#honest question but is price a monsterfucker

[ashbelero]

“Why Don’t You Eat Me, My Dear Wolf?” - In Defense of Enjoying Problematic Manga

So, I’m an avid manga collector. I read everything from seinen to shoujo, “Cute girls doing cute things” and “Everyone dies a horrible death” manga, popular and underrated titles and things that are garbage but I love them anyway. I’m a frequent poster on the Manga Collectors subreddit, and I decided to show off the manga I had preordered like six months ago which arrived a month after their official release. When I took that picture, I’d only previously read one or two of these volumes.

Eventually someone will ask in the comments how I liked this volume or that volume, which brings me to this conversation… or it would, if the person hadn’t deleted their side.

The book they asked about was “Why Don’t You Eat Me, My Dear Wolf?”, a boys’ love title with a fantasy setting. This is the book in question. I’d only read one or two chapters when they asked me about it.

When I order manga, I’m typically using the Previews magazine (seen pictured in the corner in the first photo) to check which volumes would interest me. Many times, I’ll order some that I’m not 100% sure of because I get a good discount through my comic book seller and if I don’t like the book, I’ll resell it for cover price or lower. “My Dear Wolf” was one of those I wasn’t sure of. All it gave me was a brief description, the rating, and the cover picture. I’ll be honest, I love fairy tale manga and I’m a rabid monsterfucker. The art is stunning. But when I saw the back of the book, I actually began to worry.

The description was what I saw, but there wasn’t anything mentioning the character’s actual age, and the back illustration made me pause. That’s clearly a child. Not my thing.

However, this isn’t my first manga rodeo. I know from experience that regardless of whether it’s Japan or America, manga depicting overtly sexual scenes of children is NOT commercially published by major companies. Whether it’s Made In Abyss or Loveless, nothing is ever actually explicitly shown or implied to happen to characters at that age. The Previews magazine doesn’t even print ads for straight-up hentai manga in its main book (you have to order the Adult Previews or request it from your local comic shop). Knowing this, I decided to read it anyway.

And there are some questionable scenes. The character is seen nude from the back once or twice, in the context of a bath or something. There are implications of the onset of puberty and the awareness of sexuality when he’s probably twelve or thirteen. A dick is never seen regardless of the character. Nothing overt is shown or said. It’s still slightly uncomfortable for me personally, but it’s nothing offensive. Even if it were, I have the ability to close the book and pop it back on the manga sales subreddit with the others. Someone would buy it.

I gave that person my honest early impressions when they asked me how I liked it. Now that I’m done reading, I actually greatly enjoyed the story and the smut only happens when the character is an adult — still not totally happy with the grooming vibes but eh. And the author did seem to have tried to avert these implications with a “we age more slowly here in the forest so it’s actually been 100 years” line in the last chapter. Maybe a cheap cop out but it made sense for the story and enhanced the romance for me.

But otherwise, there’s not much that I could complain about with this story that couldn’t also be said about two of my other favorite series.

Aside from the more severe romantic undertone, the themes in “My Dear Wolf” are pretty much the same as “The Girl From The Other Side” and “The Ancient Magus’ Bride” together. Both have young protagonists - Shiva from TGFTOS is implied to be about six, and Chise from TAMB is fifteen at the start of the series, where she is explicitly stated to be betrothed to the titular love interest. The way that Uru behaves towards Taro in “My Dear Wolf” is no more explicit than either of these other series, save for the ending. Do I have problems with the story? I mean, yeah. But boiling it down to the core ideas means I would also have to condemn these other two series, which are considered masterpieces.

Even if the themes in “My Dear Wolf” are implied to be sexual, though… so what? Fiction is fiction. It’s a good story, and it’s staying on my bookshelf. My only real complaint is that it’s a single volume and there won’t be any more.

And I wanted to tell that person how much I liked it and how much I would recommend it to those who liked this sort of thing, until I saw that they had deleted their own comments, likely because they feared judgment.

So for that person, and many others, here’s my review. I liked it. And though I would preface it with some warnings for those who need it, it’s still something I wouldn’t mind taking off my shelf to show a friend.