Man's Best Friend (manga)

Man's Best Friend (known as Inu mo Arukeba Fallin' Love (犬も歩けばフォーリンラブ, If Dogs Can also Walk I'm Fallin' Love) aka the Inu mo Arukeba series) is an explicit yaoi manga from the creator of Wild Rock, Kazusa Takashima and is published in English by Blu Manga, the now defunct boys' love publishing division of Tokyopop.

Man's Best Friend
犬も歩けばフォーリンラブ
(Inu Mo Arukeba Fallin' Love)
GenreYaoi
Manga
Written byKazusa Takashima
Published byBiblos, Libre Publishing
English publisher
MagazineMagazine Be × Boy
PublishedMarch 10, 2004, April 1, 2007

Description

When Ukyou rescues a stray dog and names it Kuro, he soon learns that he may have found a rare breed—-his new dog can talk and magically transform into a hunky human! With his dog now taking the form of a hot man and licking him in various places, what is Ukyou to do?!

Plot summary

The manga is split into three stories:

  • The first three chapters are about a dog named Kuro who is magically able to transform into a human with a dog tail and ears whenever he gets excited, and his "owner" Ukyo.
  • The two next chapters (Mata, Natsu ga Kita (また、夏が来た, Summer Has Come Again) and Pinpoint Lovers) are about Kentaro and Kasumi, who meet each other again after a decade apart. Kentaro had made a promise to wait for Kasumi to return ten years ago and, at the time, he had thought that Kasumi was a girl.
  • The last chapter (Kingyo Hime (金魚姫, Goldfish Princess)) involves a guy, Keisuke, rescuing a goldfish from some kids, and finding out that the fish transforms into a man to thank him for rescuing him.

Trivia
  • Kuro makes a cameo appearance in Kentaro and Kasumi's storyline.

Publication

For the English release of Man's Best Friend, Blu Manga decided to replace the original cover art, which depicted Kuro reclining shirtless in a cowboy hat, a strategically placed gun holster at his crotch, with the Japanese inside cover colour art, which depicts Kuro tearing off Ukyou's shirt with his teeth.[1] The former being the book's second print (2007) cover in Japan and the latter being the first print's (2004) cover in Japan.

Reception

The manga has been described as "reminiscent of Guru Guru Pon-chan", and Kuro's dog-like characterization was praised by Sequential Tart.[2] Library Journal described the stories as contrived and said that the characters "exist to have sex".[3] Christopher Butcher regarded Man's Best Friend as being the "most unique" of Blu's releases, and as a "very creative" fetish.[4] Dru Pagliassotti, comparing romance novels with Boys Love manga, mentions Man's Best Friend as an example of a kemonomimi "society", or setting.[5]

References
  1. GloBLisation and Hybridisation: Publishers' Strategies for Bringing Boys' Love to the United States
  2. Sequential Tart review
  3. Library Journal review
  4. Butcher, Christopher (11 December 2007). "Queer love manga style". Xtra!.
  5. Pagliassotti, Dru (2010). "Better Than Romance? Japanese BL Manga and the Subgenre of Male/Male Romantic Fiction". In Pagliassotti, Dru; Levi, Antonia; McHarry, Mark (eds.). Boys' Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre. McFarland & Company. pp. 63–64. ISBN 978-0-7864-4195-2.
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