Genre: BL/Yaoi
Rating: OT (older teen)
Price: $9.99
"This job requires you to play a man who likes other men. There's no way you can pull off this role unless you can put part of your feelings of desire into the character."
Back in the days before BLU and DMP and Deux Press, when you could count the number of BL manga legitimately available in English on the fingers of one hand, I used to download BL scanlations in vast quantities. One of the first titles I found, and one of the few that I kept on my hard drive long after my first reading, was Sakende Yaruze!, now licensed by BLU as Shout Out Loud! It's always a pleasure to see a highly-anticipated title become available, and all the more so for me when it allows me to alleviate the guilt of having downloaded the scanlations in the first place.
Shino Hisae is a babyfaced seiyuu -- voice actor -- with a sweetly naive outlook on life; when teenage boy Nakaya shows up on his door and reveals that he is Shino's son, born of a high school romance, neither Shino nor Nakaya quite knows what to do. Nakaya's not used to having a father, and Shino's not used to being a father. But one thing Shino's sure about is that now he has another mouth to feed, he needs to be less discriminating in the jobs he takes -- which results in him getting a lot of work doing yaoi CDs. Even though Nakaya doesn't quite approve...
Shino and Nakaya have the kind of rough, difficult relationship that you would expect to result from an almost-adult son meeting the father he's never known for the first time. Shino isn't what Nakaya expected -- he's so young-looking that Nakaya's classmates assume he's Nakaya's brother --and Nakaya is equally surprising to Shino. But Nakaya's entry into Shino's life opens up new vistas for both of them, and though their new situation is awkward and takes a lot of adjusting, it's ultimately deeply rewarding.
Shout Out Loud! is a charming, light-hearted family drama with BL elements rather than a full-blown BL manga; in this first volume the romance is not much more than hinted at. Takaguchi makes up for it with the little snippets we overhear of the drama CDs Shino does voice acting for, which gives her a chance to add a lot of sly innuendo and some gentle mockery of BL genres and cliches. The focus is primarily on Shino's developing relationship with Nakaya, who is a proud, independent boy with a tendency to bottle up his emotions. It falls to Shino to persuade him to open up a little more, and to let himself lean on his loved ones when he needs to rather than always going it alone.
This manga is an overlooked treasure: funny, sweet, believable, and generally delightful.
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