I have rather mixed feelings about this series. I can understand why so many people give it a high rating. It's certainly well-written, and well-crafted. But I find it very disturbing. Apparently, it was the first full-blown shounen-ai series. And it isn't shy in that respect.

It's set in France circa 1900, at a posh boys' school. Serge, a mixed-race boy, manages to attend, but is looked down on because of his ancestry. Also at this school is Gilbert, a beautiful, free-spirited boy who trades sexual favors with the older students for things like homework. It turns out that Serge is assigned to be Gilbert's roommate. And it looks like Gilbert might have a more than ordinary interest in Serge...

The characters are quite good. Though they are often defined or motivated by revenge, jealousy, abuse, control, sadism, fear, or anger. For the most part, all the characters are complex, and interesting. Particularly, we follow the mysterious and tragic Gilbert, and discover his background.

If there were an underlying theme to this story, it might be that "suffering breeds suffering." Initially, when we see a character act a certain way (such as Gilbert flirting) we assume it's just their personality. But then eventually we are shown why they act like that. It's because they were a victim of someone once. And their victimizer in turn was someone who had been victimized himself in the past. And the cycle of pain continues.

So it's not trying to be a shallow "let's just see some BL" series. But it is BL...and very much so. Serious BL fans would probably revel in the very, very long sexual scenes. And the shotacon. The pedophilia was what REALLY bothered me.

I'll read shounen-ai when the story is good (and in this case it was) but I gloss over any sex. (I don't care for sex scenes, whether yaoi, yuri, or straight.) And in this case many of the scenes would go on for pages and pages.... And the adult-child scenes made me feel really uncomfortable.

On another note, the art quite good. It's old-school shoujo, but it has a light, breezy quality. And sparkles abound. Everything is well-drawn and detailed, and the atmospheres, whether indoor or outdoor, are perfect. I could almost feel like I was there.

So while this series is a true drama instead of shallow BL fluff, it has a lot of heavy, hard-core, mature content.