When I first read this manga I was coming off of Hiro Madarame's "Akuma" series and was...quite disillusioned. The cover promised hawtness and it did deliver in that aspect, but the characters. Urgh, the characters. Too much assault and doormat-ness! Anyway, Scarlet proved to be a more enjoyable read than those, and since I re-read it again recently I figured I'd give it a proper review.
Japanese title: -
Author: MADARAME Hiro
Genres: comedy, drama, romance, yaoi
Length // Status: 1 volume // complete
Warnings: triggers for the first story: rape, attempted murder, triggers for the third story: uh, sleep molestation?, explicit sex (no visible genitalia, though)
Synopsis
Since this is a collection of unrelated stories, we'll look at them separately:
1. Scarlet: college student Akio Kouzuki finds himself becoming more and more attracted to Ryou Cyrille, an eye-catching student who turns out to be a complete klutz and not the aloof prince he's rumored to be. While Ryou loves Akio like a dog, he also starts cheating more and more on him, being unable to refuse the girls who come on to him. Will their relationship survive after all the infidelity and secrets are exposed?
2. One Night Stand: Harumi has two different lives: a straight-laced office worker persona and a more liberated one. He has been eying fellow worker Toki for a while now but is too shy to make the first move. One night, the two meet in a gay bar and end up having a one night stand. Harumi is convinced he'll be able to get over Toki now and is confident he won't be recognized, but then Toki says hello to him at work...
3. My Lover: the extroverted Keito has been growing increasingly annoyed with his gloomy and timid lover, Naoki, and is determined to end their relationship. However, something happens that makes him change his mind...
Ryou, Akio, Harumi, Toki, Keito and Naoki.
Plot and character development
Scarlet is simultaneously the silliest and the most serious out of all the stories. It presents the idea of "true love" in a different perspective than the glossy, perfect one we normally see in shoujo manga, and it shows the lengths to which an obsessed-with-love person would go to in order to achieve their goal. As cute and cuddly as Ryou is in the beginning, he turns downright scary towards the end (beginning too, actually, since the story starts off with a snippet from near the end); his silly "dog" blinded by his love for Akio is both a gift and a curse (cliches be excused), since both these sides lead to surprisingly dramatic situations - yes, even the happy love gets weird after a while. Akio serves as the voice of reason and he stays strong throughout the entire ordeal, even when Ryou's clingy personality gets on his nerves. Even he realizes that Ryou is overbearing and doesn't like the fact that he sticks to him all the time, but ultimately ends up falling in love with him.
Though the personalities might sound obvious at first, it was a bit of a challenge to try and guess Ryou's personality: he's clingy and faithful like a dog, yet he also cheats on Akio whenever the opportunity arises - but he's not a playboy either. He's very shy and keeps to himself but turns confident when Akio is around, and that timidity disappears completely when he's faced with the possibility of losing Akio for good (at which point he goes batshit insane). So bearing in mind all these, I guess Ryou's the most complex character in this manga o.O
Honestly!
One Night Stand, on the other hand, is much lighter in terms of batshit insane crap. The synopsis up there is pretty much what happens: Harumi keeps going back and forth between wanting to have a relationship with Toki and not being confident enough to speak up. He does have a few bold moments - especially when visiting the gay bar - but as a whole he's the type that would completely blend into their background. As opposed to him, Toki is a good-looking man working in the Sales department (of course) of the same company and has never noticed the pretty much invisible Harumi until after their one night stand.
My Lover: aaand the third one contains a scene which is quite possibly one of the funniest in the book. Both Naoki and Keito are idiots in their own way, but their relationship seems to somehow go on despite it having apparently no direction; it's sort of adorable, actually. I like how in the second chapter of the story Keito (somewhat) realizes that he can't change Naoki and that he prefers him the way he is. Nice lesson.
Art style
Holy tap-dancing Christ, does this manga have a lot of chibis. I'm not exaggerating, roughly 80% of the drawings in the first story are chibi! Hope you liked seeing Ryou as a human in the first pages, 'cause almost all you're going to get from now on are bobble-heads with huge, snot-like tears.
As for the other two stories, the art is actually pretty good. A lot of attention went into drawing the hair and the postures look very natural. The ukes in the second and third story do look a bit "girly" at times - glossy-looking lips, doe eyes, blushing - but even that part of the art is good.
Final verdict
Yeah, I'd recommend it if you're a yaoi fan and aren't affected by the triggers I mentioned above. The stories are believable (though the second one may be a bit of a stretch) and easy to follow, and the characters aren't complex enough to ponder make one ponder their entire existence, but not simple enough to be cardboard cutouts either. Each of them evolves in a way and "learns his lesson" - be it about respect, privacy or how to coexist with your special person.
Characters: 1.8 / 2 points - funny enough, I can see them as real people, albeit with some slightly exaggerated traits.
Realism/believability: 0.7 / 1 points - yeah, I can see Ryou's dangerous obsession/fear being even worse in reality, but story #2 relies on pure coincidence to set up the relationship.
Art: 1.8 / 2 points - beautiful art, but the numerous chibis took a bit away from it.
Flow: 1 / 1 points - a snippet of the end in the beginning of the first story, and a lot of events that happen in the past.
How much I enjoyed it: 2.9 / 3 points - if it weren't for the too many exaggerated chibis, god, this would be insanely enjoyable!
My final rating: 
(8.2, rounded to out 8 of 10)
Where to read it: MangaFox
Where to download it: MangaTraders
