Back in high school, best friends Aki and Minagi were inseparable. Aki dreamed of becoming a professional football player, while everyone called Minagi a genius and urged him to chase his dream of working in medicine. Years later, Aki has taken over his grandfather's hair salon, and Minagi has set his interest in medicine aside to work in a host club. Despite the growing tension between them following their high school fallout, Minagi shows up at Aki's apartment one day asking for a place to stay. Can the two men confront their past in order to repair their future?

Light of My Life has story by Fuuko Minami and art by Takiba. Translation by Leo McDonagh, bonus translation by Jacqueline Fung, and lettering by Nicole Roderick. Published by Kodansha Comics (October 28, 2025). Rated M.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Dreams change. Back in high school, Aki was going to be a professional soccer player, and Minagi was going to be a doctor, but after Aki's life changed, Minagi gave up on his dream as well. To say that seeing his best friend (and crush) go from aspiring doctor to host was hard might be understating the matter for Aki, and Minagi's choices have caused a rift between the two as they enter adulthood. But Minagi feels responsible for Aki's changed plans, and most of this book is the two of them talking around each other without ever actually communicating.

While that may sound annoying, in reality, it makes for a very grounded book. Aki and Minagi are both afraid of upsetting their relationship, and in the process are essentially sabotaging it in a thousand tiny ways. They're trying so hard to make things work that they're doing the opposite, and that's very human of them. These are emotionally messy people trying to keep it all inside, not recognizing that they're their own worst enemies at all times, and that drives the plot forward. Readers can see what's going on, and so can the third in their high school friend group, Sarara, but there's nothing that any of us can do about it, because ultimately the two men have to work it out for themselves. (Sarara's small efforts to bring them together are nicely understated, and he wins all the points for clearly not being weirded out or upset that his two best friends are sleeping together.)

They do, eventually, but not before they've made a total mess of themselves and their relationship. When Minagi first becomes a host, he casually hints that he wouldn't mind having sex with a guy so as not to go into the profession a virgin, and Aki takes that hint, oblivious to the fact that Minagi's actually admitting something to him. Aki thinks that Minagi's just really casual about his sexual encounters, while they mean something to Aki, which pretty much encapsulates the problem in a nutshell: hinting is not the same as saying, and these guys need a major lesson in communication. Again, this is a feature of this book rather than a bug, because all of the action is internal. There are little fights, but nothing big and dramatic; the sex scenes do that work, and the two people involved in them aren't even aware of the fact until the end. It's an interesting approach, and it mostly works, although the story does drag a bit towards the middle.

Light of My Life would have been better as either a two-volume work or a slightly shorter one. The 242 pages that make it up are a bit too long for a cozy and a bit too short for full exploration. But it's still a good book, especially if you're looking for something physically explicit and emotionally withdrawn.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

A wise woman (me) once said that a crush is a romance story told by one person without the participation of the other person. In Light of My Life, both characters are telling themselves a version of their shared story while the object of their crush is unaware of the role they play.

This is an extremely annoying premise, as Aki is the non-verbal dark hunk type and Minagi the golden retriever type to start, with years of misunderstanding and ineffectual longing creating a wide rift between them.

Thankfully, as Aki and Minagi begin to surface the secrets of their past, they become much more interesting and tolerable and, eventually, likable, as individuals and a couple. The characters are shoehorned into classic “gay dude” jobs, and Minagi is absurdly rich, which I felt gave the whole volume a nice old-school unhinged from reality BL feel. The story makes the most it can out of those aspects, so their careers don't just feel tacked on, but Minagi doesn't know how to do anything is never as cute as it's played.

The third person in their friendship ends up being the best character of the volume. Completely aware of what he is doing, Sarara is the one who brings Minagi to “crash” at Aki's and is quite funny at the end, which I won't spoil, since it's pretty much the only truly humorous scene.

This is an 18+ story, with sex scenes that are pleasantly pornish, with explicit consent that doesn't make itself a whole chapter. Their sex life lightens up as their relationship develops. When they first have sex, it feels like a penance, but by the end, you know they are happy.

For a one-volume 18+ BL, this one ticks off all the boxes – angst beginning, backstory trauma, a host, a hairdresser, and lots of sex, happily yad yada. And, oh, yeah, Aki's hands are huge.