34/50: friends with supernatural benefits ("yotsuya ghost knight," "my bad painkiller")
One thing about me is that I've never met an exorcism plot I won't at least try. Exorcists, shamans, onmyouji, priests and monks with a specialty in the supernatural—these are all catnip to me, a self-identified cat person. So "Yotsuya Ghost Knight" had two things going for it: (1) a main character who is an exorcist and (2) possibly one of the best cover designs I've seen in recent history.
What is that old adage about never judging a book by its cover? I've bought many things based on uninformed and purely aesthetic criteria. (Admittedly, most of those things have been bottles of wine to bring as housewarming gifts.) I'm afraid "Yotsuya Ghost Knight" proves the adage true. One shouldn't judge a book by its cover, and one shouldn't buy manga just because someone with amazing aesthetic sensibilities combined deco-boom with a graphic style that looks like a typography sample pack vomited all over a stack of talismans (positive). Alas, I probably will not learn any lessons from this.
"Yotsuya Ghost Knight" despite the modern aesthetics of its cover design, is a very old-fashioned story, to the point where I was surprised to learn that it was not from the extra porny early-2000s but was first published in Japan in 2023, apparently as Shiroi Choco's debut work. Exorcist Yotsuya Okuru is the most gifted and powerful ghostbuster of his generation, but a combination of past family trauma and isolation from ordinary people due to his line of work have made him a shy, awkward introvert. This isn't a problem, except that someone has unleashed an incredible evil spirit, and the only way Okuru can properly exorcise it is to squirt. Yes, from his dick. For, you see, spirits can be overcome with bodily fluids rich in life energy, and in the ranking of available bodily fluids, squirting is even more powerful than semen, and certainly more powerful than the tears Okuru has been using so far. Okuru is, however, a virgin, with absolutely no sexual experience in anything but vanilla masturbation. A chance encounter with AV star Fukase Naito, also known as the Squirting Squire, may just be the key to his troubles.
I'm sure this summary has raised many questions that you are hoping the story will answer. I had the same questions. Why squirting? Why a squirting squire? Like, in his videos, is Naito in a sexy knight costume? What is the premise? Does he wander the countryside making people squirt? With a sword? Does the sword he's holding on the cover of the DVD get used? Is that really enough to make him so popular that he's swarmed by a mixed-gender mixed-age all-demographics crowd the minute he goes out in public? Is he equally good at making men and women squirt, and if not, is it a transferable skill between the genders? Also, okay, Okuru says in the first chapter that semen is more potent than the tears, but "it's harder to use in actual battle," so that's why he saves his tears in vials to use during exorcism, but then how in the heck does he expect squirting to come into this equation? Does he have to save up the fluids that he emits from the squirting? How is that different from ejaculating into a vial? Or is he supposed to make himself squirt in the middle of an exorcism? And how did the exorcism community even arrive at the conclusion that squirting works better than semen? Who was doing the A/B testing?
Friends, these are not questions that "Yotsuya Ghost Knight" will answer. Instead, it will introduce even more questions that you did not even think to ask, because you understandably did not know the story would go there. Why is a side character named Ito-senpai who appears to have no connection to Okuru other than being a fellow exorcist so obsessed with Okuru, to the point of summoning an extremely powerful cursed spirit that possesses both Ito and Okuru? Why is Naito able to punch spirits in chapter one, an ability he never shows again? Why is Okuru, who is well-versed in understanding spirits and helping send them on their way, so convinced that his dead parents' spirits hold a grudge against him, when it is even obvious to Naito, a total stranger, that they like every other spirit have a lingering attachment they don't want to relinquish? And is Naito's protein powder business at the end sort of, ahem, semen-themed?
All this to say, "Yotsuya Ghost Knight" is a mess, a bunch of story elements thrown together and scrambled in between light-hearted (though very explicit) sex scenes. The headlights of its plot flicks aimlessly between character moments, never building tension or chemistry between any two characters. Okuru is a bog-standard introverted lead who gets in his own head and is described as being kind-hearted even though we really don't see him do anything particularly kind. But Shiroi Choco seems unwilling to make him truly negative or off-putting, so we're expected to believe this naïve and withdrawn boy draws in friends, obsessive stans, and a seasoned sex worker, even though his personality is thin to the point of translucent. The most interesting part of Okuru is his exorcism abilities, and we never get to see much of them. No paraphernalia, no talismans, no hand gestures to make seals—just Okuru making like a sprinkler all over some evil spirits. Likewise, I love AV actors in bl manga plots, but Naito's job is barely a footnote in a story where the whole premise hinges on him being an expert at making people squirt.
I spend a lot of time trying to think deeply about the series I read for this blog, ruminating on themes and how to present them in unexpected ways, so that I can shoehorn them into what I see as broader themes in the genre. But it is sometimes fun (and humbling) to encounter a story that totally defies any of my attempts to say anything deeper. "Yotsuya Ghost Knight" is just such a story. Shiroi Choco is certainly competent as a mangaka, with an airy cute style that works for Okuru's teary-eyed uke faces and Naito's mole-inflected handsomeness. But how this of all series got licensed out of the sea of bl manga that is published every year is, I think, the true mystery of "Yotsuya Ghost Knight."
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500 words or not, I don't like ending any week on such a disappointed note. So let's pivot to something I read a little while back: Murasaki Hiro's "My Bad Painkiller," a story I can only describe as "My Little Inferno but written by someone who is not Asada Nemui." Mikuni Leo is sick of his life. He's plagued with debt he inherited from his parents, stuck in a dead-end job as a server in a diner, sexually harassed by boss, and is all around lonely and friendless. Believing himself utterly abandoned by God, he turns instead to the dark arts, hoping to summon a demon who will do his bidding. What he gets instead is an ex-con named Sakaki Amane, who is more than happy to take advantage of Leo's various offerings (food, body, and emotions) to get a foothold back into normal society.
The moment I knew that "My Bad Painkiller" would stay with me for a long, long time is when, in chapter two, Amane hunts down Leo's former bullies, uses them as a dartboard, and takes a picture to show Leo. "This is obscene," Leo says, trembling, and both the reader and Amane are prepared to believe this is a bridge too far for Leo. But as it turns out, Leo is deeply, deeply moved by the lengths Amane would go, both in terms of his cruelty and for Leo. "You are a demon," Leo tells Amane. "You are my savior."
Leo and Amane have both rejected humanity—or, perhaps, believe humanity has rejected them both. Leo feels abandoned by God, his family, society, stuck in a bad place with no path to get out. Amane is a criminal with no family and a presumptive boss of the criminal underworld determined to bring Amane back into his fold. But the reality is that they crave a space where they can feel human, deserving of normal human emotions like love and validation. Like "My Little Inferno," the saving grace in a cruel world is a thin, treacherous path of normalcy. Leo and Amane live together, have sex with each other, and go on what could reasonably be described as "dates," but far from being romantic, these things feel like two people simply hanging out, enjoying if not each other's company, then each other's human warmth, like two animals snuggling together in the cold. They have been through too much to believe that another person could become their entire world or solve all of life's problems for them. Instead, they yearn for someone to be at their side, with whom life is just that little bit easier.
In the final chapter, Amane's criminal underworld ex asks Amane one of the eternal questions of bl's rejected men: Why didn't you chose to me? What does he have that I don't? Amane, by then, had already ridden off, no prince on a white horse but a demon on a black motorbike with Leo safely seated behind him. The answer to the unnamed boss's question, then, comes in the form of a flashback to their younger days, when he had told Amane, "the key to living a lonely, unloved life is to fill that void with ill-gotten pleasures. And the only person who can give you that is me." This was, of course, the wrong answer. What Leo offers Amane is not love, necessarily, but a companionship in exigent circumstances that can be identical to love. His promise is to be with Amane, come police attention or high water. What Amane—and Leo—wants is not a solution to how to live lonely and unloved, but to no longer be lonely, no longer be unloved.
This, I think, is one reason why "My Bad Painkiller" works for me in a way that "Yotsuya Ghost Knight" did not. Both feature characters trying to summon divine—or demonic—intervention to solve a nominal problem, only to bring into their lives a very human man who solves a problem they weren't even willing to articulate. "Yotsuya Ghost Knight" does this too straightforwardly. Naito's superpower ends up being, quite literally, the ability to make Okuru come as he never has before. (There's also, I guess, some "met as children once and forgot" side revelation, and you know how much I loathe this in a romance story.) But as powerful as exorcism through squirting is, it doesn't compare to the power of companionship in "My Bad Painkiller," which cannot transform the physical world around Leo and Amane but transforms them as people who can defy the world around them. Is Amane a demon? Does he have demonic powers? To the extent that demons are desire and the perverted fulfillment of desire made flesh, yes. But the true demon summoned is Leo himself, who despite being powerless and penniless and physical-prowess-less stands firm at Amane's side. With a gun pointed at him, at risk of losing his life, the only thing he truly has in his possession, he says, "Amane is my friend for life." Not "I love him," or "he belongs to me," but "no matter what, I am on his side."
"Yotsuya Ghost Knight" is available from Tokyopop. Renta used to have "My Bad Painkiller" but I can no longer find it in their catalog, which makes me very sad!
