Storytelling: Ogawa Chise Pt. 2

{Ogawa Chise} Caste Heaven-01

Ogawa Chise is dangerous and I love it. How can she write things that I am against and intrigue me with them? Usually, with BL, you can be certain that whatever horrors fall upon the uke at the hands of the seme, they will be washed away with an unearned and unbelievable happy ending. However, with Ogawa, you’d be surprised if things turned out well. Her relationships are twisted, but the thing about them is that there is this sickness in desire from both sides that reads so well. It helps that the characters are not flat and you can always expect more than meets the eye. And not that you don’t cringe or fear too much of her work will make you complaisant, but you do these things still hoping for more. You see these two characters and everything in you screams at them to run away from each other but something quieter, from deeper within, whispers for them to never part. It’s like a roadside accident, you can hardly look away. I don’t feel guilt about much, but I can’t help but feel a bit when I read and thoroughly enjoy her stories, feeling unsettled all the while. It’s terrible and I wonder why I don’t feel compelled to make this exception for other authors, well not many. For example, I couldn’t stomach the relationship in Double Mints (though I have plans to give it one more try). Yet, with only a hint of shame, I sit here wanting to fall deeper into this void of hers.

{Ogawa Chise} Caste Heaven-02

I feel like Ogawa’s trying to say something with the chasm between the boundaries she pushes in her shoujo titles and the boundaries she tramples in her BL. I’ve read the majority of her shoujo and this level of debauchery is conspicuously absent.

I had planned to write about that last bit to a fuller extent, but I think it will probably come out in little bursts like this.

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