The Fall 2023 Manga Guide

Training Mister Sakurada

What's It About? 

Hajime Sakurada is thirsty—for a girlfriend and a good time. He can't get enough of women, even though they've been steadily losing interest in him since his playboy days in his 20s. The new junior in his department, Seiichiro Mibu, is hogging all the babes and the promotions, and worse, he's such a great guy, Sakurada can't even summon any jealousy. But when Sakurada awakens in a love hotel, all tied up, it's Mibu who strolls through the door. He's got a shocking revelation and plans to ruin Sakurada's whole week with a marathon of kink play and revenge! What's Sakurada to do, especially once he begins to enjoy it?

Training Mister Sakurada has a story and art by Kaya Azuma. The English translation is by Philip Reuben. Lettering by Toppy. Published by Seven Seas Entertainment (November 28, 2023).

Content Warning: Nudity and sexual assault

Is It Worth Reading?

MrAJCosplay

Rating:

I have to say this series kept throwing me for a loop at every turn. At first, I thought this would be on the level of non-consenting revenge porn like many other BL stories out there. I would love to have more books delve into the social complexities of BDSM lifestyles, but I've been burned before, so I think my skepticism was completely justified. It also doesn't help that the opening premise of the story is one of the main guys admitting that he wanted to corrupt his coworker because said coworker inadvertently corrupted him back when the two were in high school. In the first ten pages, I'm reading a revenge story where the one enacting the revenge admits that he's performing non-consensual sexual assault.

Now, I'm expecting the whole book to be about this guy carrying out his revenge, and maybe we'll get detailed breakdowns of what the corruption process looks like…but we don't. Instead, we end up abridging all of that in three pages, and then the tone immediately shifts to a more lighthearted romance with BDSM as a backdrop. It's bizarre because I almost feel like the book lied to me, even though I'd much rather read what the book later turns into than read what it originally started as. I'm not sure if the writer got cold feet or if the whole thing is supposed to be some joke, but there is this weird air that the story doesn't know what it wants to be.

This, in turn, leads to a very tonally inconsistent story. It doesn't stick with the uncomfortable stuff long enough to flesh it out or address them as issues. The lighthearted moments don't feel super earned because they're piggybacking off those uncomfortable moments. The sex scenes are good in a vacuum and can get very intense, but there are no conversations about consent or what either party is looking for, despite one being a train Dom. It's a weird enigma that I can recommend to an extent if you're looking for something on the graphic side with a bit more of a lighter tone. There is just a lot you need to sift through.

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Manga creator Kaya Azuma knows what BDSM is and how consent is central to it. That's just not the way the manga itself runs. At one point, Mibu, the dominant partner, flat-out says that his preferred sexual subculture is all about consent and mutual agreement/satisfaction, but then he goes on to say something along the lines of, “But that's not what I'm doing here; I'm sexually assaulting you, senpai.” Eventually, Sakurada, the submissive partner, does come to enjoy their play, but that comes with the uncomfortable reliance on one of romance's worst old tropes: if you rape someone enough times, they'll start to like it.

So obviously, this book comes with myriad hefty content warnings and isn't really for me. BDSM stories are fine, but I prefer that they adhere to the all-important norm of consent between partners, which this book can't quite pull off. Even when Sakurada and Mibu transition into a mutual, loving relationship, the creator introduces a new character who pulls Mibu's bad actions on Sakurada himself, and the entire premise of the central relationship is that Sakurada “turned” Mibu into a dom by sexually assaulting him in high school. It's just really uncomfortable, and even the fact that the central relationship has its sweet moments can't negate that entirely.

On the other hand, if noncon (or dubcon) romance is your flavor of fantasy and you don't mind the BDSM elements, this is a really good bet. Azuma's art doesn't hold back to the point where it's almost surprising to see this as a release from Seven Seas instead of Fakku or Irodori's adult imprint. They make good use of a lot of the hentai tricks of the trade in terms of weirdly transparent bodies (the better to show readers penetration) and copious fluids, to say nothing of shirts made of tissue paper. Each chapter has at least one sex scene, if not more, and even when the emotional undercurrent comes to the fore, the men's sex life still retains at least play elements of non-consensual sex. We also get a decent sense of who Mibu and Sakurada are as people, even if that's less important to the plot.

This is not a release for all BL readers. The non/dubcon elements do feature prominently, and I don't love how they mess with the definition of BDSM as laid out by the characters themselves. But if it's your preferred flavor of romance fiction, you'll find enough to enjoy.