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A review by nmcannon
NTR: Netsuzou Trap, Volume 1 by Kodama Naoko
2.0
This year has been a year of illness for me, so I've been diving again and again into what I suspect will be comfortable reads, or at least reads that require very little brain power. After reading Naoko Kodama's I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents Up, I knew Kodama had chops as a storyteller, and, going in, I knew she used those powers for a longer, more twisted story in NTR. Basically titled "Cheater Trap," NTR is not a happy, fluffy tale.
When kind and popular basketball star Takeda asks his fellow basketball star Yuma out, she's so startled she says yes, without examining her own feelings. Immediately afterwards, she runs to her best friend, Hotaru, for dating advice. Yuma is especially worried about how to become physically intimate with a significant other. With her beautiful enigmatic smile, Hotaru tells Yuma not to worry: Yuma can "practice" intimacy with her. This of course gets way out of hand, with Hotaru and herbeard boyfriend Fujiwara accompanying Takeda and Yuma everywhere, and Yuma and Hotaru constantly excusing themselves to go make out in secret.
This whole manga is a series of melodramatic sexcapades that any 2000s' American TV show would happily air. Similar to Citrus, there's an enormous dollop of internalized homophobia, misogyny, sexual assault, underage sex work, and abuse/neglect. No one knows how to Google anything, not even "how do I know if I'm a lesbian." Eventually, after a long slog of volumes, Yuma comes to her senses and figures things out, like how lesbian is a valid identity, woman-on-woman intimacy is indeed intimacy, and Hotaru needs healing. One way this series could improve is if Kodama focused on the Hotaru and Yuma's healing journey more, after all these chapters of nonsense.
The trashy romance feels odder because I know Kodama can do better. She's written the characters to be ignorant, homophobic, and abusive on purpose. She wrote all these harmful cliches on purpose. The art is cute, but full of fan service and weird boob physics. This is not a yuri series for beginners, or anyone looking to expand their understanding of what lesbian relationships and culture are like. My sick, addled head was hooked on these dumb teenage antics, and that's all they are. Dumb teenage antics in comic form.
When kind and popular basketball star Takeda asks his fellow basketball star Yuma out, she's so startled she says yes, without examining her own feelings. Immediately afterwards, she runs to her best friend, Hotaru, for dating advice. Yuma is especially worried about how to become physically intimate with a significant other. With her beautiful enigmatic smile, Hotaru tells Yuma not to worry: Yuma can "practice" intimacy with her. This of course gets way out of hand, with Hotaru and her
This whole manga is a series of melodramatic sexcapades that any 2000s' American TV show would happily air. Similar to Citrus, there's an enormous dollop of internalized homophobia, misogyny, sexual assault, underage sex work, and abuse/neglect. No one knows how to Google anything, not even "how do I know if I'm a lesbian." Eventually, after a long slog of volumes, Yuma comes to her senses and figures things out, like how lesbian is a valid identity, woman-on-woman intimacy is indeed intimacy, and Hotaru needs healing. One way this series could improve is if Kodama focused on the Hotaru and Yuma's healing journey more, after all these chapters of nonsense.
The trashy romance feels odder because I know Kodama can do better. She's written the characters to be ignorant, homophobic, and abusive on purpose. She wrote all these harmful cliches on purpose. The art is cute, but full of fan service and weird boob physics. This is not a yuri series for beginners, or anyone looking to expand their understanding of what lesbian relationships and culture are like. My sick, addled head was hooked on these dumb teenage antics, and that's all they are. Dumb teenage antics in comic form.