Hittin' On Dudes Hard: A Porno Superstar Review

Whoo! Let me tell you guys—it feels real good to be able to use my free time for my hobbies again. To celebrate my month and a half reprieve from academic writing (I get draft feedback sometime in March), we're jumping back in with a review I promised you all the way back in November. Today, we are talking about a BL that I absolutely HATE to love, Porno Superstar by Nanami. Consider this post my official application to be one of your problematic favs.

As we get into Porno Superstar, it should become clear why I felt the need to write the non-con and dub con post first. Y'all, this manga has people fucked up—and understandably so—but you will pry this problematic shit from my cold, dead hands. The story features arguably one of the most reprehensible and irredeemable love interests that I've ever seen in BL mang, at least insofar as he seems like a love interest we are probably supposed to root for and sympathize with.

The saving grace of this whole manga is the uke protag, so strap in for another ❤️ uke love ❤️ post. Compared to Shio, who shines next to a boring seme, Yamashita is pulling double or triple the weight in Porno Superstar, since he carries this story to the seat of my innermost fictional affections in spite of his shitty abusive boyfriend and poorly constructed tragic backstory.

Plot Summary

Content warning: This manga depicts scenes of homophobia, sexual assault, and abuse.

The story opens up in medias res with protagonist Yamashita Tooru staring dumbstruck at a handsome man loudly throwing a temper tantrum on the phone about someone being quite literally 20 seconds late in meeting up with him. As opposed to paying too much attention to the giant red flag that is this guy's shitty personality, Yamashita is practically dissociating over the fact that the guy in question is Hikaru, an adult entertainer known for his performances in gay porn.

Yamashita is a superfan of Hikaru and collector of all his videos and memorabilia. He's so enamored of the guy that he thinks about how much he can't wait to get home and jack off to Hikaru's videos even while he's at work. He mentions that going home to jerk it to Hikaru at night is the sole thing to which he looks forward in his life.

In the process of his inner monologue giving us the context we need to understand why he's staring at the hot guy, we learn a little about Yamashita as a character. Yamashita is a gay man who describes himself as having a gloomy personality and being socially inept. He's never been in a romantic relationship and is also a virgin (ugh, same).

A little later in the manga, we learn he was publicly bullied and humiliated in his youth for being gay—he confessed to a male classmate and was beat up and ostracized for doing so—which could explain his lack of confidence or fear when it comes to pursuing relationships with men in the "real world."

Since his peers in school actively participated in his bullying, this also explains why he has difficulty socializing in general and has learned that it is easier to take abuse than it is to do much of anything about it. We are shown how poorly people tend to treat Yamashita in microcosm when a woman at his office bumps into him, accuses him of bumping into her, and then belittles him for mumbling.

Later that day, Yamashita prays to the gods to meet Hikaru before he dies, even if he has to use his whole lifetime's worth of luck. We snap back to the setting of the opening scene, since it appears the gods have decided to grant Yamashita his wish. Realizing that he can't lose the name of action, Yamashita calls out to Hikaru before he can walk off. After little to no introduction, he pulls a Tik Tok era Ke$ha and hits on Hikaru hard:

Hikaru is like "sure, why not," and the two head to a nearby hotel. In the build up to penetrative sex (which most works in the genre consider "real sex," and everything else foreplay 😑) Yamashita's thirst is unquenchable, which is initially why I fell in love with him as a character:

Ravage me however you'd like, please violate me as much as you want… as long as my partner is Hikaru, no matter what happens, I can take it.

Unfortunately, Hikaru throws a damper on these moments as he overly critiques Yamashita's sexual technique despite knowing he's a virgin and calls him ugly for exposing his ass as he preps himself. Sad! But things somehow get worse when penetration actually begins. Despite his bravado and the fact that he did prepare himself, Yamashita doesn't anticipate how painful anal sex would be and repeatedly calls out for Hikaru to stop. Not only does he not stop, but he tells Yamashita to call him by his name, which is Ryuichi. Surprised, Yamashita asks if he has been told to use Hikaru's given name, but the guy replies that "it's not like [he] has a stage name or anything."

Yes, the Fates have indeed laughed: "Hikaru" is just some rando that looks like Yamashita's favorite porn star. In the mostly obscured and implied scenes that follow, Yamashita is forced to have sex with Ryuichi multiple times that evening and passes out repeatedly until he finds an opportunity to escape.

Yamashita goes to work the next day although he's in excruciating pain from the night before. His boss walks in to usher along the welcome train for a new employee… and I'm sure you can see where this is going. In previous expository scenes, readers learn that a manager in Yamashita's company has a son that has recently been hired seemingly through nepotism. Everyone in the office is rightfully pissy about it, but people (especially the OLs) change their tune when the guy walks in and is revealed to be hot. The new employee is Asazaki Ryuichi,^[1] the guy who assaulted Yamashita the night before.

For the next few chapters, Asazaki threatens to expose Yamashita's sexuality to the company and thereby coerces him into a sexual relationship, which usually results in being forced to give Asazaki blow jobs in an old storage room during work hours. Like their first night together, Asazaki cruelly criticizes his sexual performance, at least early on in the sexual extortion plot. Due to his tendencies to tolerate the abuse that comes his way, Yamashita accepts full responsibility for the situation, sees no real way out, and comforts himself with the fact that he still finds it preferable to his experiences being beaten and bullied while in school.

Yamashita begins to throw his romantic emotions into the mix after he tries to resume jacking off to Hikaru at home in the evenings. He finds that the Hikaru videos aren't doing much for him anymore and instead comes fantasizing about rough sex with Asazaki instead:

Asazaki starts to catch feelings for Yamashita, too, although we're shown this through him doing bare minimum shit, like getting Yamashita a binder off of a high shelf so he doesn't have to get a step stool. (Honestly, I got to give it to Nanami for the verisimilitude of the low-effort shit people who are attracted to men are sometimes forced to romanticize with the lazy ass dudes with nothing to offer walking around today.)

The turning point from sexual extortion to the most dubious of romances happens when our two heroes add kissing on the mouth to their sexual repertoire. After locking lips, Asazaki grows more considerate of Yamashita's likes and dislikes, and suggests that they move away from getting hot and heavy at work (where they're more likely to get caught anyway) and go to Yamashita's place since he lives nearby. Asazaki closes off the suggestion for a change in scenery with the least romantic date invite I've ever seen:

If you satisfy me, I'll take you out on the weekend, see a movie or something. Got it?

I swear to God this Ryuichi makes Asami Ryuichi look like the biggest lover boy on planet earth. Either way, this preposition sends Yamashita into a fit of giddiness:

Am I finally going to have a boyfriend? So this sort of thing can happen even for me! Ever since I graduated from high school, I always thought I would never fall for someone again. I'm happy; I'm so happy I feel like I'm going to die.

We fast forward to Friday evening with Asazaki and Yamashita in a convenience store buying beer, snacks, toiletries, and condoms in preparation for their sexy weekend together. While shopping, Asazaki runs into an old friend named Tamura and takes him outside to catch up while Yamashita checks out. Outside, Tamura remembers Yamashita from high school and relays his tragic backstory to Asazaki.

Tamura, amused that the socially mismatched Asazaki and Yamashita have developed a friendship, jokingly asks his friend if he became gay while he was in America. (Asazaki is recently returned to Japan at the start of the story.) Clearly panicked at having his relationship with another man discovered, Asazaki launches into a homophobic rant to deny the accusation, which Yamashita steps out of the store just in time to hear.

Incredibly hurt by this—let it be known that Asazaki calls gay men "disgusting homos"—Yamashita runs off and holes himself up in his apartment. He spends a good portion of the weekend crying and berating himself for "[making] the same mistake again" by falling in love.

Borrowing from the Asami Ryuichi and Christian Grey playbook, Asazaki shows up unannounced at Yamashita's door even though Yamashita never gave him the address, all in order to deliver a seriously half-assed apology. When he grows unable to withstand Asazaki's excuses and continued extortion, Yamashita steals my heart by finally letting Asazaki have it:

Don't look down on me! I hate people like you! Even if it's someone like me, I still get hurt! Even if I'm a perverted homosexual who enjoys watching gay porn, I can fall for someone and have hopes that person will fall in love with me, too! Or do I not even have that privilege?

Asazaki seems pretty remorseful after Yamashita speaks his truth, although he still resents the fact that Yamashita doesn't accept his apology. He talks about how he reacted poorly because it's his first time dating a man and he didn't know how to come out and admit that to an old friend. Yamashita is clearly shocked since they never said they were going out. As we can all recall, their sexual relationship was the result of intimidation, not affection or camaraderie.

Although Yamashita is actually the sane one to think that the two are sex friends at best, Asazaki starts freaking the fuck out that Yamashita didn't already know they were dating and accuses Yamashita of using him for his body. Essentially, his manipulative ass turns the conversation in an attempt to gloss over the fact that he is the one who has been compelling Yamashita to sleep with him instead of the other way around.

In a sad turn of events, Yamashita is awestruck that his feelings are reciprocated and both men admit their love to one another. Yamashita asks that Asazaki treat him more gently, Asazaki begrudgingly agrees, and he embarks on a round of ass eating before the two have make up sex. While every fiber of my being is trying to feel happy for Yamashita in these final scenes, the manga can't help but end on an incredibly depressing note:

But that's not all! In another great example of narrative whiplash, Asazaki is a shockingly good boyfriend in the extras, who does things like reigning in his angry outbursts for fear that Yamashita will break up with him. He's still sensitive over the Hikaru stuff and obsessively makes sure Yamashita doesn't do Hikaru fan shit, but overall he and Yamashita seem to have a good relationship. (Interestingly, the narration we get from Asazaki in the extras shows that he thinks of his relationship with Yamashita as a sort of marriage.)

This dynamic would have been much more welcome in the actual story, but I'm happy these extra chapters make it so I can feel even a little bit happy for my boy Yamashita.

My Busted Opinion

Alright, so in this post we have another long ass summary because I'm stalling on reviewing this thing. I thought I would be a little more of a jokester in this one, but I don't think I can really manage it. Obviously, the things I dislike about this manga are going to be pretty heavy, but it appears I forgot that my reasons for liking this manga actually require me to reveal a lot about my complicated relationship with sex, which isn't necessarily a comedic jaunt for my fellow fujo trash.

I don't really mind getting into it since this blog is at least quasi-anon, and even as my actual, fully-identified self I very much relate to that tweet that everyone who has grown up online thinks is hella funny:

I've mentioned a few times before that I have little sexual experience and have never really had a partner. Sexual inexperience is what makes Hiriki a relatable character for me in Konya mo Nemurenai and the same goes here for Yamashita. However, I probably have such a strong attachment to Porno Superstar because Yamashita, a 26-year old virgin, is much closer to me in age. I'll be turning 25 in exactly a week.

And while I do sympathize with Hiriki and my former 18-year old self, it feels very different being a virgin in your late teens than it does being a virgin in your mid-20s. It's kind of a mixed bag of emotions to be lagging behind the average teenager in terms of sexual experience when you're not celibate for religious reasons or something like that. Without straying too far into femcel territory because that doesn't exactly line up with my lived experience, this manga does do something for me in terms of representing a late sexual bloomer in a way that doesn't play it off for laughs.

The older you get, especially as a man, the more people think your sexual inexperience is a big ass joke. The less experience you have, the harder people laugh. I love that Yamashita had never so much as kissed another person before Asazaki because I actually haven't done that either. It's so refreshing to feel akin to someone your age over, like, hand-holding being the most X-rated thing you've ever done, even when that "someone" is a fictional character.

I talked a little already in the summary about how Yamashita is probably too scared or doesn't think it's particularly worth it to pursue a relationship with a "real" person because of his traumatic personal history. We'll get into how I actively dislike that plot point in a minute, but I can't say that it doesn't also resonate with me.

While I am lucky to have escaped my youth without the wide scale isolation and torment that Yamashita experienced, my relationship to sex has been fraught for a long time, likely due to knowing what sex was wayyy too fucking young and growing up in an environment in which men (to whom I have the misfortune of being predominantly sexually and romantically attracted) truly weren't shit and women were worse off for their associations with them.

It makes sense to me that Yamashita directs his sexual energy into a parasocial relationship with a porn star because it's not like I haven't done that with BL media to a certain degree. "Simulation theory," or that idea that BL appeals to young girls as a way to imagine or simulate sexual encounters from a safe distance, has been rightfully criticized (by the woman who first proposed it no less) as leaving out the many older, sexually active, and/or non-women fans and their reasons for liking BL, but I can't deny that the genre has definitely served that purpose for me.

It's nice to have representation of a character who retreats solely into the digital realm for sexual and romantic stimulation without it being an ~lol I love my 2-D waifu~ kind of person. It feels much less weird and shaming, especially when compared to things like that one Gochisou-sama (That Was Good) extra about the Vampire Knight otaku.

The scene in which Yamashita tells Asazaki he can't stand homophobes like him and refuses to accept his shit apology is truly life-giving; it makes me feel powerful by proxy. He asserts relatively proudly that he is homosexual and loves gay porn, which is pretty amazing in itself, but also forces Asazaki to confront the fact that he talks about gayness in a way that undermines the humanity of gay people—their emotions, desires, and right to love and be loved. Asazaki does have the decency to feel at least a little bad about it, too.

And while Yamashita does ultimately decide to enter an official relationship with Asazaki, which is a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea, he does make it pretty clear that he'll not be putting up with their abusive dynamic any longer. We definitely have no reason to trust Asazaki when he agrees to treat Yamashita more gently, but Asazaki does say sweet things to Yamashita during the makeup sex and seems to actually be a decent boyfriend in the extras.

I don't know, guys. When it comes down to it, if I can justify liking Finder, I don't see why we can't make room for Porno Superstar. Two Ryuichis, two relationships that begin as a result of literal sexually-based crimes, two stories with genuine romance that probably isn't justified. There are even some quotes from Porno Superstar that I think about a lot for being actually good writing:

I don't know who said it before: there are people in this world who have never made love, but there will never be a person who has only made love once.

But that's enough about that. We're going to transition away from the things that are slightly redeeming about this manga because what I really want to talk about is a concept called "gay punishment," or the reason why I really hate some things about Yamashita's characterization. I plan to talk about this in a larger post about homophobia and its many different manifestations in BL media, but it's a huge issue with this story in particular and I can't not put it out there in this review.

Like with the non-con and dub con post, I'm going to pull heavily from a really great video essay to describe and elaborate on the concept, not only because its author is way more compelling than me, but she can also speak from experience in a way that I can't:

I had never heard the term "gay punishment" before watching May's video, but once she started explaining it, the concept was definitely something with which I was familiar:

[Gay punishment] is this narrative device that's often used where it's the belief of the writer that gay people are tortured by God. Like, society hates gay people, gay people are gonna kill themselves or be murdered or die poor and alone or with a disease or something like that…

This sort of theming, intentional or otherwise, will ring a few bells with avid BL readers. She goes on to discuss how gay punishment is indicative of a larger, pervasive issue about storytelling—people telling stories of which they have no real understanding or inclination to try to understand deeper—and the othering effect of giving LGBTQ+ characters "not-normal" stories to show how they and their experiences are abnormal:

[It Chapter 2 is] written by a straight person, they clearly have no understanding of actual gay people or their lives, but we're gonna write it for cheap drama because straight people can enjoy it and feel safe because they're not gay… These stories may look like they don't hurt people but they do. They encourage this narrative of "gay people will always die miserable and alone," so whenever anybody feels like, "oh, I'm gay and I'd like to tell people about that," it immediately becomes terrifying… It's a stereotype, it's a stigma, and the movie has no problem doing it.

I'm sure you can see how this applies to Porno Superstar and Yamashita's history being bullied to the point where he has no meaningful relationships, including platonic ones, and self-describes as a "gloomy" (read: miserable) person. He ends up in an abusive relationship that he decides to stay in because he believes he can do no better, which is something his abusive boyfriend explicitly tells him, too.

The messaging we're getting from this story is that if you're gay, you're going to grow up miserable and alone, and if you do somehow end up in a relationship, it's probably going to be shitty either way, so just go ahead and settle for the first partner that comes your way regardless of how they treat you. Like I said, I'm definitely going to try and dive deeper into this later down the line, but I definitely have a problem with this aspect of the story, no matter how much parts of it resonate with me.

Now, when it comes to recommending this manga, I can't really say that I do. Porno Superstar is near and dear to my heart because of my personal sexual baggage and the relatability of its protagonist on that level. Just remember that if you're ever trolling through my Google Doc of BL manga [this is undergoing hella revision so no live link lol] and see that there are three flame emojis next to this contentious title (i.e. my rating system), I have my reasons for that and I don't expect anyone to second the motion on this one.

Nanami did make a sequel to this called Shiny Star about Hikaru, gay porn icon, but I have no interest in ever reading that and I'm pretty sure it's been dropped or on hiatus for a minute. In short: I shan't be talking about the sequel here.

Next up I can maybe guarantee we'll be back to a rip-roaring good time, since I'll be reviewing sweet pool, which isn't not fodder for a serious conversation, but is something I've been joking about since 2011 or something when I first encountered 4shiki's hilarious review. I have two routes remaining, which I hope to get through sometime this week… I'm excited, but kind of sad at the same time. I never thought I would get the chance to actually play the game in English, so finishing it out will definitely be bittersweet.

Until then!

Notes

Footnotes

1. The drama CD for Porno Superstar revealed (to me) that Yamashita's boyfriend is actually called Asaoka Ryuichi, so this scanlation suffers from "fucked up the name" syndrome. Since my entire understanding of this story is dependent on this particular translation, I've kept the "wrong" name throuhought my own summary and discussion. However, don't expect anyone (esp the author) to know who the hell you're talking about if you call him what I call him in mixed company. ↩

References

ポルノスーパースター [Porno Superstar]. Translated (unofficial) by Moi-xRyu Scanlations and BangAQUA. Tokyo, Frontier Works, 2011.

Leitz, May. I didn't like It Chapter 2. YouTube, uploaded by Nyx Fears, 06 December 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qorwX1OEL-s. Last accessed 08 June 2022.

Michalski, CJ. "Do You Love This Part of Me?" That Was Good. Translated by Jillian Nonaka, Digital Manga Publishing, 2011, pp. 129-148.

Post History

This post was migrated from WordPress to Neocities in October 2022, converted from my whack ass hub formatting in March 2025, and adjusted for site version 3.0 formatting in May 2025. I have made minor grammatical edits, removed some unnecessary text, and moved the plot summary inside a details element during these transition periods.