Honey Bee & Lemon Balm Volume 1 Review

He looks like he was born to be constantly surrounded by flowers! Kaoru, impressed by Yuichiro.

Kaoru Mitsuya has already served time for his involvement in organized crime even though he’s only twenty-one and now he’s back on the outside, he just can’t catch a break. After being beaten up, he’s feeling at his lowest when he comes across a person lying unconscious in an alley-way on a pile of red rose petals. Smitten at first glance by their beauty, he checks to see if they’re all right – and it seems they’ve fallen asleep with exhaustion. Convinced that he’s stumbled on a beautiful woman, Kaoru learns that they’re a florist and their van has broken down, meaning they’re having to carry all the flowers to their shop. Offering to help with moving the flowers, Kaoru finds out that his new acquaintance is Yuichiro Shirouzu, they’re twenty-nine – and a man, His shop is a night-time florist in the entertainment district. After getting over his initial shock that his benefactor isn’t a woman, Kaoru gratefully accepts the offer to work as Yuichiro’s assistant – and can’t believe the change in his fortunes; board and lodging goes with the job!

Yuichiro, it turns out, is not as physically robust as he would like to be and occasionally (and alarmingly for Kaoru) collapses from overwork. And Kaoru finds himself having to deal with Ryo, Kaoru’s younger brother and a policeman, when thugs attack the shop. Although he and Yuichiro put up a good fight, both don’t come so well out of it and need medical assistance. How well will Kaoru – with his prison record – get on with Ryo? And what will happen when Yuichiro accepts a dinner invitation from the underboss of Aosaki gang? Can Kaoru control his confused feelings… as he begins to realize that he’s fallen for his kind-hearted employer and has a powerful rival?

Ah, this manga is really cute. It’s that rare thing, a feelgood manga with a Boys’ Love sensibility – but, as yet, nothing other than repressed feelings and some yearning on the part of poor, confused Kaoru, the one with the ‘honeybee’ hair as Yuichiro fondly describes it.

If anything, the only slight cloud shadowing my enjoyment of this well-drawn, well-told new manga is that Kaoru is convinced from the first moment that Yuichiro is a girl. It takes quite a while before he realizes that Yuichiro is not a girl – and then Yuichiro’s twin turns up, with a short haircut and in a suit, and it’s a double-take for poor confused Kaoru and us as well when we learn that he’s a she. It’s an amusing teasing game, I suppose, that mangaka Jil Hashikura is playing with their readers and it’s not a deal-breaker – but is Yuichiro’s voice high enough that Kaoru is really taken in, not only by their appearance but also their body language etc.?  I don’t really buy into the ‘girlie’ uke concept even though it’s the mainstay of many popular (older) BLs like Love Stage!! (Eiki Eiki) or Bond of Dreams, Bond of Love (Yaya Sakuragi). It plays with the idea that the manly seme will only fall for a boy when he’s convinced that they’re a girl, so that’s all right and not at all gay, really, is it? (If you’ve been watching the anime of Hana-Kimi, just think of poor deluded Nakatsu and his gay panic when he’s convinced that he’s fallen for a boy who’s really a girl but pretending to be a boy etc. etc.) Or is the idea still that women readers will immediately self-identify with the girlie uke? This would make it a kind-of warped metaphor for a hetcis relationship and not scarily homosexual at all! Interesting, then that publisher Kodansha describe Honey Bee & Lemon Balm as ‘an easy entrypoint for readers new to BL’ which might be interpreted as shorthand for ‘not too gay’.

However, putting these caveats aside, the first volume of Honey Bee & Lemon Balm turns out to be an enjoyable read. Kaoru is a sympathetic ‘bad’ boy; it’s heart-warming to watch him warily coming out of his habitual defensive shell under Yuichiro’s supportive attitude (and that of his younger brother, policeman Ryo). Kaoru might be rather rough around the edges but Yuichiro spots early on that his heart is in the right place. And, given Jil Hashikura’s attractive and sympathetic art (Yuichiro and his siblings are eye-catching too) this first volume makes for an engaging, page-turning read. The domestic squabbles between the siblings are amusing (many readers will sympathize with Yuichiro’s reluctance to eat liver and onions when he’s feeling off-colour).

Kodansha is publishing Honey Bee & Lemon Balm in a good-looking trade paperback edition which shows the mangaka’s art to very good effect (there’s a colour image at the start). The translation is by Adrienne Beck and reads very well with a good range of lettering by Adnazeer Macalangcom. There are illustrated translation notes at the end and a fun short three-panel ‘fan manga’ drawn by ‘my friend Ichiko’ as well as a brief afterword from the mangaka.

Recommended as a feelgood read for those who like their Boys’ Love on the light side, with art that’s a pleasure to look at and an endearing central character in scowling (but good-hearted) Kaoru. Volume 2 is due out in July and hopefully we’ll also get the sequel volume Honey Bee & Lemon Balm Sweet Moment from Kodansha in due course.

 Read a free preview at the publisher’s website here. 

Our review copy from Kodansha was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.