Kaito shuno
| Original review author: | Yourfapsendhere |
| Webcomic name: | Kaito Shuno Now archived on Tapas. |
| Author: | Angel Perez/Angel Yeah |
| Start Date: | May 3rd, 2011 |
| End Date: | March 7, 2017 |
| Genre: | Zowie! It's yaoi! |
| Defining Flaw: | Baby's first yaoi. |
Rating Summary
| Art: | 
Lazy grey blobs |
| Storyline: |
Laughably bad tropes stringing together creepy sex scenes... yet it doesn't really get hillirbad either. |
| Characters: |
You should totally believe they're great, but really they are douchy, dominant fuckbags or insufferable tsunderes. |
| Overall: |
An utter disaster. It sits comfortable on the lowest tier of webcomics out there. |
Background
If you have ever seen the horrors of Smackjeeves's Boy's love community you cannot miss this one. It is arguably the most popular.... and most shit. Though it has been moved due to its prominent sexual content.
Downfall
The whole 1st chapter seems designed to repel anybody with higher brain function.
A man's attempt to destroy his own miserable life u-turns into boner gags and wraps up with a Deus Ex Machina so lame I am envious I didn't come up with it as a yaoi parodist.
Kaito is sexually menaced and threatened with death at knife point by a homeless man.
However the violent psycho sneezes. Kaito feels so sad for a person who is MAYBE sick he takes the stranger home to live with him indefinitely without asking for anything in return. I am NOT exaggerating.
Art review
Atrocious! Enormous scans of noseless clones in grey voids molesting one another. If you're lucky you'll get some haphazard glow effects barfed on top or a full color panel.
There is poor use of space, paneling, anatomy, and serious scenes are littered with chibis. For bonus lazy effect, the vast majority of the panels are basic faces, eyes, or backs of heads. Why bother using a ruler, erasing mistakes, or even staying consistent? The only help telling the two leads apart is the irritating eye glow effect added after the fact.
This handy identifier goes out the window when they forget or in recent chapters when they're ~connected~ the colors merge together cause heavy-handed symbolism?
As bad as it is, one must admit it has made improvements. They use chibis and back of head panels less and less. The switch to digital has made the lines cleaner and removed the bad-scan element. The spacing, paneling, perspective, anatomy, and lighting have all improved in small to moderate ways.... Yet with this improvement I have to point out that their facial structure seems to have only gotten worse. The ears are too high, the eyes are enormous and too low, and they have yet to grasp noses... though at least they're trying now. For the over 1600 pages the comic has spanned, one would expect more improvement than that.
Story and Plot
In its most basic form it is a story about a suicidal man who is raped by a contract killer until they both fall in love and become better people. You may think with all these grim topics it'd be melodramatic and dark... but you'd be be wrong. This story is written like a romantic comedy. You may think that this sounds like an ass backwards aneurism-inducing pool of cunt drippings... and you'd be right.
If you expand it a bit, the uke or bottom learns to accept the homosexuality the seme or top forced upon him and the seme gets away from his tragic past as a child cage fighter (No she didn't just throw in the most tragic thing she could think of even though it doesn't happen in real life). There are a few supporting characters but they're all there to remind us how great the two are for each other. Ignore how the uke seems miserable all the time, he just can't accept ANYTHING EVER! Recently there has been an additional couple added to the cast. The reason? We can't give the guy who failed to rape the protagonist an unhappy ending now can we? The new couple is near identical to the main one. We have a tormented, tough-guy who's violent and sexually aggressive with a teeth-gratingly infuriating tsundere who can't cook and is super embarrassed by sex. The main difference between these couples would be the fact that the top in the 2nd relationship will stop when told to.
Characters
Kaito
The story starts with him and is mostly told through his point of view. Kaito is a repressed person who develops depression. Though don't worry about the depression. Sure it may be his starting characteristic that's supposed to drive the character throughout most of the story, but hell if the author doesn't care about it why should you? His back story is that his mother abandoned his sister and him when they were small and neither of them have seen her since. Yet she's framed as some kind of pristine maytr while their father who has done a lot to ensure a good future for them is demonized cause he's homophobic (though we never see it) and wanted his son to do something besides mechanic work. He grows up to become a miserable office grunt. An overwhelmingly possessive and manipulative man shows up to add lots of physical and sexual violence and BAM things are great... well, everybody else says things are great for him. The character arc that seems to get the most attention is the fact that Kaito went from being underweight to HAVING A GREAT BOOTY! Okay that's an exaggeration, but really do we need two separate times in the story to remind us how much nicer his ass is? Really he's supposed to be SO much more confident, healthy, and stable then he was before. He does not act confident, healthy, or stable. But hey, since we have no information on how he was before and supporting characters mention how much better he is all the time it must be legit. Despite living with the sexually unsatiable and clingy Shuno for years Kaito still acts like sex and affection are these embarrassing, mysterious, god awful inventions, and we DARE NOT SPEAK THEIR NAMES! This is exaggerated to the point that Kaito makes violent attempts to prevent even tame expressions of affections like hand-holding even after living together for years. He is supposed to be tsundere but really feels as if he just got sick of fighting with Shuno and lets him do what he wants with an occasional pout or eyeroll.
Shuno
Shuno's back story is all done for the tragicz. He had what is meant to be a “good family” consisting of a woman and a drug addict. The father is a good man. He just slipped up a bit and got his pregnant wife murdered and infant son enslaved because he was borrowing money from the mob to fuel his drug addiction. By the way he was addicted to marijuana. Yeeeeeeeeeeep. Shuno remembers all this in perfect detail despite not being old enough to speak when it happened.
From here he becomes a child cage fighter, killing other children with his bare hands for sport.... because yeah that's a thing. However he is able to slip through the bars to be properly raised by a chef and his daughter but he goes back every night and never tries to fully escape. That also makes total sense. Despite only knowing violence he is such an adorable babeh who just needed a hug, because that's how children develop. Shuno is mob boss's favorite child killer because he is the main character, shut up. Despite this mob boss let's Shuno go at age 16. However when he finds out that the chef and his daughter taught him to read and speak he kills the chef and keeps Shuno under his thumb under the threat of murdering the chef's daughter. Not sure why this makes him so upset or how he was expecting an illiterate 16 year old, who cannot speak, and has no skills besides evisceration to get along in the real world but yeah okay then.
While Kaito does not change from start to end of this comic, Shuno does. Yet his change makes no sense. In the very early chapters Shuno is detached, violent, insanely creepy, and socially incompetent. This makes sense for the back story... however without any real learning experiences he is not only able to interact with other humans but becomes exceedingly charming. Though let's get real here, he developed charm so he could more easily control... manipulate... I mean love his snookums.
Relationship
It's another one of those obvious abusive relationships that are passed off as romance.
When they start living together under the stupidest pretense Shuno demands his attention non-stop and sexually menaces him in private, in public, and he doesn't even have to be awake for it. Shuno murders in cold blood a woman who made Kaito sad, almost murders another love rival, and threatens and harms a third. He pretends to be sick, flirts with his sister, humiliates him in front of his co-workers, blackmails him, keeps him from going to work, drags him onto planes to go on vacations he's never told him about, and even forces him to wear certain clothing. This is to test how much Kaito actually cares about him, not the habits of a controlling anal polyp or anything. The worst Kaito does to Shuno is develop a friendship. However we are meant to believe that Kaito has all the control in the relationship, cause Shuno mentioned it once.
The majority of their interactions go like this: Shuno says something sexually suggestive and Kaito gets embarrassed and stammers out that he's an idiot. This OH SO HILLARIOUS formula continues to the very latest chapter and boy howdy after more than 1600 pages of that witty bullshit that's not fucking annoying or anything. Kaito is frequently pissed off, embarrassed, and miserable due to the things that Shuno does to him and it took years before Kaito was able to laugh or smile in front of him. However we're supposed to believe this relationship is ideal and the two are made for each other.
Writing review
… Oh here goes... This may sound like I'm being hyperbolic but there is NOTHING good or even tolerable about this writing. In this trip you'll find rampant gary-stu-ism, giant blocks of the same uncomfortable sex scene redrawn, poor use of cliché tropes, it is utterly tone deaf, and it has some of the worst dialog money can buy. Let me briefly talk about these faults.
Gary Stu-ism – We are reminded compulsively how hot, cute, badass, and kind the protagonists are. People who were once against them are eventually turned to become their biggest fans. The only exception are the two staple villains Kaito's father and Shuno's “Boss” who are the hubs for their separate tragic pasts. The Gary-stu-osity is typified when in one page Kaito is called cute 3 separate fucking times. WHENEVER they are in a crowd people will stop and stare and giggle about how gorgeous these two are. Calling them supermodels and demanding to take pictures of them. Even animals... dogs, cats, and even turtles... are shown to be sexually attracted to the leads. We are also reminded how hot, cute, positive, and filled with great sex their relationship must be. Sure to any outsider it appears that Kaito hates Shuno but that doesn't stop near every person from announcing to them that they bet they must be having really awesome sex all the time. Speaking of which...
Lol don't care MORE SEX! - Is a huge issue with the story. The pace will come to screeching halt for chapters of nothing but sex. Sometimes a few chapters in a row will be dedicated to this. Relationship/character/plot development (if you want to call it that) is routinely thrown out the window for it. For example they treated the first instance of rape with some sort of gravity. However rape occurs like a week later and it doesn't make a blip on anybody's radar. When Kaito's sister catches him having sex with a man you'd think it would be an awkward revelation about Kaito's homosexuality. Haha fat chance! The following scene is dedicated to references to how she'd totally bang Shuno including telling Kaito it looked as if he liked having sex. Afterwards Shuno takes Kaito upstairs to finish their “session” loudly. This was even demonstrated recently when a character was interrogating a criminal but the point of the page was that the uke was thinking, “Golly why can't this end sooner so I can be alone with hunky?”
What is reality anyway? Poorly executed tropes – It is clear the author has consumed media... and simply regurgitates pieces of it without thinking about it... at all. It's like a baby playing with letter magnets to form non-words. Except with the baby, sometimes they'll accidentally make something that makes sense. Take a bunch of examples:
After threatening suicide at work Kaito is given a raise.
Shuno convinces Kaito he's the better rapist than another man because he was a “stranger” to Kaito which is better than getting raped by a friend. Never mind that Shuno has been living with Kaito for at least a month at this point.
The chef who pretty much raised Shuno is never named. In fact his features change from panel to panel, and when he is murdered for the tragics Shuno screams out “old man.”
Kaito promised to meet his friend Oasis for an evening because she was to move away soon. However Shuno demanded his attention. So Kaito has sex and cuddles with Shuno for THREE HOURS. Shuno was asleep when Kaito left to check on the friend he stoop-up. Kaito came back shortly after but Shuno has a violent fit that Kaito had “ignored” him. We are supposed to be on Shuno's side here.
Shuno proves he'll no longer use violence by threatening a hotel full of people, and dragging, stripping, and pinning down, his kicking and screaming and fighting partner. This is not a joke, that is literally how he proves to Kaito he won't use violence ever again and Kaito buys it.
Colt, the best friend and former sexual assulater of Kaito, is revealed to have had a 2nd job as the FBI's director! He only held on to his architecture job so he could be near Kaito!
I could fill a book with all the examples but I'm going to move on...
Tone deaf – It can't really decide what it really wants half the time and contradicts itself a plenty.
At first Kaito hates Shuno's guts, which doesn't stop Shuno from doing what he wants. Later on Shuno becomes more sensitive of how Kaito perceives him and Kaito seems to like this... but later on Kaito violently switches over to being disappointed that Shuno is no longer super confident. What the hell?
Very rarely does it lean toward how tragic Kaito's depression was, but most of the time his suicidal tenancies are the butt of jokes. Most of these jokes are made by a man whose tragic back story is that his young wife comitted suicide. Super classy!
There is a bizarre double standard that Shuno thinks it's exploitative to have sex with Kaito when he's drunk but has raped him several times when he's sober. Frankly it looks as if Shuno doesn't like having sex with Kaito when Kaito wants to.
After Oasis jumps some ridiculous hoops to let Shuno off scot free with violent crimes, he turns around and calls her a psychopath, which is in no way highlighting how absurd it is that HE is calling her that.
The story glorifies how great it is that Shuno swooped into Kaito's life and is making decisions (against his will) for him all over the place. Yet the conflict in Kaito's father side-plot is what a gross human being his father was for doing the same exact thing.
Oh yeah, and in a marvelous display of being oblivious to their own writing, they take a shot at twilight.
The best example of this is when Colt reveals to Kaito all about his tragic past with his wife who committed suicide. Yet the entire time they shove really pathetic sexual innuendos in our face. Sure is making this moment.... emotional.
Terrible dialog -
Need I say more?
Sex/Gender Politics
Yaoi is a genre known for its incredibly shitty sexual politics. Typically it is an underaged girlish looking boy being drugged, kidnapped, enslaved, and raped until the effeminate young lad learns to love his abuser, which is treated as a romance where the uke just doesn't GET how much his abuser loves him. However out of all I read, Kaito is TOP TIER when it comes to fucking up its fuck politics. Now I'm one of those feminist, sex positive, over-thinker pedantic jack-offs so I could be bias. Yet I believe many folks would think a lot of the sexuality in Kaito Shuno is backwards and kinda creepy.
Rape culture-est elements are abound in this comic with all the excuses heaped upon the rapist for his behavior. Rapist had a tragic past, he truly loved Kaito, Kaito was teasing him by... existing, Kaito should have fought back harder, Kaito's skin looked REALLY GOOD after being raped all night, and just didn't want Kaito to not realize his love! Even though Shuno continuously mentions how much he likes and wants to have sex with Kaito. Rape could be the only answer for Kaito to REALLY understand.
When Kaito asked for Shuno not to have sex with him, Shuno stuck his tongue up Kaito's ass and jerked off onto him. Kaito sees this as Shuno “obeying” his wish for no sex, cause neither of those things are sexual amirite?
Shuno has made numerous references to Kaito's butthole being a vagina and wishes it was capable of carrying a child.
Even with things besides sex a lot of Kaito's personal decisions are mocked, and Shuno forces him to change his mind. Such as going out on a date, seeing a friend, going to Hawaii, quitting his job, and even when he told him he didn't want an apple tart. Later on Kaito realizes that Shuno's choice REALLY WAS the good one. Doesn't Kaito realize he's the dumb woman stand-in and should just do what Shuno wants blindly?
They make a couple of references to how giving one their “virginity” is the most precious gift to give to a man, and that there is no point in taking care of one's personal appearance if it's not for the visual benefit of a man.
They treat sex as a “chore” women do for their man to make them happy or to pay them back for other kindnesses rather than something both parties should enjoy.
Speaking of which, Shuno tells Kaito that he should penetrate him. Not because he would enjoy being on the receiving end of sex but to get revenge for that time Shuno raped him.
We have the double standard that women getting raped is awful but men being raped is hot and harmless.
We even have a joke scene where Kaito thinks about what Shuno would be like if he was a woman. This leads to rape, a forced pregnancy, and the implication that a woman simply cannot be dominant sexually because she does not have a penis to penetrate with. Somehow the horrific implications of Kaito being a woman are totally ignored.
Kaito's neighbors are Fusjohi or yaoi fangirls. They squeal over Kaito and Shuno's relationship whenever possible. Their creepiness is deemed acceptable and the characters in themselves are just annoying but they take it up a few more horrible notches. They send them gifts of sex toys, and actively listen to them have sex. IN FACT, when Kaito was first raped they cheered on Shuno from next door. You shouldn't think they're creepy though because they're girls and you totally wish you were in their shoes, right?
Author biography
There is not much to be said on AngelPerez that has not been said a thousand times about a yaoi webcomic author. She can be succinctly summed up in, “Typical yaoi fan.” I will say she deviates from the norm in the fact that she has admitted to making mistakes in the story and receives criticism on occasion. At one point she actually removed a rape scene from her story because it upset her fans. Good on you! Though she continues to ban people for expressing negative opinions about her work.
Conclusion
This comic is pretty much the purest example of a bad yaoi webcomic one can find. Typical, offensive, poorly planned, poorly drawn, gary-stuism, and its true purpose is just personal spank material. As it was described to me once, it is written like a baby with a sticker book. They just stick whatever trope they want into a scenario even though it is not even close to fitting. When they put the turtle sticker on the hippo outline people coo about the fabulous insight of putting two four-legged animals together.
