The Spring 2024 Manga Guide

Fox-Colored Jealousy

What's It About? 

The first day they met was on the train. While Akiha Konno was on his way to his first day of school in Tokyo, some creep just had to touch his butt...Thankfully, the nice college guy saved him, but, uhhh...Akiha didn't mean to just glomp him like that! Worse, he called the fox ears that appear when he's all worked up "cute"! Welp, it's not like he'll ever see him again...

Fox-Colored Jealousy is a manga by Machi Suehiro with an English translation by Leighann Harvey. This volume was lettered and retouched by Dietrich Premier. Published by Yen Press (April 16, 2024).

Content warning: This book contains explicit sexual content. It is for mature readers only.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

There isn't much to this story, so it feels odd to say that it would probably have been better with more volumes. The plot is relatively thin: Akiha's family has been prone to fox possession since ancient times, and now Akiha's the one who has inherited the family "gift." Frustrated by how it impacts his life, he heads to the big city for college not just for an escape but also because he has distant relatives who run a shrine and hopes they can help him. Instead, he bumps into his distant cousin Yukuri, and both he and the fox fall headlong for the other man. Antics and shenanigans ensue.

It's certainly no more ridiculous or paper-thin than any other romance premise, but the execution feels somehow lacking. For one, Akiha's relationship with the foxy freeloader isn't always as clear as it needs to be. At one point, he mentions that he's conscious although not in control when the fox takes over, but then later he returns to his own body after a fox possession with no idea where he is or who he's with, which contradicts the earlier statement – and later depiction of how his possession works. The fox itself quickly falls for Yukuri, but that's brushed off as "animals just like him," which makes things pretty damn awkward when the fox is asking for kisses or putting the moves on Yukuri; animals like me, too, but no dog I've met has ever acted that way. Yes, it's a romance, and that changes the rules (plus, you know, fiction and all that), but it still doesn't sit particularly easily.

And that's where we come to the idea that this simply needed more than one volume. What we get is the perfectly okay outline of a story wherein a young man and the fox spirit possessing him both fall for the same guy, with the fox eventually trying to get the two humans together. It's cute enough, but it never dips below the surface, which has the unfortunate effect of making it feel forgettable. It goes through the motions, providing a no-chance rival, a cute gimmick, and the requisite sex scene in the bonus chapter, but that's all it does. There's no real worldbuilding (a late volume reveal that someone else's family has a similar possession problem is unexplored), the characters look nice but have little personality, and the story is just going through the motions. I like the art, but that's not enough to make up for what the writing is lacking.

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Lauren Orsini
Rating:

Tell me if you've heard this before: Boy meets boy on the train but forgets to get his contact info. Boy shows up at the relative's house that he's staying at and—surprise!—his public transit paramour just so happens to live there. Fox-Colored Jealousy has a romance plot so well-tread and familiar that it requires additional conflict to keep the love story from ending too easily. That conflict shows up in the form of our protagonist, a college student named Akiha who excels at setting up rakes for himself to trip on.

Akiha has had a tough life and it has made him wary. For generations, his family has been possessed by fox spirits. When Akiha is flustered, he instantly looks like he's bound for a weekend at Anthrocon, sporting a pair of fluffy ears and a bushy tail. When he completely loses control, the fox spirit takes over entirely—and this sly, playful spirit is far more assertive than Akiha regarding desires!

Meanwhile, Akiha's love interest (and distant relative? Best not to think about it) is Yukuri, a handsome older college student, tall and dark whereas Akiha is short and fair. Yukuri quickly establishes interest and gets Akiha so flustered that the fox spirit takes over. The spirit uses Akiha's body to put the moves on Yukuri before Akiha can stop him. In this way, you could file some elements of this romance as dubious consent. However, the implication is that the fox spirit possesses Akiha because he's too stubborn to admit he wants it.

From there, it's barely a "will they or won't they?" as Akiha comes up with reasons for misinterpreting Yukuri's interest in him. These reasons become increasingly unlikely by the third or fourth time Yukuri saves Akiha from a damsel-in-distress situation. But I'm sure you noticed the explicit content warning on the cover and realize that yes, they do eventually get over themselves (though they don't get into anything naughty until the final few pages).

It's apparent from this manga's delicate line art that the artist put all of their love into detailing the characters and left the backgrounds sketchy and vague. By the end of the book, I was very familiar with Akiha's flustered face and Yukuri's suave advances. A minor supernatural element in Akiha's fox possession is more incidental to the story than I expected; it's less about the search for a cure and more about admiring his cute little ears. As a whole, it's an entertaining BL romance that doesn't attempt to be anything more.

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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. Yen Press, BookWalker Global, and J-Novel Club are subsidiaries of KWE.