We don't even see a lot of Caesar in the third ep, though Eroica does take time out to visit the "comely" art instructor while he's sleeping and plant a kiss on his face. With the Achilles statue still unclaimed and in London by the end of the book, though, one suspects that our young naïve object of desire will play more of a role in the story: we're meant to see he's dropping his young boy fear of Eroica and growing attracted to him. ("I can introduce you to a good counselor," the Major offers after listening to Caesar, "he specializes in . . .growing pains.") Hopefully, this game of pursuit and retreat will ultimately resolve itself: hate to think of these guys going over two decades without getting anywhere. . .

Aioke's art is packed with the conventions of girls' manga: at times, the floral patterns get so extreme that you wonder how any of the characters can breathe in the panels. The book's male figures all stand around in sensitive or macho poses, while as much attention is paid to Eroica's wardrobe as it is to storytelling. Occasionally, the various poses can go over the top - I couldn't help snickering at a panel that showed the Major flanked by several underlings all grimly holding cigarettes in their mouths, for instance (even when he slugging a bad guy, the Major keeps a lit cigarette clenched in his mouth) - though it's not much different from old American girl comics that used to halt the action for a full-panel shot of their heroine in a snappy, reader-designed outfit. At times, the artist's reed-thin bodies threaten to float off the page; the only regular male cast member to show a different body time is a stock Interpol detective who inexplicably appears with floral patterns on his suit. I also sometimes found myself momentarily confused by panels where a character's hair seemingly changed from black to blond (perhaps suggestive of different lighting?), a problem which was compounded by the fact that the three male leads all have similar thin aesthetics' faces.

Do American girl manga fans buy this stuff as eagerly as Japanese readers? I wouldn't be surprised to learn it was so: in a way, the book's ongoing game of male/male tantalization presents nascent teengirl readers with the ultimate in non-threatening males. Eroica, though he may flirt nonstop, never gets beyond planting a single chaste kiss on the unconscious Caesar (who, nonetheless, recognizes that he's been visited while he's dreaming). Even when he holds Caesar captive, the most he does to take advantage of the situation is recite poetry to the boy. The surly Major regularly expresses his disdain toward either male or female who openly expresses their sexuality, while Caesar, of course, is just too clueless to be much a threat to the reader.