Genre: BL/yaoi
Age rating: 16+
Price: $12.95

"My body is created of the earth and belongs to it, but my soul belongs only to you."

Most of the time, the BL manga I enjoy the most are the ones with interesting plots and well-rounded characters that steer clear of stereotypes. Most of the time, I prefer to avoid BL stories that pair a small, weak, big-eyed, emotionally volatile "uke" with a tall, strong, inscrutable, taciturn "seme". Most of the time, implausibly cool outfits and historical settings that have obviously not been researched make me roll my eyes and move on to something else.

But then there's Wild Rock.

Wild Rock ticks a number of the boxes that would normally turn me right off: ludicrous "historic" (okay, prehistoric, but the point stands) setting? Check. Plot so thin it's practically nonexistent? Check. Lovers are a stereotypical seme and uke? Check -- and how. And yet none of that seems to matter, because the lush romanticism of the story and the stunning beauty of the art add up to something really special.

Wild Rock is a BL variant on the Romeo and Juliet story: there are two feuding clans in a vaguely sketched prehistoric setting, and the eldest sons of the respective clan chiefs fall in love. In fact, this story is played out twice in this volume: the main story, "Wild Rock", concerns Yuuen and Emba, while the prequel "Innocent Lies" deals with their fathers, Yuni and Selem. Each version ends differently, which adds a little much-needed substance to the volume; there's something terribly bittersweet about Yuni and Selem's story, especially since it comes after Yuuen and Emba's, so we know in advance that it can't end well.

When you're telling a romantic story that fits squarely within the cliches and conventions of the genre, you have to go all-out; half-heartedness or irony will kill what makes the story appealing without adding anything to make up for it. Maybe that's why I enjoy Wild Rock so much: it's unashamedly, unabashedly, whole-heartedly, swooningly romantic, right from the very first scene, in which Emba saves Yuuen from being eaten by a lion. But that wouldn't be enough if it weren't for Takashima's art, which is so gorgeous I want to lick it off the page. It's like the soaring violins on the soundtrack of a movie, or the soprano's aria at the end of an opera: it sweeps you along on a tide of emotion and shuts down the rational brain's objections.

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