Genre: BL/yaoi/anthology
Age Rating: M/Mature/18+
Price: $13.95

Don't let the title mislead you: Reversible is not an anthology about BL couples who switch sexual roles. In fact, it doesn't seem to have much of a theme at all -- not that it needs one; although the eleven stories featured are all by different artists and have a wide range of types of characters and situations, they feel as if they're coming from a similar place. Perhaps because the artists are relative newcomers, this anthology being their collective debut on the US market, the stories have an original, off-beat feel that makes them refreshing to read.

The collection gets off to a good start with "Tell Me You Like Me" by Saki Takarai, a funny, sweet, and erotic story about an established relationship between two office colleagues. Takarai's characters are well-observed, and her art style has a lovely loose openness that gives each page a sense of motion and each facial expression a sense of life. This may be my favourite of all the stories in the book, not least because the main characters' relationship feels very real, full of little pitfalls and difficulties but also brimming with warmth that's a joy to read about. My second favourite would have to be Neri Koizumi's "Sakuragawa University Cheer Squad", in which a hard-drinking university student falls for a kindergarten teacher; it has a down-to-earth charm and a slightly goofy humour that reminds me of Ellie Mamahara's Alley of First Love; and as with Alley of First Love, Koizumi manages to populate her world with vivid and well-realised secondary characters in a short span of pages.

There are three stories here that deal with high school love triangles; Kazuha's "Tri-Color Love Song" appears to be the first chapter of an ongoing series, which is a little frustrating to see in an anthology of otherwise self-contained stories, though as a first chapter it's intriguing enough to make me want to see what happens next. Haruki Fujimoto's "Boyfriend" goes the other way and is itself divided into chapters, each chapter giving us a different character's point of view. The ending is unresolved, and while I wouldn't be surprised to find that there was a sequel in the works, it's strangely satisfying as it is, with a multitude of hints at things going on under the surface that aren't made explicit and don't need to be. Of all the stories in the collection, this one has the most interesting art, reminiscent of Takako Shimura at times. "Perfect Age" is a little hard to understand at first -- the characters' names aren't given early enough, so that untangling who's talking about whom is tricky -- but it has a sweetly melancholic tone and a light, open art style, both of them rare and lovely.

Also featuring high schoolers, but without a love triangle, are "Caged Bird" by Kometa Yonekura, "It Falls At Night" by Shiori Ikezawa, and "Dear Boys" by Misora Hatori. Like "Tri-Color Love Song", "Dear Boys" is very obviously the first chapter of an ongoing series; unfortunately, it feels much less complete than the "Tri-Color Love Song" chapter, with the little that happens on-page seeming more like setup than an actual story, and not the setup for anything particularly unusual either. (Gosh, an ordinary boy goes to a private boys' school with a powerful student council and unusually attractive students? Never seen that before.) "It Falls At Night" is a charming little piece about two boys taking advantage of summer break to sneak around their school grounds -- and running into something unexpected on the way; "Caged Bird" is on the surface a pretty typical "why does he love me?" story, but Yonekura generates a sense of intensity of emotion that lifts it above the norm.

Rounding out the collection are the sweet but unremarkable "Catch!", the quirky and fun "Office Mermaid", and the slightly disappointing "Happiness, Fun, Kindness", which doesn't really do enough with its premise -- if your main character is an angel who's fallen to earth, I expect you to use that as the basis for something really interesting, not just some smoochy conversations with his human boyfriend.

But none of the stories are bad, and the few less-good ones aside, this collection is very high quality -- a substantial and varied array of fresh, heartwarming, entertaining stories with enough quirks and originality to be refreshing and distinctive. I look forward to seeing more work from all these artists; with this as their US debut, they've got off on the right foot.

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