About:
Warning:
This review will contain spoilers for the manga and anime series Your Love Belongs to Me. While the manga may vary slightly from all other forms of media, it may have similar story elements and could be considered spoilers.
Trigger Warning: There may be references to threats of rape, sexual assault, kidnapping, drugging, and harassment, as it appears in the manga.
Synopsis:
Mochizuki and Ishio have a lot in common. They are both captains of their respective martial arts teams, have secondary sexes, and hate each other. Mochizuki is an omega, and Ishio is an alpha, but they aren't drawn to each other. The only reason they interact at all is that they are forced to share a dojo, which results in numerous skirmishes between the teams. To assert their dominance, the two captains spend much of their time trying to embarrass or fight each other, with little to no success.
One day, while Mochizuki changes in the dojo, Ishio walks in on him. It is then that Mochizuki notices how shy and nervous Ishio gets around him when it comes to anything remotely sexual or affectionate. With this new insight, Mochizuki changes his method of harassing Ishio, which entails hugging, cuddling, and all but sexually assaulting him. Naturally, Mochizuki is beyond pleased with this development until Ishio makes it clear:
If Mochizuki isn't careful, Ishio might just mark him as his.
Review:
First, let's talk about the artwork. The cover really does not do the work justice. This is a gorgeous manga. Mochizuki, in particular, is lovely. He's a perfect mixture of the stereotypical omega traits we see, with them being beautiful and feminine, but it also spins it with him being bulky and hypermasculine. His face is stunning, truly. I am not sure what it is about this art style, but something about the way Honoji Tokita draws faces is just… everything. If you are big on art, I do not doubt that this one will surely please you. I plan on hunting down everything from this artist as soon as possible.
Now, while the artwork is stunning, to say the least, the story is a bit superficial and pretty stereotypical regarding yaoi or manga in general. However, I will say I did really like that the omega, Mochizuki, is an athlete and is just as strong as his alpha partner. That was a nice change of pace for an omegaverse story. However, it was undercut by the appearance of the alpha female character. I love the introduction of the alpha female, and I wish she had played more of an active love interest role, but she ended up being a chaotic villain. She ends up drugging and kidnapping Mochizuki to hurt Ishio. Her reasoning for doing so is severely lacking, simply because she hates how happy and carefree his life has been. I really dislike how random this all felt and how misused the alpha female was.
This story is so great because of how down-to-earth and fun it was before the random kidnapping. These two boys fighting amongst themselves, learning about their sexual preferences and needs, and growing from enemies to lovers is the best portion. I wish we had stayed on that same track rather than introducing a chaotic villain just to create random tension. Also, I would have really liked it if the alpha female had been used as more of a legitimate love interest. I think it would be interesting to see a male alpha and a female alpha rival each other, especially when the one they are vying for is a bulky male omega. Oh well, I can dream, I guess.
Finally, I have to talk about the length of this one. It is so, so short, even for a single-volume story. Especially if you consider the random inclusion of the kidnapping scene and all the time spent building up to the alpha female being revealed as a chaotic villain since this was advertised as mature on Tapas, I had expected more sexual content. However, there are really only two scenes, one of which happens at the end of the main story, and the other that occurs during the epilogue, and that's it. Once again, I wish we could have forgone the whole kidnapping thing altogether, and maybe we could have had a more sexy time, or we could have explored more of their future relationship.
Results:
I love how this manga looks so much. It's hard to say that I dislike this. I do think it had tons of potential, but it devolved into your standard, unbelievable, tropey, chaotic villain plot. I am so glad I read it because I've found a new favorite artist, but this is missing many of my favorite aspects of yaoi and omegaverse, such as the sexy time and pregnancy. If you haven't read anything by Honoji Tokita, it may be worth it just to check out the beautiful artwork. However, this is probably a miss if you're looking for a deep and interesting omegaverse.
Have you read Your Love Belongs to Me? If so, what do you think? Do you agree with my assessment? Do you not? Let me know, and comment below!
This is one of my all-time favorite omegaverses! Mochizuki is one of my favorite characters. I also thought that the female alpha was pretty much there for tension between Mochizuki and Ishio.
Right? It’s heavily underrated. I wish the female alpha had a bit more development, but here we are.
Thank you so much for reading my review!