Recently I dabbled a little in reviewing some more adult materials with a review of the first Emmanuelle novel. Well, recently I learned that the new adult manga from Katsu Aki, the creator of Futari Ecchi (along with the manga version of Vision of Escaflowne & Psychic Academy) involved discussing polyamory, and had been licensed, I decided to pick up the first volume of that manga – We Started a Threesome.
There will be some spoilers.
For a bit of background, Futari Ecchi is an example of something that I’d call “erot-u-tainment” – combining “erotic”, “educational”, and “entertainment”. Specifically, that manga (which has gone for over 800 chapters in various iterations), was focused on providing a degree of education to readers on how to have a better sex life with your partner. The series has been – from what I’ve been able to read – generally more heteronormative in its subject matter, and is also generally softcore, but consistent in finding an entertaining (in multiple senses of the terms) way to use a narrative structure address various sexual topics in a way that informs as much as it arouses – to the point that I’m really bummed that Tokyopop, of all companies, was the one who got it, as in this day and age of digital manga, I feel like it might stand more of a chance in the US market.
In any case, when I read about this series, and learned that it was going to handle the topic of polyamory in a similar manner, I was interested in picking it up. While I’m not in a polyamorous relationship, I appreciate works that try to handle the topic well – and I hoped this would be one of those. This first volume (the only one out in the US thus far), appears to handle the topic well, from the double-outside perspective of not being in a poly relationship and also being outside of how poly relationships work in Japan.
The focus is on the throuple of Lia, Suisei, and Emito – three childhood friends who have formed a nesting polycule together. Each of the three also have their own degrees of past emotional baggage (it’s established that Lia was nearly killed in her parents’ murder-suicide, and Emito has been on the receiving end of some form of abuse of his own), and their love for each other as a new found family unit has lead to the three of them falling in love and living together.
Much of the focus of the narrative is on some of the difficulties the trio face in their lives related to being in a nesting polyamorous relationship with people who don’t particularly understand. Lia’s boss wants to shoehorn himself into the relationship because he thinks she’s easy. One of Suisei’s co-workers also wants to to do a similar thing, trying to play on fears of jealousy and neglect, and the volume ends with Emito basically getting grabbed by the boyfriend of one of his female co-workers at his part time job who appears to be about to sexually assault him (so, content warning for that).
Other than the issue with tossing in some sexual assault at the end (and sex-pest behavior at work from Lia’s boss), my main issue with the manga is more that it continues to be just kinda hetronormative. We get a couple light bones thrown on one page to the idea that the men might be bisexual – but for a manga that got the LGBT tag by the publisher, feels a little disappointing. It’s not a big problem – honestly, the sex-pest boss and the threat of sexual assault at the end are the bigger things to call attention to, if only for the reader to know going in that’s coming so they aren’t blindsided. The sex is on the harder end of softcore, but considering Futari Ecchi, that’s along the lines of what I expected.
Ultimately, considering that the English version Futari Ecchi is out of print and has yet to be license rescued, if you enjoyed what we got, and want to see something more like that, We Started A Threesome is the next best thing – and certainly it feels like, if not a good successor to that series, then a good parallel, and if you’re okay with some milder 18+ content, this is worth picking up.
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