Mister Mistress

Mister Mistress' main character, Fujimaru Senda, is your typical teenage boy, complete with raging hormones and an insatiable need to pleasure himself at every opportunity. He likes girls, of course, but no girl has ever lived up to the absolutely adorable innocence of his elementary-school younger brother, upon whom Fujimaru utterly dotes. Since no real girl has ever lived up to Fujimaru's standards, he spends a lot of time alone with his dreams and fantasies, doing what boys do when they need a "hand." What this typical teenager doesn't realize is that all of his pent-up sexual energy -- and his habit of self-satisfaction -- has attracted the attention of a nearby incubus. Much to Fujimaru's consternation, incubi are male.

The sexy demon, Rei, appears first in Fujimaru's wet dreams, and then later in the real world, charming the rest of the Senda family with claims that he is a long-lost cousin. Perhaps his claim isn't so far off the mark, however. Rei, who initially appears as a gorgeous 19th-century gentleman before transforming into a sexy, bespectacled homeroom teacher at Fujimaru's school, seems to have some connection to Fujimaru's family. He drops hints that somehow Fujimaru is special, that he's someone Rei has been waiting for for a long time. That hint of destiny, of Fujimaru and Rei being possibly more than stereotypical yaoi characters thrown together without reason, that gives Mister Mistress an edge of uniqueness among its competition.

Of course, the idea of destined lovers isn't a completely unique one in any genre of love stories, but Mister Mistress keeps that angle subtle and mysterious in the first volume. Most of what this manga has going for it is the silly but not over-the-top humor employed to get Rei and Fujimaru into compromising, and remarkably unusual, situations. Rei summons a tentacle creature to punish Fujimary for looking at pornography in one chapter, while in a later story, Rei concocts a fake medical examination at Fujimaru's school, using his magically seductive fingers on all of Fujimaru's classmates just for the excuse to fondle him at school. The situations Rei tricks Fujimaru into are silly, but they're fun, and while the somewhat clichéd humor may not draw outright guffaws from the reader, it should at least elicit a warm chuckle.

Rize Shinba's artwork and characterization are both sketchy and unremarkable in the first volume of Mister Mistress, her first work to be published in English. Her characters are fairly typical for comedic BL manga, but at least each has his own individual quirk, giving the entire manga a light flavor of originality. Secrets and hidden pasts begin to surface at the end of the first volume, giving hope for an even more intriguing conclusion in the second.

Mister Mistress does not really shine among the wide variety of BL manga available these days, but it does at least glimmer. With such a promising setup in the first volume, if the second volume delivers an interesting finale, Mister Mistress may well prove to be a gem in the rough.