Judul: 極楽カフェ 1 (Rainbow Cafe 1) Pengarang: 間々原Ellie (Mamahara Ellie) ISBN: 4-19-960191-0 Tokuma Shoten; Chara comics Harga: 533円
	Judul: 極楽カフェ 2 (Rainbow Cafe 2) Pengarang: 間々原Ellie (Mamahara Ellie) ISBN: 4-1996-0215-1 Tokuma Shoten; Chara comics Harga: 533円

SO! A short (short?) review on Mamahara Ellie’s Gokuraku Cafe.

OK, so here’s Ellie with the first series she wrote on her own for Chara (the previous two were written by two different writers, Ellie only did the illustration; she is also the sole author of her newest for Chara, Macaroni). What does she offer now?
It being for Chara, of course there’s male-to-male romance in Gokuraku Cafe. But what I like from Ellie, she takes her characters more as everyday people, people you may find on streets, not being over-romanticized, hyperimagination-fueled BL characters made only to satisfy female readers. OK, they were absolutely made for female readers, but they’re a farcry from being born out of homoeroticism only. If Jackson Hawk was a gay, or if Ebina Shuuhei was a gay, then be it. So what? Walk on your streets for just 15 minutes and you may find one or two gays, or even a flock, if you happen to walk around when it’s Mardi Gras.

Gokuraku Cafe is about a late-teenager named Takanashi Yuuto. He works for a cafe, Rainbow Cafe, which is owned by Dick (the master), and Yuuto also lives with him. Not without a reason! Yuuto’s parents have passed away, and Yuuto didn’t continue to college or university. His best childhood memory is of Jacky of the Rainbow Valley, a clay animation film he watched with his dad and which he loves even when he’s now nearing his 20s. Dick turned out to be Richard Y. Swallow, the creator and director of Jacky, which for some reason has chosen not to make any Jacky film anymore and spend his life as a master of a cafe in downtown Tokyo. Yuuto, eager to make animation like his whole-life love Jacky, must feel very blessed for being able to live with the man responsible for his eternal admiration and learning stuff about animation from him.

One day, Yuuto ‘helped’ a man which he thought wanted to commit a suicide by throwing himself to a river. It’s actually Yuuto’s ‘help’ that threw the man into the river, because the man was in fact trying to help a kitten, not thinking of ending his own life. ‘The man’ was Esaka Moriharu, a famous and talented pitcher for Tokyo Elephants. Oh, OK, so Yuuto and Moriharu have a romance affair, happily ever-after, the end, right? Not right. First, because Yuuto is not so easy to fall to Moriharu (even after Moriharu kissing him in front of Japan, live on TV!) -- there’s the funny, Ellie-styled resistance of Yuuto towards Moriharu. (The same resistance can be found in Hanafubuki Dengei Yarou, although the series ends with two successful male-female relationships and not the male-male instead.) Second, it’s not what Gokuraku Cafe all about. It’s more about the stories of the lives of the caretakers and the frequent visitors of the cafe, although centered on Yuuto, Dick, Moriharu, and another person… Jackson Hawk.

Jackson Hawk, Jack for short, is a famous director who visited Japan to promote his new work, “Danse Macabre”. He turned out to be Dick’s ‘lost’ son, and both Dick and Jack seemed to hate each other, and the good-natured Yuuto tried to reunite them. Because he knew that the solution of all the misunderstandings happening between Dick and Jack was in something Yuuto had loved for a long time: Jacky of the Rainbow Forest.
And oh, for additional information, Jack is a gay, which adds a thing or two to the relationship between Moriharu and Yuuto. When Yuuto met Jack at his hotel room, Jack said to a confused Yuuto, (the dialogue--or rather, monologue because Yuuto doesn’t understand but his mothertongue--is in English): “You’re not one of the press, right? ----Is this some kindness of the distributor?” (He must mean the local distributor of his films.) “Jesus! Does everyone know about my “taste” in Japan?” (The Japanese text which runs under the English words is: Kimi, press no hito janai ne? Hyottoshite Haikyuugaisha no service? Maittanaa… Nihon ni made ore no syumi tte tsutawatteru no?”)

And may I mention that, as usual, Ellie’s art is wonderful?

 

Reviewed by Tyas