The art is gorgeous. The art is almost too good. I just want to sit and stare at some of the pages and lose track of the fact that I should be paying attention to the words. If I had a second copy of this manga I'd slice it up and put pages on my walls like little posters. (Like Jen did with J-Boy.)

First off, this is an anthology. The title story takes up only one chapter. The Day I Became a Butterfly is the strongest story in this set. It's about Uka the Uke, who is dying of some vague, undefined illness and Mimi, a boy with the strange ability to know when people are going to die. Uka the uke looks like a girl. It's not just the face, it's the flowers in the hair, the stance ... the skirt. (see picture below)

As for the rest of the anthology some of the stories are definitely het. They involve guys who date girls. Girls with boobs and everything. Now, don't get me wrong, I really like this title. But, when I see Juné's logo on the spine I don't expect het.

There is a story about two guys facing being separated after high school, followed by a story of a het couple with the same problem. All the time I was reading the second of these two stories I was confused. I kept expecting the story to go a different direction. Then I re-read it to make sure that the one who wears the girl's uniform every day is actually a girl. This anthology already had one guy in a skirt, maybe this was another one. I am pretty sure it's a girl this time. Still a bit befuddled I went onto the next story, Blue Cat Tunnel, where one half of the couple is undeniably female. There is also a yuri theme to that tale of adultery.

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The last two chapters are short, but they both deal with couples that I am confident are male. Tokyo Alien Ulala is a strange little snippet. Yuzuru acts like Ulala's words of love is just Ulala speaking 'alienese'.

As for the plot of the last story .... Um.... well, it's a little hard to pin down. I see it as a story about a guy slowly falling in love with the guy who loves him. But, I can see an argument for more than one interpretation. Even though it's a little vague, it's still a wonderfully emotional story.

Most of the stories are a little hard to define. They have a dreamy quality to them. It's hard to summarize them without inlcluding assumptions that I am making as a reader. I can see how someone else could read these stories and some away with a different idea of what happened. In this case, it is a strenght of the stories, not a weakness.

I am very curious as to why this came out under the June´ imprint and not the DMP one. A DMP title with some gay in it is not surprising. A Juné title with het and yuri is. The art and the writing are great. But, since this is being presented to potential readers as a yaoi title, I need to judge it from that standpoint. So, I took a bit off the overall grade for being only half yaoi. Though, If I made a list of my top ten favorite titles with yaoi content, this would definitly be on that list.

Mangaka: Sumomo Yumeka
Publisher: Juné (Upcoming Releases | YaoiWiki Entry)
MSRP: $12.95
Censorship: N/A
Warnings: ! Guys dating girls with boobs and everything. Also, a peek of a bra.
Disclosure: This was a free review copy, courtesy of Juné Manga.