Osakana wa Ami no Naka

So, this is what I gather happened during that half hour: Our hero, Matsui, is a doe-eyed, innocent uke who looks just like a brunette Shirou Kamui from X. While waiting for his friend Yoshino to get them sodas after watching this guy who looks like Tamahome from Fushigi Yuugi swim, said guy, henceforth Yuuji, accosts Matsui on the bench and takes him to a bar where some guys throw money in after betting on a high school swim match. Matsui is stupid enough to drink and smoke what they give him, and he eventually leaves. Good for him. Whatever. The typical long-haired tech and thisother guy have sex. It's really awkward, slow-cell sex with Godawful piano-pr0n music in the background. All the stereotypes are there--sort of like animating somebody's straight-into-the-comment-box Livejournal yaoi drabble. Gasping and biting of knuckles and all that jazz. Wee-hoo. Meanwhile, Yuuji's grandfather tells him he needs to take over his corporate dynasty, and Yuuji angsts over feeling like a fish in a trap, hence the title. So, the way he takes care of these feelings is to get his friends to help him to accost Matsui during a thunderstorm and rape him beneath him a gazebo. It's the same slow-cell, pr0n-piano, gasping-uke wilting-flower bullshit as the first sex scene, except even more stereotypical and less is going on. Matsui is left lying naked beneath the gazebo afterward. Kay. Apparently this rape was some serious magical soul-affirming buttsecks, because Yuuji tells his friends, one of whom is a hothead voiced by Takehito Koyasu, he's "done" hanging out with them, and leaves. Takehito's character tries to beat him up. Meanwhile, outside, Long Haired Tech Boy admits his feelings to Yuuji, and when Yuuji does not respond in kind, LHTB screams at Yuuji never knew how to love anybody, and tries to attack him with a knife. LHTB's boyfriend stops him and punches Yuuji. I wish that was for the rape, but apparently it's for not knowing how to love, or some shit. Kay. So, uh, fast-forward a bit, and Matsui and Yoshino are in high school. Matsui goes to join the swimming club to meet up with his rapist, and the very last scene of the entire show, as it freezes to colored-pencil still, is Yuuji walking toward Matsui, apparently feeling the same soul-changing love they both felt as Matsui was beaten and thrown to the ground and raped by Yuuji. End scene. And I'm left staring at my computer screen, wondering if what I just thought happened did happen. This is another example of bad yaoi cliches taken to an extreme. Granted, it's difficult to avoid when you come across a show/manga marketed on the sole virtue alone that holy shit, the main characters are gay for each other. I hate the "I don't know how to show love, so I'll rape you, but it will change me" storyline. Were Matsui a girl, that would never be tolerated as acceptable. Yuuji would be in prison, as he damn well deserves to be. I don't see why it should be any different just because he's a boy, as much the walking stereotype of an uke as he may be. That strikes me as extremely sexist. I don't see why in yaoi this is suddenly an acceptable way of dealing with one's emotions. It's not. It's rape. It's a hideous crime. Hell, this doesn't even have the excuse of having a bad plot because it's porn. There really IS no porn. You see naked men hugging and hear the gasping and the cells jerk a little. It's lame. It's laughable. While not quite as blatantly stupid and "What the fuck" inspiring as Bronze/Zetsuai 1989, this is pretty far up there on the scale of sheer idiocy. The artwork isn't so bad for a 90's title, and the art style is nostalgic, but beyond that, there are no redeeming qualities to this show. By the end of the show I don't care about any of the characters in the slightest, and can see them as nothing more than bad celluloid stereotypes. Matsui is wide-eyed, innocent, and eager to please, whereas Yuuji is tall, dark, brooding, silent, angsting, and totally out-of-touch with his feelings. If you have half an hour to utterly blow, maybe this is worth it. Maybe. It's not nearly as lulz-worthy as some other titles out there. This is just stupid and rather insulting to the intelligence of the audience.