#derail

I was not blown away by "Try & I Love You," but I very much appreciate its existence. Unlike many other iterations of the "childhood friends to lovers" storyline (some of which I'll discuss later), it is the rare, unadulterated version of this trope: two childhood friends who harbor no romantic interest in each other before they decide in a moment of "why not?" to date each other. Accordingly, the plot consists entirely of Takumi and Ren struggling with what dating means for their friendship, if it means anything at all. In chapter 2, Takumi complains to his coworker that "it doesn't feel like we're lovers at all." They are too comfortable with each other and know each other too well. Instead of going out, they rent a bunch of movies and watched them at home. Instead of a popular cafe, they go to an all-you-can-eat-crabs buffet. They cuddle and make miso soup for each other after a night of drinking and go to a gyoza festival where they feed each other and even though Takumi's heart pounds at seeing Ren's happy face, he still wonders, "What if I tell Ren I want to date like real couples?" What the hell are you talking about, the reader may be yelling at this point. Are you not already dating like a real couple?

This week I was chatting about relationships and heteronormativity with my good friend Caitlin, who always has something smart to say. She reminded me that part of rebuking heteronormativity is "figuring out who you are versus what you think you are based on stories." In the case of "Try", the stories are contained in things like the movie Takumi and Ren imitated in chapter one, a romanticized fantasy narrative about how love should be performed and how dating should feel. Love feels like butterflies in the stomach, demands certain date spots and behaviors, and most importantly should not be comfortable during the honeymoon period. It should include some sort of physical manifestation of sexuality, because in these stories, you have sex with one person and that one person is the partner you date exclusively. These stories are predictable and iterative patterns of behavior that, for many people and for Takumi and Ren, make us doubt love even when we are staring it in the face.

In our society and in Takumi and Ren's, these stories are also straight ones, the heterosexual part of heteronormative. Ren's ex-girlfriend Sayaka breaks up with him because she realized she is attracted to women, and in the aftermath, Ren realizes he was distracted by years of heterosexuality into thinking that his feelings for Takumi cannot be the same romantic feelings he has for Sayaka, simply because Sayaka is a woman and Takumi is not. Later, when Takumi misunderstands Ren's motivations for dating him, Ren comes to a second discovery, even more radical than the first: that the issue is not whether Sayaka is a woman or that Takumi is a man, but that Ren wants to stay with Takumi, even if it means chasing and begging and fighting for a chance.

If love is anything at all, echo argues, it's not in sex or kissing or holding hands. At its most basic core, it must reside in the desire to be with the other person. For Sayaka was similar to Takumi in the ways that attracted her to Ren: they have fun together, they like the same things. But Ren was willing to give up Sayaka, simply because she said she loves women. And Ren wanted to date Takumi, even if Takumi never expressed an interest in men.

There is something dangerously close to aromanticism in Takumi, and part of me thinks echo could have gone the full nine yards with that. "Up until now, I've never been in a relationship because I fell in love with them," Ren admits to Takumi. Later, he explains, "I think girls are cute, but I've noticed that I don't want to know more about them, nor do I have romantic feelings for them. I don't feel anything in particular when I see my fellow men, either." But here echo stops short, and creates a unique "gay for you" twist but for alloromanticism: Ren's feelings for Takumi are uniquely romantic and inspire him to want to be with Takumi. And that's fine; we are in the boys love genre after all. But after the confession, "Try" loses its odd appeal and becomes a kind of awkward sex romp, with Ren getting angry that Takumi is trying to practice anal sex on his own and an epilogue where it turns out that Takumi is actually an insatiable beast over, of all things, Ren's sleeping face. I can't help but wonder what, say, ymz would have done with Takumi and Ren's relationship—but, well, "Good-bye, Heron" already exists.

On the other hand, Aiba Kyoko's "Derail" is "childhood friends to lovers" by way of false advertising. Hikaru and Haru are not childhood "friends" at all, but rather two lovers who have used childhood friends as a front to hide behind. Haru is a gloomy playboy who has spent most of his life devising ways to keep Hikaru unreasonably close to him, and Hikaru is a classic maladjusted people pleaser who uses his nice guy persona to hide the fact that he derives almost all his self-worth from being wanted by Haru. Both of them have the makings of psychopaths in another story, but here they spend their energy playing tortuous mindgames in their own heads while from the outside they progress, totally normally, from friends to dating to lovers. That neither of them have any real friends other than each other becomes increasingly obvious, because any third party would have called out this relationship for what it is from the start. Oh, your childhood best friend sleeps with you in the same bed and forbids you from bringing girls home? Oh, your childhood best friend makes googly eyes at you over breakfast and lets you jerk him off? Come on, man. Be so fucking real with me right now.

The issue is, of course, that the default assumption of heterosexuality has Haru believing he needs to be playing some sort of Soulslike game with Hikaru's feelings before he can get to his goal of dating, while Hikaru believes he's unilaterally trapped Haru like a codependent spider in a web of neediness. As Haru says, when people in tense situations are pressured to pick between two unreasonable choices, they're convinced they must choose one of them. So if you are two men who want to be in each other's lives forever and to be each other's number one, heteronormativity has you believing the unreasonable choices are either to (1) not do that, which isn't an option, or (2) slide everything under the cover of "childhood friends" and hope no one, least of all yourselves, takes a closer look. This is a losing proposition, but Hikaru and Haru are so busy believing the story they tell themselves and everyone around them of being "childhood friends" that they simply cannot realize they are in an impossible situation, being forced to make unreasonable choices. They must, as one might say, find the secret third thing, which is not so secret here: just admit you love each other and leave the rest of us alone!

Unlike Takumi and Ren, I don't think Hikaru and Haru were ever friends or at least haven't been friends for a long time, too caught up as they were in stretching the boundaries of acceptable "childhood friends" behavior. And I think there's a part of their creator that agrees with me. Amusingly and in contrast with "Try," the epilogue of "Derail" features the two of them going to a hotel for a date, not to have sex, but rather to spend an evening playing video games and relaxing. This might be the closest we ever get to a "lovers to childhood friends" reverse trope, or at least as close as we'll ever get without reincarnation or isekai.

Suzumaru Minta's "Love Song of the Cracker Ball" splits the difference by featuring one character who is learning how to turn a hypothetical openness to the other gender into a very real interest in one specific male friend and another character who is doing his own one-man show of "Derail" but, like, more normal about it. Wako and Takeo have been neighbors and childhood friends for a very long time, and Wako had been depending on remaining Takeo's friend to stay Takeo's number one. When that position is threatened by Takeo suddenly musing that he'd be open to dating a guy, Wako loses equilibrium entirely and ends up confessing his long-time crush to Takeo, who of course suggests they try dating. Wako is somehow even less prepared for this possibility than he was for getting rejected, but after a lot of hand-holding and hijinks and a poorly thought out plan by Wako to figure out what inspired Takeo's gay awakening, they manage to make a proper relationship of it.

(Before we get further in this review, can I just say that I loved this story? Wako and Takeo's friendship feels so lived-in, where you can tell they are two characters with a past who are used to dealing with each other, with Takeo able to pinpoint even Wako's wildest insecurities and Wako never letting Takeo control the pace, even when, towards the end of the story, it threatens to destroy their burgeoning relationship. Suzumaru draws big, dynamic expressions for her characters that bring them to life, making even frail Wako feel explosive, and isn't afraid of making her characters not look handsome if it serves the comedic timing. In particular, I love the panel at the end of chapter 1 when Wako yells "good fucking job!" Wako's face is ugly from the exertion of screaming, and Takeo literally looks like he could fall off the rooftop stairs and into a Crayon Shin-Chan panel. Wako and Takeo's friend Manaka is my favorite side character and would deserve his own spinoff if he wasn't imbued with the pansexual appeal of a certified pretty boy. He does a surprisingly good job playing emotional referee, and it speaks to the strength of their friendship that he never once seems worried that his friends will stop needing him after they start dating each other.)

"Cracker Ball" is a spin-off of "Cupid is Struck by Lightning," and while it isn't necessary to read "Cupid" to enjoy "Cracker Ball," Takeo and the decisions he makes make a lot more sense when you have. In "Cupid," Takeo is a side character who is brought into volume two to add spice and intrigue to main characters Ao and Shingo's relationship. Arrogant, brash, and determined to teach his underclassman a lesson, Takeo comes out the other side of "Cupid" realizing that he wants what Ao and Shingo have: a love so important that you'd be willing to be retraumatized just to prove that you need and want to be the other person. That's why he's so upset at what initially looks like Wako being homophobic, only to be totally disarmed when Wako declares, "I am the one who loves you the most." "Cracker Ball" softens the blustering egocentric Takeo we see in "Cupid" (though that may be because "Cracker Ball" is partially through the POV of Wako, for whom there can be no better man than Takeo), but the animating drive of Takeo is still to be someone's number one. When the veil of heterosexuality is lifted, he realizes he's had that all along in Wako. 

Takeo is the most straightforward of the six men we see in these three series. Unbeholden to shame or crippling anxiety, he ends up cutting right to the bone of the childhood friends trope. When he corners Wako in chapter 2, he doesn't mince words and poses the questions that all friends-to-lovers pairs must answer. What can you do when you are already family, when there is already a bond that cannot break? What is beyond that, and why is it worth reaching for? "Childhood friends to lovers" is so powerful because it is a story that asks the characters to risk so much. It is a story that believes being together is worth potentially altering something that already works, because that is the only way to together explore something that may not. It is about moving into that uncertain future together, with a person both familiar and strange by your side. It is a man you have known all your life, but suddenly, he looks different. He is on the other side of a line, and that line is love. But he holds out his hand, and when you grab it, you see him for who he is. "See?" he says. "There is nothing to be scared of."