REVIEW: ‘Gerard and Jacques’ by Fumi Yoshinaga

Ger­ard and Jacques (2006) by Fumi Yoshi­naga is a mxm romance between a aris­to­crat and a com­moner set against the back­drop of a coun­try on the verge of civil war.

The class sys­tem in France is a sig­nif­i­cant part of the story and a grip­ping one. In the city of Paris, com­mon­ers are seen with dis­dain and are treated as such because they are believed to be uncouth and with­out an edu­ca­tion since they are poor. Whereas the nobil­ity are viewed as hav­ing refined tastes and are edu­cated. They are “old money” and are very well dressed in their pow­dered wigs and make-up. It comes as no sur­prise that the dis­par­ity between the two classes has caused unrest in France. The nobil­ity and the com­moner square off in what is well known as The French Rev­o­lu­tion.

The premise of this story is an engag­ing one but it doesn’t come into fruition until the sec­ond vol­ume. The first vol­ume is seen merely as an intro­duc­tion. Ger­ard, a nov­el­ist who writes erotic romances, vis­its a high end brothel and becomes Jacques first and last client. Jacques spews a lot of insults at Ger­ard, call­ing him a ‘sodomite.’ Jacques is an aris­to­crat whose father sold him into pros­ti­tu­tion. Ger­ard, being older, despises the nobil­ity and sets out to teach seventeen-year old Jacques a les­son and he ends up buy­ing the boy his freedom.

In a twist of fate, Jacques comes to be a ser­vant in Gerard’s house­hold. Much of the story shows him work­ing for Ger­ard and adapt­ing to life as a com­moner. The story speeds up three years and Jacques is much older and is seen read­ing phi­los­o­phy books. The two men develop a friend­ship. The story arc then moves into the back­ground of Ger­ard and explains how he got his scar and how he lost his eye. He has good rea­son to hate the nobil­ity and I enjoyed the last cou­ple of chap­ters in this first volume.

The sec­ond vol­ume is much tighter and has more action and the polit­i­cal and social strife of Paris is on the verge of explo­sion. Peo­ple are ready to riot in the streets. Mean­while, Ger­ard is now a best-selling nov­el­ist of erotic nov­els but it attracts the atten­tion of the Pub­lic Safety Com­mis­sion. Ger­ard and Jacques even­tu­ally become tar­gets for the Jacobins and are forced to leave Paris dur­ing the Reign of Terror.

I enjoyed the romance between Ger­ard and Jacques. It was believ­able to me in that the two men had come to love each other. It was a nat­ural pro­gres­sion that never felt forced to me. The sec­ond vol­ume was the best of this two vol­ume set because it had a lot more polit­i­cal intrigue and sus­pense. The draw­ings in here are nicely done as are the men. The story is char­ac­ter dri­ven and I loved that the his­tor­i­cal set­ting was a big part of the story. If only vol­ume one had started out as strong as the sec­ond vol­ume, I’d truly sing this author’s praises but it wasn’t.

The sex is graphic in here and there are a cou­ple of rape scenes. The chem­istry between the two men was nice not great. Their scenes together were much more inti­mate and emo­tion­ally engag­ing in vol.2. The author did a good job in mak­ing me believe that these two men had fallen in love. I wish there was more to the story after this vol­ume but the author did leave it with a good end­ing. Ger­ard and Jacques will not be one my favorite yaoi manga reads but I’m glad to have read it. The best thing about this manga was the his­tor­i­cal aspects of it fol­lowed by the love story. My grade, B/B-.

For Fur­ther Reading

• REVIEW: The Assign­ment by Evan­ge­line Anderson

Tagged as: class system, French Revolution, mxm romance, yaoi manga