Read on Renta!:
Entwined in Red by tapon

Japanese Title:
Karamaru Himo no Akai Ato
絡まる紐の赤い痕

tapon (author)
moment (publishing line)
ShuCream Official EN

TW: emotional, physical, and sexual abuse

A complaint I see frequently regarding BL manga is that it’s too short. Compared to shonen or shojo series, which can go on for tens (and sometimes hundreds) or volumes, BL is often kept to between one and three volumes, and only goes beyond that for extremely popular series. (Though, I’ve noticed this is changing a bit with the proliferation of digital publishing in the BL space, but that’s a tangent for another day.) I personally like this aspect of BL, however—it forces the artist to write a concise story that makes a big impact with as few pages as possible. And, in the case of today’s review subject, sometimes you come across a manga that fits a full coming of age story in as few as four chapters.

tapon’s Entwined in Red condenses a story about abuse, trauma, and shame into just over one hundred pages. Our main character, Asai, is a Very Good Boy whose entire personality and motto are heavily based on the idea that it’s best to live a “normal” life. Good in school, a wonderful son and big brother, and popular with all his female classmates, Asai seems like the perfect example of what a teenage boy should be. However, he’s harboring a secret—ever since elementary school, when he and some fellow classmates stumbled on a porn mag with women in full shibari, he’s been obsessed with the idea of beautiful red ropes marking pale skin. From his classmates’ exclamations of disgust, however, it was made clear that liking shibari isn’t “normal.”

Enter his beautiful classmate Rui. Consistently truant, to the point that most of his classmates only remember his existence through rumors about him being a player and son of a yakuza, Rui is a complete mystery to Asai. So when Rui is suggested as the pianist for their class choir contest (evidently a staple in Japanese middle and high schools), Asai is asked as the class rep to visit Rui’s apartment, tell him about the contest, and deliver some paperwork. What he walks in on, however is Rui in the middle of prostituting himself to an older man, his beautiful pale skin covered in red rope.

When Asai tries to chastise Rui for doing “stuff like that,” Rui gets annoyed and points out Asai got hard from seeing him all tied up, so what right does he have to act superior? When Rui tells Asai to take responsibility for constantly interrupting his time with his clients, Asai can’t resist the allure of these desires he’s been pushing down for half his life, and thus Asai’s squeaky clean image is tarnished—but in its stead starts the blossoming of a relationship tying him to Rui.