Read it on Renta!:
Pittosporum by Shino Mikami
Japanese Title:
ピットスポルム
Links
Shino Mikami Twitter (author)
comic picn Twitter (publisher)
According to Wikipedia, pittosporum is a species of flowering trees and shrubs with leaves that are “spirally arranged or whorled, simple” and flowers “produced singly or in umbels or corymbs, each flower with five sepals and five petals; they are often sweetly scented.” Both times I read Shino Mikami’s Pittosporum, it hadn’t actually occurred to me to even wonder what the name meant. When I looked it up for the review, however, Avas Flowers’ article on the pittosporum came up with the meaning: counterfeit and deceit.
Suddenly, a name for a BL manga that used to seem kind of silly and cute felt quite heavy and sad. Because at its core, Pittosporum is about deceit—deceiving the people around you, and, most importantly, deceiving yourself. And it’s the type of deceit many queer people, in particular, know all too well.
Pittosporum is the story of sweet, diligent Yano who’s worked hard to get into a fancy private school far from home. His family, whom he loves dearly, is incredibly poor so he needs to work hard to get good grades and upkeep his scholarship. A wrench is thrown into his perfect, peaceful high school life, however, when he’s suddenly placed in the dorms with Odajima. Odajima is the playboy rich kid who can get away with whatever he wants because his parents help fund the school. Skipping class, fooling around with female classmates and teachers alike… there’s nothing “serious” or “hardworking” about Odajima—at least not on the surface.
However, lurking below his nonchalant and sardonic exterior is a childhood of trauma and an adolescence of hiding his true self. There will be some spoilers below for much of Odajima’s backstory, and so I highly recommend reading the manga first before moving on to the second half of the review!! The manga itself will be a lot more powerful if you do. 😤
You see, Odajima has been watching Yano for almost the entire time they’ve been in school together. His initial run-in with Yano made him think Yano was emotionally and mentally strong—a pure, sweet, self-righteous boy raised in a kind and loving home. When he witnesses Yano secretly crying after getting off the phone with his sister, however, seeing the other boy overcome with distress and loneliness, Odajima can’t help but acknowledge that Yano is suffering and hiding his pain the same way Odajima is. When Yano then unknowingly stands up for Odajima after hearing how his ‘friends’ use him for his money and status, the nail is in the coffin. Yano is suddenly all Odajima can think about.
Odajima’s childhood was originally rich, lavish, and loving. One day, however, he follows his father and finds he’s actually having an affair with another man. After this, everything unravels—his mother finds out and can’t take the mental strain of realizing her marriage was a sham, and his parents divorce. Now mentally unwell and distraught, his mother burdens him with her own hang-ups about his father’s sexuality, making him vow as a child that he will be “normal” and will never turn out the same as his dad—will never hurt her the same way he did.
But, while seeing his father locked in the embrace of another man felt like a sexual ‘awakening’ for Odajima, he’s relieved when he finds he can easily sleep with girls and continue to live as the ‘normal’ boy his mom needs him to be, and he’s avoided being attracted to any men. That is, until Yano catches his interest.
So behind the scenes, there’s a constant push-and-pull happening inside Odajima—he’s incredibly drawn to Yano in a way he never has been to any girl, even if he knows he shouldn’t be. He finds a million tiny reasons to be near Yano, whether it’s offering to tutor him or teasing him or even just being a nuisance because at least being hated means Yano is thinking of him. He yearns to touch Yano, and then runs to the next girl who’ll have him to pretend these feelings aren’t real—only to end up fantasizing about what Yano would look like squirming in pleasure below him. But he can’t feel this way about another man—he promised his mom he would be good, he would be ‘normal.’
As I said in my 2023 BL Awards summary for why I picked Pittosporum as my favorite new series, it has a lot of tropes that are very common to the BL sphere all the way from its inception: boys’ dorm roommates, rich/poor dynamics, a seemingly experienced seme and incredibly virginal and pure uke, etc.—all of which I do enjoy. Nonetheless, I still appreciate all the ways Shino Mikami turns them on their head. Yano may be awkward and virginal, but he’s the one who makes the decision that he actually likes and wants Odajima’s attention even if it confuses him at first. Odajima is rich, but the manga owns it by openly commenting on how his mother’s wealth makes all of his shitty behavior disappear (when the one ‘bad’ thing she won’t accept is his sexuality). I also really liked how their actual recognition of each other started before they were even roommates, and how Odajima was actually horrified when he saw he’d be rooming with Yano—because it meant it would be all the harder to keep deceiving himself.
One thing that really hits about this manga is that when Odajima is with Yano, you can finally see his true self. He’s playful and sincere, perhaps even a bit cute and pure, and entirely unlike the womanizing and cynical boy he pretends to be. While he lashes out at Yano sexually in an attempt to push him away—to get Yano to tell him he’s disgusting so he can finally just give up and go back to deceiving himself—he really wants to treasure Yano, be gentle with him, be near him. He yearns to really be honest with himself and his wants and needs, and only with Yano is he able to achieve that, because Yano is finally someone who wants to know and understand him as a person rather than as the perfect, intelligent, stunning, wealthy son of the Odajima family.
I feel like a lot of the concepts in this manga are incredibly relatable from a queer perspective in particular: the intense desire to just want to be who you are, to love who you love, but feel like you can’t do that without the fear of somehow damaging what you supposedly already have; that awakening when you have your first love and just can’t deny it anymore; finding your special people you can finally be yourself around, and slowly finding acceptance in the people who truly care about you. I feel like Shino Mikami captures that so beautifully, whether intentionally or not, and it makes me incredibly touched by Odajima and Yano’s love story.
As for other aspects of the manga…
The art is very simple, but lovely and incredibly expressive. While Shino Mikami’s lines are clean, there’s a soft sketchiness to them that really adds to the overall vibe of the story. Yano is so cute and emotive, and I love how the more we get to know Odajima and the more he’s with Yano, the more his emotions show on his face as well. I’ll try not to give the context away, but there’s a scene where Odajima cries, and for the first time he just looks so young and unsure, and it really brings home that he is just a deeply traumatized boy deep down. Mikami is so good at capturing these really small, emotional moments that add a lot of weight to the story and characters.
But the comedic timing is also really good. The story may sound really heavy, but thankfully there are plenty of silly, sweet, cute moments to balance out the really darker stuff. I’m personally not a fan of particularly sad or upsetting content, and I had no trouble at all getting through this manga (though I did cry a few times…). In fact, I had more trouble putting it down.
The ero scenes are secondary to the plot, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t really good. But I will definitely say, if you’re in it for the porn, this book is not one I’d recommend. The ero scenes are minimal, and they’re often more emotional than gratuitous—meant to show Odajima’s longing and desperation, and then finally his emotional connection with Yano.
I’m sorry this review got so long; I really only intended to write a brief summary to introduce the story, but something about Pittosporum digs deep into my soul and next thing I know I’ve spent over 1000 words talking about it.
In Japanese, flowers sometimes have different meanings than in the West, so it’s hard to know if Shino Mikami fully intended the meaning behind “pittosporum” to be “deceit.” In hanakotoba, or the language of flowers, the meaning can be “stepping out into the wider world” or “tenderness, fondness.” And I feel like both meanings have their place in the story—this is a series about two young men moving past deceit into into their true selves, and finding love and acceptance with each other and their wider world.
If you’re in the mood for something a bit heavy but with an incredible amount of emotional payoff, I can’t recommend this manga enough. I originally read it in Japanese as it was being released, and then was absolutely ecstatic to see it was brought to Renta! via one of our partners. There are actually four volumes out in Japanese, with three and four being about the growth in their relationship as they heal together, which is well deserved. Both these boys deserve all the happiness in the world, and it’s treat to be able to read their story.
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