User Reviews For: Under the Cherry Blossoms

The art is beautiful and elegantly restrained. The clothing of the era is a delight for the eyes. The plot was not very easy to discern at first, it took me some time to understand. The protag is very snakelike and cold, but at the same time you understand his motifs. Even though the aesthetic is soft and beautiful, the plot can be quite dark and disturbing. Melancholic and haunting, this is a unique BL worth reading.

Wow! What a beautifully tragic love story! Do not read this expecting your sweet or sexy love story. This is a very deep story of love when love cannot exist because of the status quo. Yet despite that, it is a love story; one with pain, a deep unspoken love, and a bittersweet end that felt....right. It is beautifully drawn and VERY well written. This is one of the best books I've read on Renta!. I wish there was more like this.

Definitely worth reading. Yes it has got a bittersweet ending, but the journey there is such that you can't even begrudge it. It hasn't got fluff, it hasn't got smut, and it's got plenty of angst, but it was still perfect.

???I LOVE THIS MANGA!!!??? It's tragic & melancholic. Takasaki is beautiful & devious, conniving, a very dangerous combination. I found it to be a very good read. The artwork is beautiful. The dialog fits. This is a great story????

A very bitter(sweet?) story - beautifully drawn and excellent plot. It's dark, so don't read this when you want a wholesome ending.

I wish there were more historical manga like this.

This is my favorite one volume BL on Renta. It is heartbreaking, but with each new read, I learn more about the characters' motivations and subtle feelings. The eloquence of the dialogue, the beautiful artwork, the complex narrative -- I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.

I am not sure if I like this story. A lot of the previous reviewers said they liked it, but put question marks behind their sentences. I now understand why. You want to hate it, but don't. You want to like it but don't. It is a complicated story, but the characters are not all likeable. Tomozane is an example of a pure and warm person, forced to change by principles and friendship and loss. Takasaki is very unlikeable, but somewhat understandable. He probably was a horrible person, but he was also treated equally horribly, and his attitude is somewhat understandable. He is a person with feelings (or at least had feelings at some point), after all. I kind of hated how Tomozone gave in and visited Takasaki, but I thunk that it means he was at peace with himself, whereas Takasaki was never at peace with himself until the last page.. I want to say that this isn't a typical yaoi story, but it is a beautiful trope in Asian genre nonetheless?

I couldn't enjoy it as much as the other reviewers. Yes, the art is pretty and the historical setting is interesting, but the plot is even more depressing than I expected and a lot of the detail of things like poetry is lost in translation. If you enjoy court intrigue series like Empresses In The Palace you would likely enjoy this. If you hate watching the aristocracy be horrible and murderous to each other, you won't.