yaoi.caDr. Ten
Contents
Personal Notes & Links -- my own comments and key Dr. Ten linkage Journal Items -- avatars galore and LiveJournal mood themes oh my! Wallpapers -- dress up your computer's desktop with these beauties Image Manipulations -- cleaned and coloured images to tantalize the most discerning taste buds Fanlations -- sometimes you just need to put words in their mouths Fan Art -- artwork based on Dr. Ten's characters Fan Fiction -- when you just want to read a little more about our favourites MOTS V1 Summary -- Map of Tokyo Savage volume 1 chapter summaries |
The Obsession
It all started with the whimsical purchase of Dr. Ten's Nase only a couple months into my yaoi manga collecting. At this time I was making purchases based on covers. This cover had intrigued me and the moment I opened the volume I knew I'd found what would become one of my favourite mangaka. One of the first pages I skimmed to involved sounding, and I admit that I was overjoyed at discovering such exotic BDSM in a manga.
I confess that initially I was lured into the iniquitous den of Dr. Ten due to her manga's high smut quotient. She conveyed eroticism in a way that I had not seen before in manga, and very seldom since. However, once I managed even the most basic of comprehension regarding her stories, I fell utterly in love with her manga. Personally, my brain is my greatest sex organ, and Dr. Ten delivers in spades with her plots (most of the time).
While I'd love to see yaoi lovers world-wide at least give her a chance, Dr. Ten is certainly not for everyone. I believe she will always have, in some senses, a limited audience, but I would not doubt if she is insanely popular in Japan.
Style
Dr. Ten cleverly weaves smut, story (sometimes with extreme depth) and comedy in a fashion that I have not seen before in manga. She defies all conventions, fashioning characters that break beyond the role of typical seme and uke. She also explores every taboo (incest, shota, cross-dressing etc.) with passion. What I find incredible is that Dr. Ten does all of this with style and flair that is devoid of base debauchery. It's very easy, in the beginning, to feel that her works are PWP (plot what plot/porn without plot), but any exploration of story will reveal otherwise.
Her characters are rich and fun, well-developed and with very interesting histories and backstories. While some of her characters are definite uke or seme, many switch or are quite simply undefinable. You're never quite certain what her characters will do next, and it's best to toss convention and conjecture out the window.
While some might think her exploration of taboo topics is purely for shock value, nothing could be further from the truth. Somehow she manages to justify each taboo and give it meaning amidst her stories. I've never felt that the presentation of any taboo has been without reason, and I feel that this is one of the greatest appeals to her work. No matter how fantastical her stories, they feel grounded in reality (insofar as manga goes).
While Dr. Ten's plots range from the simple and cute to the mind-bendingly complex, they are all page-turners. The deeper her stories, the more you want to explore and know. Like most mangaka, when she introduces a tragic or angst element, she patches your heart with some lighter aspect or comeuppance for the character wronged. Thankfully she does not torture her characters needlessly, and as already mentioned, her plots seem to be quite deliberate (although very smutty).
The sexual content of her tales are graphic and quite explicit. From bondage to sounding, and beautiful lovemaking to hot hot hot sex, she captures each moment for what it is and conveys it perfectly in her artwork. Famous for her "screaming uke", their ecstasy laden wide mouths do fade into the mind's background after long enough exposure to her work. Even the non consensual sex scenes are devoid of deep feelings of violation, which I think is important for her stories. While some tales suit gritty non con, Dr. Ten tempers most such moments with either an appropriate hurt/comfort aspect or humour. However, that is not to say that she does not weave darkness, as some aspects of her tales are very dark indeed.
Dr. Ten's sense of humour truly is a wonder and adds levity to any of her stories. Whether subtle or invasive, she makes her fans smile at just the right moments. As dark as her tales sometimes become, she doesn't make her readers suffer too long before a respite of comedy that is surprisingly not out of place.
I don't know how she does it, but this mangaka is unbelievably clever. I hope she produces works for many more years to come.
Signature Content
Like any mangaka, Dr. Ten's stories tend to have similarities or feature aspects that fans can usually expect from story to story or at least every other story. Some of these signature components are:
- cross-dressing
- shota
- magic & alternate universes
- cat/demon/fox boys
- younger/smaller characters that are aggressive
- sounding & bondage
- tentacles
- silver haired bishounen with spectacles
Web sites & Translations
List of Works
- BK1(start here and then run a search for "Ｄｒ．天")
- JPQueen
- Amazon (start here and then run a search for "Ｄｒ．天")
Scanlations
Fan Sites
- Dr. Ten Tenshi: angels without mercy (a LiveJournal community for sharing all things Dr. Ten)
Official
