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. 😤