Boys Love, or BL for short is a genre that depicts romantic and/or sexual relationships between men. It’s a rich genre with stunning variety in its themes and due to its popularity, the English market gets a satisfactory number of localized titles. The trends and tropes change and evolve over time, however, certain broad strokes or fan favorites remain.
The word ‘trope’ has a negative connotation among anime and manga fans, but it is merely a tool whose outcome depends on its implementation. The romance genre especially runs on tropes, but it’s either a setting or a dynamic that helps the reader decide whether to invest in a series or not. In this corner, I want to highlight 5 Boys Love VSC that share the same trope. Today’s theme is cooking!
Secondo Piatto
Writer/Artist: Best Restaurant
Original Story: MangoBear
Platform: Manta (All-ages), Lezhin (Mature) Tappytoon (Mature)
Hyeonwook is aghast when his childhood best friend and long-time crush Heeseon announces she’s getting married. To his friend Minseok, no less, and it’s only been three months since they met through Hyeonwook. One day, he is asked to accompany the couple to an Italian restaurant to taste test the wedding menu. Secondo Piatto is owned by Wonyoung, a friend of Minseok’s and only Hyeonwook picks up on the unusually high quality of the ingredients considering the amount his friends can afford. Wonyoung insists it’s a wedding gift, and Hyeonwook keeps something else he notices to himself: the strange behavior of Wonyoung around his ‘friend’ Minseok.
Secondo Piatto is both MangoBear and Best Restaurant‘s first commercial BL work, although Best Restaurant has another mature BL title called Cry Me a River under the pen name Majjip. When different platforms acquire the same vertical-scrolling comic, they are sometimes re-translated and lettered, you might encounter different Romanized versions of characters and artist names.
Surprisingly, “Our crushes are getting married, and there’s nothing we can do about it,” is a thing in BL. Who can blame the artists for returning to this theme? This setting has it all! The heartbreak, the inevitability, having to send them off with a happy face because you can’t suddenly stop being their friend, nor do you want to. It’s a gift that keeps on giving! Unless you’re experiencing it firsthand.
Secondo Piatto does a great job of taking this complicated, tangled web of relationships and crafting a messy, smutty but eventually comforting story full of yearning and drunken missteps! The plot doesn’t focus solely on the romantic aspect, you can even anticipate some action towards the end.
If you’re able to, I recommend you read the mature version as the all-ages versions of R-rated comics sometimes cut out an entire chapter and you might miss out on conversation relevant to the plot. Plus, you’ll be able to enjoy Hyeonwook’s pecs in their whole glory!
I’d recommend Secondo Piatto to readers who can tolerate characters who make mistakes, have a hard time letting go of the past and enjoy the bitterness regret brings!
Off The Plate
Writer/Artist: Jai
Translation: Cie
Lettering: M Omac
Platform: Tapas (Mature)
To Gyul, Jeongro is a part of his past that the restaurant consultant wants to forget. Gyul wanted to celebrate an anniversary with his partner but had to find a bar to drown his sorrows after having been dumped instead. Five years later, the man who kept him company that dreadful night is now a contestant in the cooking show where Gyul’s a judge. It doesn’t take long for him to figure out who Jeongro is. However, the younger chef seems completely oblivious.
Confession time: Off The Plate is the reason I picked this theme. This series is Jai‘s first and only commercial BL, the main story is completed but according to the artist’s Twitter account, there will be side stories to come.
When it was first introduced to Tapas‘ library, I wasn’t very impressed with the key visual as the image seemed kind of bleak. The color palette used throughout the series is grim and washed out as if a thin layer of dust is covering everything and everyone. The road Jeongro and Gyul walk on seems to be paved with hurdles.
The plot isn’t a walk in the park, but none of the circumstances that happen throughout feel overly dramatic or out of place. Gyul and Jeongro fit each other like puzzle pieces and you care about them as characters as well. One issue I had with this series is that normally the color of the base background to the panels indicates whether the events happen now or in the past. In Off The Plate, however, both black and white are used for both past and current events. I read it during its serialization and it was hard to piece the events together.
Still, I heartily recommend Off The Plate to readers who are looking for an interesting dynamic to read and who love their BL a bit depressing. I’m looking forward to Jai’s future works!
The King of Home Cooking
Writer/Artist: Lee Hyun-joo
Translation: Sunflower
Platform: Tappytoon (Mature)
What’s a broke college student with unimpressive cooking skills to do to make a quick buck and ensure a comfortable retired life? Jiho’s solution is to join a cooking show that heavily relies on variety and fan votes. He wants to lay the fanservice thick since his looks are decent but he doesn’t know what to do. His classmate has an idea: “business gay performance”, or BGP for short. He needs to find the hottest guy among the contestants and fake a gay relationship to stir up the show. A black-haired prince by the name of Choi Woo-hyuk comes to the rescue.
Or does he? The King of Home Cooking is Lee Hyun-joo‘s first work to be licensed in English and it’s complete with 81 chapters. The spinoff, The King of Home Dating, focuses on one of the love interests in the prequel and is currently being serialized. If Off The Plate is the more serious older sibling, The King of Home Cooking is the ridiculous younger one who thinks they can get with anything. And to everyone’s dismay, they do.
The romance side of the plot is great and has all the beats you might expect from a BL. The main characters getting off on the wrong foot, misunderstandings, lots of crying, rivals, and all that jazz. It’s executed well and while I caught the second male lead syndrome as always, Woo-hyuk and Jiho fit each other nicely.
I should finish by saying that Jiho is a force to be reckoned with. If you’re the type of reader who expects the characters to grow and fix their harmful or annoying sides, you might want to reconsider this one. Unrepentant Jiho remains his annoying, selfish self through every course of this series.
I’d recommend The King of Home Cooking to readers who can handle… well, Jiho. The competition is full of wacky characters, every minute a new shenanigan occurs, and ultimately, it’s a fun series with a unique premise!
I Became The Lousy Side Top
Writers: seulki & Backill
Artist: erim
Original Story: robo
Translation: Ciara
Platform: Tappytoon (All-ages)
Our protagonist wakes up in a BL novel as Seo Jaewoo, a side character who’s a top. Thankfully, he remembers the main beats of the plot. While he’s happy Jaewoo inherited his grandmother’s house and is living the rich landlord dream, he also knows that he turned the main bottom character Yoo Hyeonjin’s miserable-enough-as-is life a hell. This lousy attitude gets Jaewoo killed in the end, and the reincarnated Jaewoo is determined to turn his fate around by using his cooking skills!
I Became The Lousy Side Top would probably be considered an isekai vertical-scrolling comic first rather than one about cooking. Adapted from a webnovel itself, suddenly waking up in a novel or a video game the main character was reading/playing, and doing everything to avoid the death route is the most common setting of isekai in webnovels.
Similar to other works in the genre, Jaewoo tries to save himself while being careful not to derail the original plot so that the main couple can meet and fall in love. However, acting completely different from the original character creates a whole other trajectory despite his efforts.
I have to say, there’s a weird charm to this series because it somehow works. A lot of the details here are added and scraped for convenience. For example, Jaewoo tries to win over Hyeonjin’s brothers with his cooking skills since their oldest wants nothing to do with their landlord. When he slowly opens up, however, the younger siblings are nowhere to be seen and brought back when it’s convenient again.
Or when Mujin is running a dangerously high fever because he was stabbed, in one panel he can’t even move, a couple of panels later he’s up and arguing with others, pinning down Jaewoo, and then he can’t move again. Most of the panels are up-close drawings of the characters’ faces and there are barely any backgrounds, especially during a conversation.
Still, a part of me couldn’t put I Became The Lousy Side Top down! Even with all the issues I mentioned above, there’s a charm and intrigue to this comic that makes you wonder what happens next. It’s completed too, so you can binge to your heart’s content!
Honey Bear
Writer: Ruyoung
Artist: Nutty
Translation: DADA
Platform: Tappytoon (All-ages & Mature)
Peanut is five years old and a healthy male Chihuahua. He has a 21-year-old slave named Geonwoo, whose duty is to feed and take care of his needs. He does a good job of it, but Peanut is concerned about his human lately. The only woman who visits the flat is Geonwoo’s best friend of ten years and now it’s up to Peanut to create a chance encounter for his human to meet someone they might like, and put that good body to use – if you catch his drift!
Honey Bear is an ongoing series on Tappytoon, from the writer-artist duo Ruyoung & Nutty. This is their first commercial BL, and I have to say I’m impressed by the warmth and cuteness oozing from the series!
Geonwoo is a judo practitioner at a sports university and thanks to Peanut, he does meet the cutest guy he’s ever seen! Hajin is a chef who’s in the process of opening his pastry shop in the neighborhood. I have a special place in my heart for comics that lay its card early on. Geonwoo quickly accepts he’s gay, Hajin is gay and immediately notices Geonwoo’s feelings for him are romantic. Our sporty bear is exactly Hajin’s type but he’s sworn off dating. These happen in the first couple of chapters, so all we have to do is sit back and find out how the equation will solve itself.
While I only recently got into Honey Bear, I still wanted to recommend it here because it’s an absolute gem that’s impossible to put down once you pick it up. This series would be perfect for people looking for a BL with its main couple to be as green as a forest, many laugh-out-loud funny moments, and who are into kind, bulky bears like Hajin.
Boys Love: Cooked to perfection
I was under the impression that there were a lot of food/cooking-related BL vertical-scrolling comics out there, but turns out, it was just me reading almost all of whatever’s available in English. It was also interesting to note that these works don’t include recipes the way the Japanese manga such as What Did You Eat Yesterday? or Let’s Eat Together, Aki and Haru do. Sharing is caring, so don’t forget to add your favorite BL that incorporates cooking or your thoughts on this week’s list!
Catch up with previous entries in K-Comics Beat’s Boys Love for Life series by clicking here!
