When Hinata's best friend, Makoto—with whom he's been in unrequited love for years—moves in with his girlfriend, Hinata is heartbroken... That is, until Makoto's younger brother, Toki—who may or may not be harboring some unrequited feelings of his own—suddenly decides to move in with Hinata!

Toki is like a little brother to Hinata! So when Toki rolls over in his sleep and starts kissing him, Hinata assumes it's just a fluke. Toki must have been dreaming about somebody else, right? It's not like Toki is totally in love with Hinata and desperately jealous of his feelings for Makoto... right?

I Want to See Me in Your Eyes has a story by and art by Yoriko. English translation is done by Carissa Tenorio and lettering by Vibrant Publishing Studio. Published by Tokyopop (April 14, 2026). Rated M.

Content Warning: dubious consent

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

When I first started reading this book, I initially thought that I had missed something – specifically, a different book that introduced Toki and Hinata. If I did, it's not available in English; although creator Yoriko does have two other works translated, neither of them seems to be related to this one. That means that either the book that does introduce these characters hasn't been translated or that this is an example of poor use of in medias res. I can't with confidence say which it is, but the result is the same: it really feels like this isn't giving us all the information we need to really feel for Hinata's situation.

That's too bad on several levels, the most pertinent being that the whole Makoto/Hinata/Toki love geometry doesn't feel as central as it needs to. Hinata has apparently been in love with his best friend Makoto for years, while Makoto's younger brother Toki has been pining for Hinata. When Makoto announces that he's moving in with his girlfriend with an eye to marriage, Toki interrupts Hinata's solo pity party by announcing that he's moving into his apartment because it's closer to school. Unable to kick Toki out, Hinata finds himself falling for the younger man who insists on living with him and holding him all night. (And for the record, “school” is college, so Toki's a legal adult; they're six years apart in age.)

Apart from the feeling of missing important backstory, the other issue with this book is that Toki isn't awesome about consent. Their first sexual encounter is Toki pretending to be asleep so he can grope Hinata, and in all fairness, this is the worst moment. But in his eagerness, he often doesn't ask Hinata if he's okay with what's going on, and when he does learn to do so, I feel like it's a bit late in the game. Learning that consent is important shouldn't only happen when love is mutual.

Despite these issues, the art is nice, and both men look equally masculine, just in different ways. Hinata is a good guy, standing up for a female coworker when she's sexually harassed, and it's not hard to see why Toki loves him. Toki's got his issues, but he evens out as the story goes on, something the translation does a good job showing. All in all this wouldn't be my first recommendation for racy BL, but if you can overlook its issues, it isn't a terrible reading choice.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

This may be the sweetest BL I have read in a very long time. When Hinata's long-time crush's brother moves in with him, I was a little thrown out of the story, because that really could have been an ugly plot complication, but…no. Hinata and Toki actually address Hinata's long-standing crush on Makoto and build their own relationship from scratch.

The art is lovely throughout, and sex scenes are explicit, but not just rutting. Both Toki and Hinata have a full raft of emotions as if the creator thought they ought to be actual humans. As the story develops, you forgive them their flaws and root for them as a couple. Which actually brings me to the most amusing thing about this manga.

At some point, Hinata saves a female colleague from sexual harassment, then becomes the target himself. From that point on, the colleague pays more attention to him, and she picks up on his relationship with Toki (which was pretty obvious). Later, the only other woman in the book also realized pretty much right away, while all the men around them are clueless. The women openly root for them to the confusion of those same men. It's a side joke, but one that worked well and added a third dimension to the characters and their story.

This was a story that could easily have gone pear-shaped, but ended up being very well handled and satisfying to read.

Bolts
Rating:

It's been a while since I've wanted to reach inside a book and strangle somebody over how dense they can be. I'm sure a lot of us have been in that situation or know someone who's been in that situation where they have very strong feelings for somebody, only for it to receive very little reaction, no matter how far you go with them. I know we live in an era where it's very common to sleep with your friend or roommate, while there are zero romantic implications. But the sheer level of affection that Toki shows for Hinata in this book is so blatant that I genuinely started to feel bad by the time I got to the end of the book.

Some of this is played up for comedy, but the majority of it is dramatic emotional logic. This is a story about overcoming a doomed romance. Hinata is a young man who just found out that his unrequited childhood crush from seemingly years ago is about to get married, but coincidentally, his childhood friend's brother, Toki, happens to move in with Hinata. So the two start sharing a cohabitation life. It's really cute, and the story is more or less about their relationship casually getting stronger as the book goes on. I'd say it's a slow burn if it wasn't for the fact that physical things escalate quite quickly.

But emotionally, things were dragged more than they needed to. Hinata is so hung up on his past romance that it's hard for him to recognize seemingly obvious signs, so there's nothing inexcusable in terms of writing. It's just really funny seeing the levels Hinata will go to justify the overly clingy and affectionate behavior that he is receiving. So in a lot of ways, this is realistic, but I'm pretty sure your mileage may vary on how well you can personally deal with that type of progression or lack thereof. Thankfully, the book is short and self-contained enough that you're not dealing with that type of situation for too long; just keep it in mind when you jump in.