Zetsuai 1989

One of the great groundbreaking classics of the Boys Love Genre, Zetsuai 1989 and its sequel series Bronze: Zetsuai since 1989 combine unique character designs and layouts with an emotionally intense storyline brimming with melodrama and always on the verge of breaking out into violence.

The story concerns Kouji Nanjo, a young Idol Singer with a dark and violent past and a Big Screwed-Up Family, who is out drinking one night and falls down on the street. He's found and picked up by a highschool student and promising soccer star named Takuto Izumi, who takes him to his home to recover. When Kouji wakes up in bed with Izumi, he immediately recognises him as a person he saw playing soccer six years before and fell in love with -- though at the time, he took Izumi for a tomboyish girl. Now that he knows Izumi is a boy, he finds to his dismay that his feelings have not changed and are still as strong as ever, but Izumi has a fiery temper and a trauma-laden past that makes it hard for him to trust anyone, and Kouji's all too aware that as a public figure he's not free to fall in love with whoever he wants.

Zetsuai 1989 ran for five volumes, with the plot reaching no conclusion to speak of; the sequel series Bronze: Zetsuai since 1989 ran for 14 volumes but broke off due to the mangaka's illness; she eventually gave the series a proper ending in a doujinshi. There were four associated light novels, and two single-episode OVAs, as well as a collection of associated music videos with the title Cathexis.

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Tropes used in Zetsuai 1989 include:

• Anguished Declaration of Love: Kouji, multiple times. One of them he made into a song! Suffice to say, Izumi is not happy when he finds out.
• Armor-Piercing Slap: Izumi's sister Serika once slaps Kouji when Izumi gets very sick because of him.
• Big Screwed-Up Family: You don't get them more fucked up than the Nanjous.
• Bokukko: Subverted. Young Kouji thought that young Izumi was one, but many years later he got quite the surprise. It doesn't help that "Izumi" is both a surname and a Gender Blender Name (though mostly used by females) in Japan.
• Boys Love: one of the defining series that launched the genre.
• Dead Little Sister: Madoka, for Shibuya In fact, Shibuya became Kouji's manager after he, in quite the Pet the Dog moment, sings to the dying girl.
• Diving Save: At some point, Izumi kicks his soccer ball across the street. Serika goes to retrieve it and is almost hit by a car... then, when Izumi is going to help her out, Kouji pulls this and saves her himself.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Almost subverted with Kouji. He wants' to be able to suppress his feelings for Izumi and be Just Friends, but he ends up acting like this trope.
• Driven to Suicide: Izumi's mother, eventually.
• Dude, He's Like In A Coma!: At the beginning of the manga, Kouji can't bring himself to kiss Izumi or tell him how much he loves him while he's conscious because he's terrified that he'll reject him and never talk to him again, so he keeps on finding times when Izumi is sick, unconscious, drunk or in a deep sleep to make out with him. He also gives more than one Anguished Declaration of Love when he knows absolutely that Izumi won't hear it or remember it. Then he gets mad at himself for it afterwards.
• Dumb Struck: Kouji goes mute after he's in a nearly fatal motorcycle accident. He's in a coma for a while and does come out of it, but when he wakes up he can't talk...
• Expy: Izumi is what Kojiro Hyuuga from Captain Tsubasa would've been, if CT was a Boys Love series. Justified Trope: Minami Ozaki started her career as a Hyuuga/Wakashimazu djka.
• Everyone Can See It: everyone can see that Kouji is in love with Izumi, including Izumi's little sister, except for Izumi.
• Fan Girl
  • Serika is a Kouji fangirl. She's later mistaken for his girlfriend, which brings up Izumi's backstory into the public eye. Izumi is enraged by that.
  • Also, Minako Sasaki and Eri. The latter goes completely Yandere, though.
• Faux Symbolism: Angel wings! Feathers! Crosses! Sunflowers! Zetsuai itself has very little of this, but the later volumes of Bronze go crazy with the random symbolism -- Kouji's new band is even called "Kreuz", German for "cross".
• Freudian Excuse
  • It's easier to understand why Izumi is so hot-tempered and mistrustful of love when you realise that at the age of five, he saw his mother murder his father.
  • Also, the reason why Kouji's older brother Akihito hates him so much is because his mother was forced to leave the Izumi clan after Kouji was taken in by their old man and he never saw her again.
• Friend to All Living Things: Kouji loves animals, specially dogs.
• Gayngst: And how. Kouji eventually justifies his feelings (see If It's You It's Okay), but he spends a lot of time angsting about the fact that Izumi is a guy.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Izumi has a scar on his left hip from the time when he tried to failed to prevent his mother from killing his father. Later, he cuts himself across that scar, thus giving himself a cross mark.
• Green-Eyed Monster: just try getting close to Izumi. Kouji will not take it well. At all.
• Hot-Blooded: Izumi
• Idol Singer: Kouji, and a few of the women he dates.
• If I Can't Have You / I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Kouji swings between these two extremes with regard to Izumi. He's aware that I Want My Beloved to Be Happy is a better attitude, but he can't quite bring himself to feel that way, and often talks about how he'd like to lock Izumi away. In fact, his behaviour tends to stop short of full-on If I Can't Have You, but he angsts quite a bit about how he resents anything that makes Izumi happy if it takes Izumi's attention away from him.
• If It's You It's Okay: Before he met Izumi, Kouji was a womanizer, and even after they get together he maintains that he's still heterosexual, just madly in love with Izumi. (In fact, he claims that thinking of other men makes him feel sick.)
• Jerkass: Akihito
• Love At First Sight: Kouji for Izumi. Izumi takes much longer to return his feelings.
• Love Hurts: Kouji goes through a rather extended period of pain and suffering while trying to suppress his feelings for Izumi. It doesn't work out well for him]].
• Love Makes You Crazy: Kouji and Izumi aren't entirely stable when it comes to each other, but the worst example is probably Izumi's parents, since his mother killed his father for cheating on her, and his father smiled while she did it.
• Love Martyr: At one point Kouji cuts off his own left arm so that his family will leave Izumi alone.
• The Masochism Tango: Kouji and Izumi's Masochism Tango is more like a full-length ballet, and it seems to run in Izumi's family, since his mother killed his father for cheating on him, then killed herself twelve years later.
• Meet Cute: Lampshaded with Izumi's teammate Kasaya and his girlfriend Eri: he remarks that their meeting (he was crouched on the ground, and her skirt flew up, exposing her panties) was like something out of a shoujo manga.
• Melodrama: there's a very good reason why this trope is in bold.
• Mommy Issues and Oedipus Complex: Oh, Akihito...
• Names to Know in Anime: Show Hayami plays Kouji, Takehito Koyasu is Izumi, Kappei Yamaguchi is Katsumi, Masami Kikuchi is Akihito, Kumiko Nishihara is Serika. . .
• Oblivious to Love: Izumi takes this to new heights of sheer stupidity.
• Only Sane Man: How Katsumi Shibuya hasn't gone bonkers with all the stuff around him, the world will never ever know
• Perfectly Cromulent Word: "Zetsuai" is a portmanteau word invented by Ozaki, a compound of "zetsubou" (despair) and "ai" (love). Hence the series is sometimes referred to in English as "Desperate Love" (though Ozaki's preferred English translation is "Everlasting Love").
• Ping-Pong Naivete: for someone who is street-savvy, lives on his own and has gone through enough trauma in his life to strip away his own childhood and force him into adulthood ten years too early, he is ridiculously naive when it comes to relationships, love and Kouji. Especially Kouji.
• Rape as Drama. Kouji rapes Izumi's girlfriend Minako out of jealousy and tries to rape Izumi to push him away.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Although he does go out with a girl named Minako at one point to get Kouji off his back, Izumi is never genuinely interested in anyone but Kouji.
• Slap Slap Kiss: Many, many times.
• Stalking Is Love: Izumi not only eventually stops minding Kouji's persistent stalking but says it's why he's falling for him.
• Stalker with a Crush: Kouji. Izumi doesn't realise it for ages.
• There Is Only One Bed: Twice; in the very beginning, when Izumi takes Kouji home to recover from his illness, and later when Izumi is staying in a tiny room near his workplace.
• Victim Falls For Rapist: Subverted. Kouji attempts to rape Izumi, but his real intention is to make Izumi hate him, and at the last second, he backs off and doesn't go through with it. Later, played straight since Kouji stops restraining himself; although Izumi sort of consents, it's in the spirit of "I'm tired of fighting this" rather than because he wants it, and he later refers to it as a rape and has frequent nightmares about it.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Hirose is the one who tries to uphold the Nanjou traditions the most, invoking this trope as the reason.
  • Also, Akihito pretty much worships the ground that Hirose walks on.
• Will They or Won't They?: They do. Eventually. It takes five volumes, if you even count the end of Zetsuai 1989 volume 5 as a true example of "they do", which it arguably isn't since Izumi is just lying back and thinking of England. If you don't count that, it takes another three volumes.
• White-Haired Pretty Boy: Kouji definitely occupies the lighter end of the trope. While he doesn't destroy planets with meteors or burn down orphanages, he's certainly one Yandere of a Seme with some serious shades of Love Makes You Crazy/Evil. Just ask Zarla.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: Serika is one in training, arguably. Also, Kouji's younger sister is named Nadeshiko, but I don't remember if she was one as well.
• Yandere
  • Eri, (also a Loony Fan) who reacts... badly to Kouji announcing his retirement and tries to stab him to death.
  • Kouji himself as well. And how.
  • And Izumi's mother.