Author: Yun Kouga
Release: 2002
Medium: Manga
Pretty thorough. I only have a few questions, and they're not pressing.
Textually unimportant, but subtextually very significant. Hard to explain, see below.
Depending on your tolerance, this is either 'barely weird' or 'nightmare material.' Again, see below.
I adore Loveless and always have, so it's 'webmaster bias' bonus points are through the roof. It's gay score is inspiring. Cultural relevance is low except in one way where I think it may have had more of an influence than people realize.
Let me start with the actual 'weird fantasy sex' stuff, the questionable (complimentary) worldbuilding that puts Loveless on the list. Then I'll address the elephant in the room.
Loveless is a serialized manga that began in 2002 and, because of several long hiatuses, is still unfinished (as of 2023). It’s not long; total published content has been collected into 12 tankobon, all of which have been officially translated into English. The art is lovely and the writing is poetic and lush. It takes place in modern-day Japan and the plot revolves around a weird secret society that, for reasons I find hard to explain, runs 'spell battles'. These spell battles are verbal smackdowns in which opposing teams of two use what appears to be a magical ability to change the reality around them with their words. They verbally tear each other down until one side has their will totally broken, either by being intimidated by the (literal) web of hurtful words around them or by being shaken by the vicious conversation unearthing personal wounds.
These 'teams' have codified roles. There is one fighter and one sacrifice. The fighter is the one speaking the spells, and the sacrifice takes the damage. That damage visually and palpably manifests as something binding the sacrifice, usually chains, or ropes of some kind, though some battles are more visually abstract.
So… If Yun Kouga isn't super into BDSM, I don't know what BDSM is. Again, a two-person team with codified roles, one 'fighter' who unleashed devastating verbal damage and a 'sacrifice' who visibly takes that damage, fight existential battles against similarly paired duos in an underground subculture. The fighter/sacrifice bond is a deep bond, one that manifests as soul names that physically appear on both partner’s bodies when they come of age, and most consider it unspeakable to dump your partner or force a relationship with a new one. Of course, several plot points revolve around a few people doing exactly that. The person who appears to be the main antagonist is so shifty about showing his name that for a while you can’t tell which of his fighters is actually his sacrifice and which one he forced into the role.
For as obviously D/S as that all is, that all takes place in the realm of metaphor and suggestion. The obvious weird fantasy sex thing is the cat ears.
Hey, uh, listen up. Hey fellow weebs, do you remember when nekomimi was suddenly everywhere in the mid-2000s? That was because of Loveless.
The skinny is that, in the world of Loveless, everyone is born with cat ears and a cat tail. Everyone. You lose them when you lose your virginity.
No, for real. In fact, in the text, people say 'losing your ears' instead of 'losing your virginity.' There are characters who lost their virginity young and now wear fake ears so that they don't get in trouble with teachers or parents. There are characters who are mocked or considered weird because they're in their 20s but they still have their ears. In Loveless, you are nekomimi until you fuck.
And that's why sexy cat people started showing up everywhere inexplicably circa 2003. It was because of Loveless. Sorry if you found out this way. For a while, you could find fanfictions labelled 'Loveless AU' just like you see 'Daemon AU' or 'A/B/O AU' today. Virginity Nekomimi and spectral bondage being tossed into whatever else the fic author liked. I miss it.
So, there is the explicietly sex-related worldbuilding element, the virginity nekomimi, and the not explicitely sexual but very BDSM-coded worldbuilding of the spell battles. And making this special realtionship, different from normal relationships, secret, hidden from society but very real to the two bonded (and soul-bonded) partners, Kouga is able to do a lot of subversive writing in the series without being textually explicit about it. Most of these partnered teams are same-sex and some of them are clearly implied to be in a sort of relationship without Kouga having to fully commit to writing a censorable tragic subplot about teen lesbians. She can write about how the antagonist treats his partners and their enmity with each other without having to directly grapple with labels or messy details or even logistics of that would work if he was more obviously trading boyfriends for boyfriends. And she's able to dive into the things that are beatuiful about the relationship between the two central characters when that would normally be absolutely fucking impossible in almost any other setting.
Loveless is about a relationship between a 20-year-old man (Agatsuma Soubi) and a 12-year-old boy (Aoyagi Ritsuka), and how that has been received has changed over time.
It's a little hard to remember now, because of my personal relationship with Loveless. I don't remember the controversy around the title because I was 12 or 13 years old myself when I read my first volume of Loveless, having freshly discovered manga because of Cardcaptor Sakura and developing a nascent obsession with yaoi to feed my repressed bisexuality. Because I was Ritsuka's age myself, his delicate and unusual relationship with a kind-hearted older man was very appealing to me.
And this is where I should start apologizing for that, but I don't want to, because now that I'm ten years older myself than that kind older man, Agatsuma Soubi, who is only 20 years old, I still find their story very compelling.
Summary first. Aoyagi Ritsuka is a deeply unwell adolescent boy who became an only child when his loving older brother, Seimei, died a few years ago. His mother became mentally ill and abusive because of the loss. Then, a mysterious adult man--an adult to Ritsuka's eyes--enters his life saying he is now here to serve Ritsuka. His name is Agatsuma Soubi, and he was Seimei's fighter. He is now going to be Ritsuka's fighter, which he is doing becuase it was Seimei's last request that he do whatever Ritsuka wants him to do, and he will fulfill that request because he loved Seimei very much. Because Ritusuka is a lonely child, what he wants Soubi to do is spend time with him, take pictures, eat ice cream, cook lunch, comfort him when he's sad or afraid, listen to his worries, and tell him more about his mysterious, dead, dearly beloved older brother.
I'm about to sound like the guy who jumps to defend pedophilia with a 'but Japanese culture' argument. Actually, I don't understand Japanese culture very well, and this is not a defense, but a connection I noticed. In many cultures, including Japan, it was not uncommon for a younger sibling to re-marry the spouse of an older sibling if they passed away. Actually, this happens all over the world; marriage realistically involves sharing resources, and being widowed means having ones livelihood thrown into jeopardy. In many instances, it's a kindness to take on an in-law who now is worried about shelter and food. And Soubi, who now, to me, reads like a miserable young thing who is barely an adult, feels like a gifted widow. I admit to seeing a tenuous connection to Revolutionary Girl Utena, in which one woman inhabits the strange, surreal position of the Rose Bride, a woman who grants powers to whoever is engaged to her, and that engagement changes every time her fiancé is defeated in battle. Like a Fighter or a Sacrifice, she is a person who is a position, that position is sexualized, and the importance of the position supersedes personality, opinions, or a change of partner.
I do remember people saying at the time that the only thing that 'excused' Loveless was that Soubi and Ritsuka's relationship is clearly not sexual. It can be argued that it isn't romantic, either, though I honestly think it is. The way I read it, Rituska has romantic feelings for Soubi, but in the way a child does. Soubi's feelings are much more complicated, in that the obvious subtext is that Seimei, the older brother, who is his age, is the one he loved, and Ritsuka is an appendage to that.
How to explain, then, the uncomfortable fact that Soubi's actions to Ritsuka are often blatantly flirtatious? Well, if we carefully consider--just kidding, asshole, the narrative goes out of its way to explain to the reader that Soubi was sexually abused when he was a very young man/boy and has been treated as property by abusive men who own him since and this is his concept of a normal relationship. This is spoonfed to the reader and yet 50% of them will not get it. This is about a horrendously abused young man who is repeating the cycle in such tight turns he's perpetually dizzy, the dumb little faggot. I love him.
Here's the defense of Loveless: Loveless is the story of a romantic relationship between a 12-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man, at first. At first, inexperienced Ritsuka takes older, experienced Soubi's flirting at face value, and rebuffs him (or accepts him) shyly and innocently. As the story progresses, and Ritsuka faces his demons, learns more about himself and his brother, and grows, Ritsuka begins to see Soubi for what he is. He recognizes when the flirtation is dishonest or when Soubi doesn't actually seem happy about what he's doing. He gently calls him out when Soubi is doing something he knows isn't right and firmly asks him to stop. He draws boundaries which make things more comfortable than both of them. As he matures and begins to demand equal respect in their relationship as fighter and sacrifice, their relationship as people evolves.
At the place we are now, three books away from Kouga's planned ending, I don't believe I do have a word for the relationship the two of them now have. It feels less romantic than it did at first. It also feels closer, more genuine. Not quite like siblings, not quite like a couple. They have the kind of genuinely honest relationship two people have when their primary concern is not what word to call it but how to treat each other well. I've had a few of those relationships; if you have the courage to seize them openly, to know that it will not make sense to outsiders but that you are feeding each other, you bloom.
...But don't fuck them. You can't fuck them. No, really, that fucks it up. Don't fuck them. Whatever happens in Loveless in the future, I'm sure the final scene between Soubi and Ritsuka is not a bedding or a wedding. I'm sure it's amiable, and comfortable, and I'm sure people are still asking nosy questions about 'what they are', and I'm sure the same laterally aggressive hacks are still claiming that setting your eyes on this manga will transmit a neurotoxin that turns you into a pedophile, and I'm sure I still read this at 12 and correctly understood that what was going on here was complex, and sad, and not replicable in real life.
This is is a weird entry because no one actually fucks unless you count like, the first time Soubi was raped by his adult male teacher as being technically shown in flashback. The reason this is here at all is because of how important it was to me growing up and how close it still is to my heart. Should you read it? Not if you came her for, like, more series like Pern or a way to diversify your A/B/O intake. I think the main reason to read this would be if you are also a weepy sex abuse survivor yourself and/or if you both like shoujo and enjoy ethically challenging reads. Like, it isn't your Kinky Freak certification that needs to be current for this one, it's your Shoujo Bullshit cert. If you can watch Oniisama E straight-faced, get on it.