My Instructor Won’t Yield Review
Driving school instructors are the pinnacle of popular! People fall for them left and right!
Chiba (30), charming, good-looking and a driving instructor, knows all about the pitfalls of being alone in a car with his female students/pupils. He makes sure that he rejects all romantic advances, maintaining a high professional standard. So teaching male students doesn’t present any problems – not until beginner Yaotome (also 30) appears, very smartly dressed in a suit, but dissolving in terror the instant he has to attempt to drive the car. Strangely, he calls Chiba ‘Maki’ as he struggles to steer around the course. Perhaps Chiba’s calm and reassuring teaching method hasn’t worked because a whole week passes and Yaotome doesn’t return. However, when Chiba calls into the local convenience store late one night, he spots a dishevelled man clutching a few purchases – and realizes it’s none other than Yaotome. His student, covered in confusion, apologizes for his absence and says he’s been busy with work. Chiba offers to give him a lift home and as they talk, he learns that Yaotome is a mangaka on a very tight deadline!
Inspired by their chat, Yaotome goes on to gain his provisional license and asks to exchange contact information with Chiba. Chiba suspects that he’s not just looking for friendship… but is wary of embarking on a relationship, as a year ago, his former boyfriend left him for a woman (they even invited him to the wedding). And then, when he is starting a lesson with a new female student, she tells him that he’s just like ‘Maki-san’ in a shojo manga that she loves. Alarm bells ring. He checks out the title and sees interactions he’s had in real life with Yaotome on the page. Has the mangaka been using Chiba as material for his work in progress? He just wanted to play lovebirds with me…so he could use me to get ideas for his manga.
Anyone who’s been apprehensive about taking the wheel for the first time in a driving lesson (not to mention the second and third times too) will sympathize with poor Yaotome when he goes into major panic mode. Although, I expect many of us would have been more than happy to have an instructor as patient and good-looking as Chiba to encourage us through those difficult first stages! This manga rings true (mangaka Deme Kingyobachi explains that it was inspired by her own experiences as a learner driver) which really helps to establish an interesting and believable dynamic between Chiba and Yaotome. It’s impossible not to want to find out if their relationship will develop or founder, especially as Chiba, for all his easy-going, relaxed charm, is still bruised and unconfident after being dumped by his original boyfriend. When the first boyfriend reappears in his life – and at the worst possible time – it feels as if Chiba just can’t get a break.
My Instructor Won’t Yield seems to be the first of Deme Kingyobachi’s Boys’ Love manga to be published in print in English (she also produces josei works, notably gender-bender Madoka’s Secret (Manga Planet) and it’s an involving read with believable, interesting characters. Her character art is expressive and accomplished, although she admits that she found drawing the cars ‘extremely challenging,’ eventually consigning that side of the manga to her assistant! She also has a very good feel for how to pace her story so that the way the relationship evolves, encountering pitfalls and misunderstandings, feels convincing and avoids the usual BL/romance clichés. There’s also a really cleverly pitched change of direction halfway through which made me smile – and hopefully will amuse other readers too!
The Kodansha print edition comes as a trade paperback with an attractive colour image at the front. Translation is by Kevin Steinbach who, aided by the lettering by Nicole Roderick, captures the naturalistic ebb and flow of the conversations really well. There are four helpful and interesting pages of translation notes at the end and ‘Afterword’, a sweet little bonus story. My Instructor Won’t Yield is described by Kodansha as a one-shot and although I’ve seen the occasional rumour that there will be a sequel, the mangaka seems to be busy with a new BL title (due out in Japan this month) so we can at least hope that Kodansha will pick up that one too in due course.
Read a free extract at the publisher’s website here.
Our review copy from Kodansha was provided by Diamond Book Distributors.
© Deme Kingbyobachi/KODANSHA LTD
