Reception
At the time of its writing, the genre as a whole was not commonly recognised by those not creating it, but Zetsuai 1989 is considered one of yaoi's "major works" and "one of the greatest icons of shōnen-ai". Koji and Izumi have been described as shōnen-ai's Romeo and Juliet. There is little explicit sex in the series. Instead, the series is "angst-ridden", and includes "a lot of blood" via themes of self-harm and accidents. Ozaki's works have been described as "prolonged erotic psychodramas", and Zetsuai 1989 is the "most famous" of these. The depiction of love in the series has been described as "nearly violent", which is regarded as a "true revelation" for female readers. The character of Izumi's mother has been criticised by Kazuko Suzuki as an example of yaoi showing "extremely negative images of mothers". Anime News Network has criticised the melodramatic tone of the OVA Bronze: Zetsuai Since 1989. Aestheticism.com describes the art style of Zetsuai as being "like a fashion designer's workbook", but Anime News Network says that the character design is "horribly mutated" and "disgusting". Matt Thorn describes the relationship between Koji Nanjo and Takuto Izumi as an "intense and often grim love story", saying that "if you like your shônen-ai (or "slash") intense, look no further." Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto describes Zetsuai 1989 as being a controversial work, noting that it was one of the early yaoi works to "enjoy widespread popularity abroad". She labels it as being bad when read through a gender studies perspective, and not representative of the yaoi genre. She characterises it as showing "violent, obsessive and abus" sex scenes. She notes that it was written during a period of yaoi history where most stories ended in tragedy. Bauwens-Sugimoto posits that because of the time gap of ten to twelve years between publication and when it was translated into German and French, audiences who read it in translation would have found it "out of touch with the times", and thus extrapolate to the yaoi genre as a whole being "backwards".
Read more about this topic: Zetsuai 1989
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