society has re-structured itself around all-male families, and gay relationships have become the norm.
At the beginning of Marginal, the Holy Mother is assassinated by a terrorist known as Grinja. The government in power doesn't want to start a mass panic, so it pretends that the Holy Mother has only shed her vessel, and that she will be miraculously "reborn" in the near future. The public, which is superstitious and devout, believes this easily. Only government officials know that behind the scenes, there is a frantic effort to create a new being with an XXY chromosome -- a male capable of giving birth. (This is a BL misrepresentation of an actual phenomenon known as Klinefelter's Syndrome.)
The manga's story revolves around one such boy -- Kira, the product of a genetic experiment, who becomes involved in a three-way relationship with Grinja, the aforementioned terrorist, and Ashijin, a young man who calls himself Kira's owner. A complex plot and flawless world-building make the story irresistible, and Kira's search for freedom is as symbolic as it is gripping.
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