is a yaoi

Yaoi

In careful Japanese enunciation, all three vowels are pronounced separately, for a three-mora word, . The English equivalent is . also known as Boys' Love, is a Japanese popular term for female-oriented fictional media that focus on homoerotic or homoromantic male relationships, usually created by...

 manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 written by Maki Kazumi

Maki Kazumi

is a the Japanese author of the manga Desire, illustrated by Yukine Honami and published in 2004 by Digital Manga, Inc. Maki Kazumi is also the author of Encouragement to be a Knight, illustrated by Kosuri Kusumoto and published by Chara Comics....

 and illustrated by Yukine Honami

Yukine Honami

Yukine Honami is a popular illustrator of yaoi manga.A native of Ishikawa, Japan - Yukine Honami was born on March 17 , is currently residing in Ishikawa and her star sign is Pisces...

. It was published in October 2004 by Digital Manga Publishing

Digital Manga Publishing

Digital Manga is a company that licenses and releases, in English, Japanese anime, manga, and related merchandise. The company has several subdivisions: Digital Manga Publishing, which publishes Japanese manga, novels and instructional and illustration books in North America with multiple imprints,...

, Inc. A novelisation, called 'Desire: Dangerous Feelings' was also produced.

General book information

The original Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 edition was published by Tokuma Shoten Publishing Co., Ltd. Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

 in 2001. Digital Manga Publishing, Inc published an English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 version in the U.S.A. and Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, translated by Kumiko Yuasa under license

License

The verb license or grant licence means to give permission. The noun license or licence refers to that permission as well as to the document recording that permission.A license may be granted by a party to another party as an element of an agreement...

 granted by Tokuma Shoten Publishing Co., Ltd. in 2004. Digital Manga, Inc. owns the English translation copyright for "Desire".

The English First Edition (ISBN 1-56970-979-3) was printed in October, 2004 in Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 and was rated 'M' for mature

Mature

Mature is the adjectival form of maturity, which has several meanings.Mature may also refer to:*"Mature 17+", a rating in the Entertainment Software Rating Board video game rating system*Mature, a character from The King of Fighters series...

 audiences

Audiences

Audiences is an indie rock band based in Chicago, Illinois. They have self-released two live albums. Live at The Otterarium was self recorded and produced in their practice space. Live at Lincoln Hall was recorded live at Lincoln Hall Chicago and engineered by Flashpoint Academy graduate sound...

 18 years and over. The book story consists of four chapters titled "Desire" (which is the story of the manga), including a special additional episode titled "Not That Deviant" (epilogue) and two small chapters titled "Free Talk" were the writer talks about the story and some of the characters in the manga.

Plot

The story is about Toru, an extremely quiet and shy high school student who has a crush on Ryoji, a popular member of the high school swimming team known for his sexual escapades. Further complicating this matter is that Toru and Ryoji are very close friends, thus forcing Toru to hide his real feelings for Ryoji and pretend to be just one of his good friends, while being torn between his love for Ryoji and the facade he has to keep up when he sees him every day.

But all that changes one day when Ryoji makes an indecent proposal to Toru, asking him if he would like to experiment with him sexually, and admitting that he had been aroused

Sexual arousal

Sexual arousal, or sexual excitement, is the arousal of sexual desire, during or in anticipation of sexual activity. Things that precipitate human sexual arousal are called erotic stimuli, or colloquially known as turn-ons. There are many potential stimuli, both physical or mental, which can cause...

 by thoughts of him during sexual intercourse

Sexual intercourse

Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the act in which a male's penis enters a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The entities may be of opposite sexes, or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails...

 with his girlfriend. Toru unhappily accepts, pressured by his feelings for Ryoji, but as time passes Toru becomes even more aggravated as he realizes that his sexual affair with Ryoji was just a fling based on Ryoji's sexual curiosity, and not on actual romantic attraction

Romantic love

Romance is the pleasurable feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love.In the context of romantic love relationships, romance usually implies an expression of one's love, or one's deep emotional desires to connect with another person....

.

Toru is so depressed about the one-sided situation between him and Ryoji that he confides with a close friend named Kashiwazaki about his emotional turmoil. Together, they come up with a plan to discover Ryoji's true intentions by secretly deciding to lie to him about them being in a romantic relationship together.

After learning of this, Ryoji becomes very angry and jealous about Toru and Kashiwazaki's alleged relationship, and tries to break them up. The plan apparently has worked, but Toru is now in a serious love triangle

Love triangle

A love triangle is usually a romantic relationship involving three people. While it can refer to two people independently romantically linked with a third, it usually implies that each of the three people has some kind of relationship to the other two...

 between Ryoji and Kashiwazaki when he begins to realize that Kashiwazaki has been in love with him for a very long time. As the story progresses, he begins to understand that he and Ryoji were not the only ones that were hiding their true feelings.

Reception

Desire sold 6,000 copies between September 2004 and July 2005. It has been described as "over-the-top soap opera with plenty of steamy bits". It has been praised for not showing a stereotypical seme-uke relationship, and being a "damn good story about being a teenager". Patricia Beard, writing for Mania.com regarded the manga as better than the novelisation, but still enjoyed the novelisation. Michelle Smith, writing for Pop Culture Shock thought that the non-consensual scenes were worse to read about in the novelisation than in the manga, as it was "more clear" in showing Toru's pain. The second half of the novelisation is not adapted from the manga, and the boys misunderstand each other and have sex. Smith regarded the novelisation as unexciting.

In 2008, Desire won an American Library Association

American Library Association

The American Library Association is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members....

award in the Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults division, under the category "Sex Is...".