Black Sun by Ogasawara Uki

Rating: 7
801 Media 2008 - Taiyo Tosho 2007
2 volumes
Translation: Leona Wong (v1), Jocelyne Allen (v2)

Black Sun is a sumptuous historical adventure drama set in the time of the medieval crusades against the Ottoman Empire. It tells the story of Prince Leonard de Limbourg, a European noble serving the order of the monastic knights, and his fateful meeting with General Jamal Jan, an accomplished soldier of the middle eastern empire.

Leonard is commander of Gerun fortress which has been under siege by enemy forces. Hopelessly outnumbered by the opposition, instead of choosing to fight to the death in glory Leonard takes the risky decision to negotiate with the enemy general, offering his own life in exchange for the safety and freedom of his men. Jamal tests the sincerity of Leonard's offer by ordering him to subject to Jamal's sexual advances there and then in the fortress in front of the enemy officers. Leonard feels humiliated but is resolved to see through his intent to save his men and lets Jamal have his way with him. The fortress taken, the surviving Europeans are allowed to walk free but Leonard is taken prisoner by Jamal as his spoils of war.

The first thing about the manga that I must laud is the gorgeous artwork; I love the character designs, Ogasawara draws some of the most handsome men in BL manga who have beautiful faces without being feminine and sexy muscular bodies that keep their distance from realms of bara. When a mangaka takes on a period setting, a lot of the believability of the story resides on the mangaka's ability to create a convincing looking world and Ogasawara achieves this in the detail of her background and prop art but especially in the splendidness of the costumes. Jamal's Turkish robes are opulent, majestic and elegant, and I often pause in my reading of the story to admire the artwork.

Ogasawara's artwork ranks amongst my favourites in the BL genre and although her stories are habitually entertaining I find that her work always falls a step or two short of greatness, Black Sun not being an exception but also probably the best that I've read from her.

This manga is centered on the relationship between the leads but there is a decent plot driving the story resulting in an intriguing tale about love blossoming despite differences in faiths and cultures, against a backdrop of war and all the problems that come with it. Jamal is a charismatic seme who devotes the rest of the two volumes to winning over Leonard and finding a way to keep a prisoner of war as his lover despite the condemnation of the Sultan Emperor and all those around him. Leonard feels that he would rather die than be used as a harlot and yet he is captivated by Jamal's forceful personality and can't help but give in to the pleasure of sex with him. His resistance against Jamal stems from their first humiliating encounter of forced sex in front of an enemy audience but later Leonard learns that Jamal holds a different view of the incident,

"Humiliation? You mean when I was testing the sincerity of your words? Were my soldiers laughing at you in any way? You were impressive. You cast away your pride to save your comrades. There was a reason to it...And now I'm the one being laughed at. I could've had everyone annihilated and yet, I freed them. Above all, instead of killing you I brought you here!"

I've spent more time than usual talking about the plot because it is actually quite interesting and functions well as both a period drama and as a BL romance. The subtitle of the manga is "Enslaved King", likely referring to both characters since Leonard is a captive noble and Jamal was originally a slave, recruited into the army as a boy from a land conquered by the empire, who gained exalted status as a decorated general in command of the slave division. In fleshing out their backgrounds the story touches on issues of class and caste, on faith and religion, on brutalities and consequences of war, and thus raises interesting questions as food for thought that lend the story credibility as a historical drama.

In fact, I often found that the story worked better in the dramatic parts than in the lighter-hearted romantic scenes. Ogasawara regularly tries to insert small pockets of humour into what are otherwise serious sequences and more often than not they fall flat as comedic devices. I felt that for many a scene it would have been better to cut out all comedy and left them as straight-up dramatic sequences. There is plenty of sex in the manga since Jamal is constantly horny but occasionally the sex seems gratuitous and detracts from the seriousness of the main narrative. Although both the plot and characters are interesting there is still an overall lack of depth to both and I think the manga would've benefitted from more focus on developing those core elements instead of wasting pages on cheap humour and pointless smut.

At times, the amount of unnecessary sex becomes a real weakness in the manga. In volume two there is a sequence where Jamal and Leonard chase an assassin through the Emperor's palace...and take a break for a quickie, after which they are still miraculously able to chase down the assassin. Leonard points out that, "now isn't the time" and this reader vehemently agreed. Was the mangaka required to inject some smut into the chapter to fulfil editorial requirements? If it was Ogasawara's own idea it serves as an example of how she occasionally loses perspective of the bigger picture in her stories, something I've found to be a common weakness in her other works. She's good at crafting absorbing suspenseful storylines but then inserts the occasional weak scene or what I feel are inappropriate plot developments and consequently the overall story is held back from fulfilling its potential as a really good yarn.

Another example of this in Black Sun is during Jamal's punishment scene; he is punished by the Emperor for freeing the enemy soldiers in exchange for Leonard and is dealt twenty lashings of the whip. The Emperor's lover Nicolaides, possibly the most annoying character in the manga who makes you wonder what on earth the Emperor sees in him, asks to mete out the first ten lashes and during the whipping gets turned on since he has always lusted after Jamal. Jamal tells Nicolaides to give him a blowjob and then screws him in front of an amused emperor. While the rest of the story takes pains to portray Jamal's devotion to Leonard and his resolve to make him his lover at all costs, a scene like this makes the reader question the strength of Jamal's feelings. Jamal also regularly hits on his closest aide, Isaac, who is his former lover. Is Ogasawara attempting to depict Jamal as a playboy character? I don't feel it quite works in the context of the story and I think is one of the biggest character discrepancies in the manga.

The latter half of the second volume is probably the weakest part of the story, the plot is tied up a bit too neatly and too quickly, which is a shame because the first volume was very good and promising. The second volume also suffers from what I thought was an inferior translation to the first; a different translator worked on the second volume, probably owing to the fact that there was a lengthy gap of four years between publications, and there were parts in the narrative that just didn't make much sense in the context of the dialogue which obviously led to interruptions in the flow of the story.

Although Black Sun has its weak points there is still plenty to like about this manga and I would easily recommend it as a worthwhile read.