Yarichin Bitch Club Vol 1 Review

Yarichin Bitch Club is a new BL manga by Ogeretsu Tanaka that takes the cake in terms of featuring the craziest high school club I’ve ever seen in a manga.

Synopsis:

Takashi Tono has just transferred to an all-boys boarding school and is bummed about attending a school in the middle of nowhere with nothing but dudes. After being informed that all students are required to join a club, he decides to sign up for the Photography Club, thinking it will be easy and stress free. Then he arrives at the club room and walks in on the members engaged in a group sex act and his life suddenly gets a lot more complicated. Turns out, the “Photography Club” is just a cover story and Takashi has inadvertently joined the “Bitch Club” which essentially acts as the school’s brothel. The members don’t have sex in exchange for money however; they all enjoy having sex and are very enthusiastic about their club activities. Before Takashi can make a quick exit, another transfer student, named Yu Kashima, shows up to join the “Photography Club” and accepts the situation so easily that Takashi ends up being swept along by everyone else’s excitement and is made an official member before he has a chance to object. He’s also informed that the club requires members to have sex with at least one person per month and that any members who don’t meet their quotas are strictly punished. What’s Takashi going to do now?!

Review:

Yarichin Bitch Club is a manga series that you can’t really take too seriously, as the internal logic of the story doesn’t really stand up to the slightest bit scrutiny. For example: Why doesn’t Takashi simply put in a request to switch clubs? Why would a club where everyone has supposedly joined because they enjoy having sex have a minimum sex quota? Is it really realistic that everyone who attends and teaches at this prestigious school would be okay with the existence of this club, which appears to operate pretty openly? You kind of just need to embrace the absurdity of the plot and simply enjoy poor Takashi’s reactions as he plays the straight man to this cast of sex-crazed idiots. If you can do that, you’ll be in for a pretty entertaining read.

As you have probably guessed, there are a lot of raunchy scenes in this manga, but they mostly involve the other club members, as Takashi and Yu decide to pretend to be dating so that they can avoid having to actually meet their quota for the club. You can guess where this is going. Cheerful and seemingly unflappable Yu starts to develop real feelings for Takashi, but, of course, Takashi has no idea how he feels. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Takashi has a crush on his friendly classmate, Yacchan. Tangling this web even further, one of the other club members also has a crush on Yacchan and Yacchan is actually Yu’s cousin and seems to have a complicated relationship with him. Sounds like the perfect recipe for a deliciously dramatic disaster.

I liked both Takashi and Yu quite a lot. Takashi is constantly freaking out, while Yu, who joined the club because he is genuinely interested in photography, is so happy-go-lucky all the time that he is usually able to just go with the flow no matter how insane the situation gets. They’re cute together, so I’m looking forward to seeing if they’ll become a couple for real in future volumes. I’m also curious to discover what’s up with Yacchan, as there seems to be more to him than initially meets the eye.

In addition to the messy love quadrangle, Yarichin Bitch Club also features several romantic subplots involving the other club members. Unfortunately, this volume devotes a significant amount of time to one such subplot involving my least favourite character, the club’s Vice President, Yuri. Yuri only appears to think about sex and seems averse to speaking in full sentences, instead opting to spout annoying gibberish or randomly sing to himself. I was irritated anytime he said or did anything and I hope he will spend more time in the background in future volumes. His subplot remains unresolved, however, so I will likely have to put up with more of his antics in the next volume.

Yarichin Bitch Club is a silly and bawdy comedy that delivers plenty of laughs and erotic scenes and has the potential for a lot of crazy romantic drama amongst it’s main cast. I found it to be a fun read and would recommend it to BL manga fans looking for something amusing and smutty. That being said, there are some aspects of the story that might be a turn off for some readers that I want to mention. The penalty for club members who don’t meet their monthly sex quota is to be gang-banged by the other members of the club. While our two leads manage to avoid this outcome, there is a bonus chapter at the end of the manga that features a flash back scene of one of the other club members winding up in this scenario after they first joined. While this isn’t portrayed as being a traumatic or entirely unpleasant experience for the character in question, he is definitely not a consenting participant at the start and this makes the whole scene pretty uncomfortable. As a result, I recommend using your discretion when deciding if this title is something you want to try.

Final score: 6.5 out of 10

For more information on this manga check out Sublime Manga’s website: https://www.sublimemanga.com/reader/782

What did you think of this manga? Who was your favourite member of the club? Do you think I’m completely wrong about Yuri? Let me know in the comments.

You can also check out some of my other BL manga reviews:

• Liquor & Cigarettes Review
• Our Dining Table Review
• The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese Review
• Melting Lover Review
• Love in Limbo Series Review
• The Wize Wize Beasts of the Wizarding Wizdoms Review
• Fourth Generation Head: Tatsuyuki Oyamato Review
• Monster and the Beast Vol 1 Review