The Fall 2024 Manga Guide

Scrumper

What's It About? 

Shu Susuki is a laid-back student whose top priority is looking cool, even if it means getting pulled away for a lecture every now and then over his pierced ears and dyed hair. Imagine his shock, however, when it turns out he's been totally outdone by Yahiro Tsukimi, a straight-A student who has piercings in some pretty extreme places… just ones that are easier to hide from the faculty. Shu's dying to know how deep the rabbit hole goes and and approaches Yahiro for answers, which leads to the two bonding over bodymod and developing an unlikely rapport. When their discussions end up giving Shu glimpses into Yahiro's daredevil side, his curiosity and concern ends up drawing him deeper into the other boy's life than he ever imagined.

Scrumper has a story and art by Ukiuki Chisato, with English translation by Maud Duke. This volume was lettered by Tim. Published by Irodori Comics (September 22, 2024).

Content Warning: This manga includes a scene of someone's tongue being pierced with a needle.

Is It Worth Reading?

Thanks, Scrumper – I now know what a smiley piercing is. Not that the manga depicts it 100% accurately; Yohiro's piercing seems significantly longer and lower than most, making it look like he has sharp fangs rather than a small ring between his lip and teeth. But hey, that's manga aesthetics for you, and part of why we love the medium…although I have to admit that this was almost a bit too much for me with both the smiley and the scene where Yohiro pierces Shu's tongue for him. Yohiro feeding his pet snake mice? Fine with me, that's just nature. Shoving a long needle through another guy's tongue? No, thank you.

The piercings are important to the plot, however. For Shu, who is perhaps not the brightest bulb, they represent a sort of badassery he aspires to, and he's convinced that they'll also help to get him girls. For Yohiro, they seem to be a quiet rebellion, and since he limits his piercings to inside his mouth, it's a way for him to act out without being called on it. He can hide his smiley and later his tongue piercing with a mask, unlike Shu, who has to come up with creative solutions to cover his ear piercings. Yohiro seems drastically unhappy, and perhaps the piercings serve a similar purpose to cutting for him: they allow him to act out and free some of what feels trapped beneath his skin.

Shu, for all of his less intelligent behavior and statements, isn't a fool, and he does realize that something's going on with Yohiro. This uneasy feeling builds from their high school days and is fully realized during the time skip when they meet up at their coming-of-age ceremony two years after graduation. He immediately notices that Yohiro now smokes and is much thinner than he was in high school, and honestly, it feels like this volume ends right before we get into the meat of the story. (And, per Irodori, right before things get racy.) That's not to say that we didn't need the buildup of their relationship, because contrasting the boys with each other is key to seeing them as adults. And maybe it's brilliant marketing, too – had the story stopped with high school graduation, I may not have been as curious to find out what happens next. Now? I'm almost certainly going to be picking up the next volume.

A slow-burn romance over a storyline of relatively short page count means you end up with a fair amount of unevenness. That tone defines Scrumper, even more than its odd name that isn't going to make sense unless you're familiar with particular piercings. You will learn more about body piercings in general from this book, however, since boys Yahiro and Shu swapping details of their rods and holes and punching new ones in each other is the distinguishing element of this manga. I mean that entirely in terms of jewelry, by the way, since despite being an Irodori doujin release, this volume features no on-panel sex. It's not necessarily a requirement, but maybe I've just been conditioned by their releases over the last few of these guides.

What you do get from Scrumper is a serviceably cute BL book with a nice niche focus some of the time. The bits where the guys are bonding over talking about piercings are the most compelling, and make the manga feel its most unique. I know I said there was no sex in this, but that doesn't mean there isn't an earnestly intimate scene of Yahiro penetrating Shu (by piercing his tongue). "Do not try this at home" and all that, but it fits with the scrappy rawness of the acts, of teens finding how they want to express themselves and who they're doing that expressing towards.

Not that Yahiro and Shu actually figure each other out until the very end of the volume. This is an extremely slow-burn love story, and as insinuated, that means stretches of it can be very uneven. Eschewing the piercing parts just turns Scrumper into a fairly basic will-they-won't-they play. And the unfortunate fact is that Yahiro and Shu don't have a ton of chemistry when they aren't talking about sticking bits into each other's bodies. Between that and Ukiuki Chisato's occasionally uneven art, it makes the story lose drive after its halfway point. Things do pick up a bit with a revelation about Yahiro's sexuality that gives the guys something else to actually discuss for a bit, and it ultimately ends cutely enough. But I don't know how well this manga is going to scratch your BL itch unless you specifically need a couple of cute boys with piercings to be kind of awkward around each other for 90 pages.

I'm getting pretty tired of stories billed as romances but in practice are more like “watch these two strangers become friends.” That's the gist of Scrumper, the story of two dudes who bond over their shared interest in extreme body modification. Though this story includes graphic scenes like a DIY tongue piercing and a pet python swallowing live prey, it's the tamest fare we've received for the review guide from Irodori, which has generally made a name for itself through its willingness to publish hardcore hentai.

By now you might be wondering, as I was, “What the heck does Scrumper mean?” As it turns out, it's a more obscure name for the already obscure “smiley” piercing. As the characters discuss in the story, you don't want to try this one at home, even if it makes you look like you have a sick set of metal vampire fangs. It's in a painful, delicate position and can seriously damage your teeth, so it's considered a “short-term” modification. Yahiro, the character with the smiley/Scrumper piercing eventually has to take it out, but by then he's already piqued delinquent Shu's interest. When Shu wants a tongue piercing, he even has Yahiro do it! There is absolutely a kink element to these guys giving each other piercings, but it's hard to find the eroticism when they're barely even friends. They haven't exchanged numbers when the tongue piercing occurs.

By the end of the comic, the pair meet up again after some time has passed—and now they both have tongue piercings. The talk gets a bit graphic and Yahiro mentions he's sleeping with men. Of course, Shu doesn't have an issue with that, considering the type of comic he's in, but it doesn't seem to particularly spark this girl-crazy guy's interest either. I get the feeling that this is only the first of several volumes, but it's so short that I didn't get much of a feel for either character nor did I detect any chemistry between them. The art is pretty enough, and it has an interesting message about whether pain tolerance makes somebody a tough guy or simply a random predilection. But overall, the story is as indeterminate as its name.

We all know the classic joke “and they were roommates.” Scrumper could easily have the tagline “and they were piercing buddies.” This is a short and simple manga about two guys being homies. Despite having different personalities, they bond over their mutual love of piercings and subtle acts of adolescent rebellion. Over time, this fascination with each other grows into a healthy, blossoming friendship with strong hints towards a potential relationship. This is difficult to judge because while I enjoyed it and the character writing was solid, the story doesn't amount to anything. It's a simple short story about two teenagers gradually realizing that they should probably take things a bit more seriously until eventually they become average adults by the end.

There's no big, profound message but that's part of what makes it so charming. The two boys feel like rowdy and immature teenagers but in an endearing way. They do stupid things for stupid reasons, they talk about sex very crassly yet nonchalantly. They like things for very superficial reasons. Even though sex is brought up frequently, there isn't anything shown. One of the characters being gay is just treated with the same amount of reverence as declaring the sky is blue. There is a bit of vagueness regarding the nature of their relationship at the end. Regardless of whether as friends or lovers, it doesn't matter because the dynamic between the two is just that strong. Is it strong enough to recommend on its own? Maybe not but I don't think you lose anything if you read it.