About:
Warning:
This review will contain spoilers for the manga and anime series Wails of the Bound ;β. While the manga may vary slightly from all other forms of media, it may have similar story elements and could be considered spoilers.
Trigger Warning: There may be references to sex work, prejudice, slut-shaming, rape, implied infertility, male pregnancy, implied dementia or Alzheimers, age gap, body-shaming, obsession, PTSD, claustrophobia, manipulation, stalking, mentioned incest, child abuse, and mentioned arranged and forced bonding, as it appears in the manga.
Synopsis:
This is the sequel to Wails of the Bound.
No longer feeling compelled to protect his chief anymore, Miyabi, having finally met his alpha partner and being marked, Shingo Utou decides to take a promotion, putting him into the chief position of division two. Utou hopes his time of pining after and protecting omegas, who could never love him in return because he's a beta, is finally over for the foreseeable future, but then he meets the new hire: Sumito Sasabe.
Sasabe is an omega, and though he's not planning on disclosing his secondary gender at work, he has to disclose it to his bosses. Sasabe hates being an omega, as any success he has is always attributed to his ability to seduce and pleasure. But he hates betas even more as they can do nothing for him, unable to mark him and protect him from other alphas, so he'd rather hate them so he doesn't mistakenly fall in love with one.
Utou is having flashbacks of working with Miyabi, and after talking to his boss, it's clear that the intent of hiring Sasabe is to replace Miyabi and what he offered the company: his body. Utou has no intention of seeing another omega be used by clients again. But every time Utou tries to help, Sasabe sees him as just another predator trying to take advantage of him. Still, as time goes on and the two grow closer and closer, they find themselves falling for each other. But Sasabe's role in the company is already becoming that of a sex worker, and he's desperate to take that opportunity away. A beta can't mark an omega, so there is only so much Utou can do for Sasabe. Thankfully, there is an alpha from another company lingering around that Sasabe could use.
But if an alpha marks Sasabe, he can never have sex with anyone other than that alpha again, separating him from Utou forever. Is it worth losing the one he loves for the guaranteed safety it would provide? Or will he regret abandoning Utou forever?
Review:
We're back to the mostly pretty art. Once again, the eyes are often far too wide for the faces, but I've already discussed that in the review for the first entry in this series. Not much has changed except that it is a bit more consistent, which I can appreciate. What's more important to discuss in this particular title is that the sex scenes are a tad cleaner. I don't think it's because of time or practice, but because there are just fewer individuals in each sex scene, unlike before where they were having to blur 3+ peens in most sex scenes. Here, we really only see two penises in any sex scene, which makes it so much easier to see and discern what is happening. As a degenerate, that's pretty important to me, so I love that for me and my fellow degenerates. It's still not the cleanest, but it's better.
Unfortunately, the whirlwind aspect of the previous title happens here, too. The relationship is much better this time because we're focused on Utou and Sasabe. The story is really honed in on showing how they interact with each other, and how they struggle with trust, love, and how their wants or needs align or disalign. The chemistry between the two just feels so much more realistic than the previous main couple's. However, while the main relationship building is better, there is still an issue with the backgrounds.
There is a secondary love interest, an alpha, who is pining after Sasabe and offers to mark him and be together so Sasabe can be free from his secondary gender. As it turns out, the alpha was just trying to get with Sasabe to punish Utou? But Utou's only slight against him was when Utou was chosen over him on a project, which, again, wasn't Utou's doing. This ended up having a domino effect of the alpha losing his twin brother to an arranged marriage. Apparently, the alpha wanted to be with his omega twin brother. ICK. And then this is all explained within a couple of panels? It felt so out of left field and so unbelievable. It would have been better just for the alpha to have wanted Sasabe. The end. Nothing more. The need for the alpha to have some ulterior motive so wild and weird like this was so unnecessary and did nothing for the story beyond just making me feel weird. I liked that this added the concept of having to have a mark removed, which I rarely see, but this could've been included without the random incest-fueled-revenge-plotline.
Something else that's completely glanced over is Sasabe's unique family structure. It turns out he was raised by two omega fathers, something I really wanted to hear more about beyond the unexplained flashbacks or the single and brief appearance of one of his dads. Seeing couplings between two omegas is pretty rare in omegaverse work (I have my own that I wrote, Dominate Me: Omega), and I was really excited to see more, but it might as well not have even been shown for the brief time it was shown and referenced. It really made Sasabe's background feel hollow. The issue with the first entry was that there was so much background that it overshadowed the main couple. In this case, there is a ton of main couple time, but then the backgrounds are so brushed over that they all feel needless or unbelievable. I wish this had been like a ten-volume series because there are just so many elements mentioned without any follow-through. It left me truly bewildered.
Before I close out this review, though, I have to mention that this has male pregnancy. LOVE. One of my favorite parts of BL omegaverse is that they can have children, and I adore that Utou got to have children. Utou comes from a very large family with so many siblings, and after Sasabe meets this family, he realizes that he wants to give that kind of happiness to Utou in the form of his own family. They have twins, and we get a glimpse of how they might look a tad bit older, but that's it. I love that we got what we got, but I always desperately want more in the best way when it comes to storylines where the couple has children. If they decide to continue Utou's and Sasabe's story with their babies, I will be all over it.
Results:
I was super hard on this, but if you can believe it, I liked it much more than the first entry in this series. The couple felt so much more authentic and believable because we get so much more time with them as opposed to mixing in halfhearted backstories and the like. Unfortunately, that means the backstories in this are even more halfhearted, but then add in the odd revenge plot fueled by incest, and we just jump right off the rails. This is pretty good overall if you cull that little blip of weirdness out. It's sad and hard but ends with so much hope and joy; it's just a good time. We also get hints of another continuation with our previous main couple from the first series, which I look forward to.
Have you read Wails of the Bound ;β? If so, what do you think? Do you agree with my assessment? Do you not? Let me know, and comment below!