In the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale "The Snow Queen," a little boy named Kai is struck in the heart and eye with tiny pieces of a magic mirror that turns everything he sees into something rotten and ugly. He is swept away to the castle of the Snow Queen and forgets his old life. In Yuri Ebihara's manga Allure, Kai is a handsome young man who had lost his vision, and after receiving a cornea transplant, cannot seem to see anything but the beautiful and cold young doctor who performs the operation. This Kai, too, is swept away by Doctor Hizuki, his own personal Snow Queen. This fairy tale allegory lends a dreamlike quality to Allure, which helps to bring originality to an otherwise average manga volume.

Allure asks for some suspension of disbelief, not only as it draws parallels to the Snow Queen tale, but also in the plot line that brings Kai and Hizuki together. The corneas that Kai receives in his transplant are actually those of the surgeon Hizuki's dead lover, Sugiura. When Kai first opens his eyes after the operation, the first person he sees is not his mother or his girlfriend, but the cold blond surgeon. After that moment, it seems that Hizuki is all that Kai can see, and all that he can think about. Kai finds himself crying at times when he sees Hizuki, without explanation. Could it be that the spirit of Sugiura draws Kai's gaze to Hizuki through their shared eyes? In keeping with the fairy-tale feeling of the manga, a definite answer is never given.

The story of Kai and Hizuki's growing relationship spans from Japan to Norway as they draw closer, further apart and then close again. While it is nice to see a yaoi manga with an entirely consensual, adult and overall positive pairing, Allure lacks the sort of emotional conflict that creates a truly gripping story. Conflict appears in the form of Kai's nurse, a childhood friend whom he is expected to marry, however the girlfriend conflict falls flat because the reader never gets a sense that Kai particularly cares for her at all. Hizuki's lingering loyalty to Sugiura is somewhat more believable, but we see very little of Hizuki's real feelings for his dead lover. Even a bonus story at the end of the manga is told from Sugiura's point of view, with few clues into Hizuki's heart. Without a real conflict other than possible societal disgrace to face our lovers, their story falls short of compelling.

Yuri Ebihara's artwork is lovely, but not entirely unique. Her style could be easily confused with several other yaoi mangaka, and very little stands out. Scenes of conversation and light action flow smoothly, and Kai's personality comes through well in his character design. Hizuki, as the colder and less emotional of the pair, ends up feeling expressionless and flat. Ebihara-sensei's kissing scenes seem almost painfully awkward, and anything beyond kissing is brief, vague, and largely passed over. Allure is rated 18+ for a bare handful of nude panels only. The real focus of the manga is on the gentle growth of the main characters' relationship.

As a light read of character growth with a dreamlike feel, Allure succeeds well. The story is not too engrossing, the characters are not drop-dead gorgeous, the artwork is not fascinatingly rich. In the end, Allure is satisfying and comfortable as a pleasant story in a faintly fairy-tale world.