For many, Fake was the first taste of boy-meets-boy manga

Looking around at AlienBootCamp.com, Logo's collection of LGBT-themed animation, I see that they've got clips from the animated adaptation of Fake, one of the earliest examples of Japanese male-male romances to make it across the Pacific. While the video reached American vendors first, the comic that inspired it is well worth checking out.

Fake follows two New York cops -- Dee Laytner is loud and obnoxious, while Randy "Ryo" Maclean is the shy and cerebral one. Before I had the chance to read any YAOI, I had read plenty of essays warning that the genre usually featured characters who didn't identify as gay, insisting they in love with only one particular man. That wasn't the case, however, with Fake. Dee is openly bisexual and in one scene he corrects people who think that bisexuals are "on the fence" about being gay or straight. Ryo, meanwhile, is closeted due to his shyness -- his problem isn't a matter of self-acceptance, but not feeling secure in how to approach another man romantically, or even how to respond to another man's attention.

The story primarily focuses on the two investigating a variety of crimes, with the police procedural serving as an excuse for the two to get to know each other better and to grow close. In their first case, they encounter Bikki, the stubborn son of a murdered mob lackey. Bikki quickly latches on to Dee, who becomes a foster parent to the young man, but clashes with Dee. Bikki's homophobia and conflict with Dee causes him to vow to "protect" Ryo from Dee. However, as the series progresses, he slowly builds a kinship with Dee and accepts his foster father's relationship.

Fake has plenty of faults, but those problems usually give the series a goofy charm. As a police procedural, the series is laughably bad. However, the point of each case is to put Ryo or Dee in jeopardy so that the other one can come running to the rescue, so it's easy to forgive the plot holes since those rescue scenes are effective. Similarly, whenever a special agent arrives to help with a case, the person usually is more interested in winning Dee or Ryo's heart than in solving the case.

Since it was the first a boy-meets-boy manga to be published in English, Fake was heavily sampled by gay male comic readers. The title drew a large number of gay fans, who were drawn into Fake's mix of adventure and romance. Unfortunately, I haven't seen a title grab gay fans quite the way that Fake did, not even later work from the same creator. A sequel series is currently being published in Japan, though no one has licensed it for American readers, yet. If it makes it over the Pacific, I wonder if it capture the magic twice.