A Mafia-Crime-themed Boys Love – only in Japan, of course! Sexually graphic with some drama and humor on the sides, The Clouds Gather – the first feature for its anime form – begs to differ from other BL animation in many ways.

Twittering Birds Never Fly (囀る鳥は羽ばたかない) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Kou Yoneda. A sequel to Yoneda’s previous one-shot stories Don’t Stay Gold (2008) and Though They Drift, They Do Not Sink, But Nor Do They Sing (2009), it has been serialized in the boys’ love (BL) manga magazine ihr HertZ, formerly known as HertZ, since August 2011. The manga was adapted into an anime film trilogy produced by Blue Lynx and animated by Grizzly beginning in 2020. It also inspired an original animation DVD (OAD) adaptation of Don’t Stay Gold and an ongoing audio drama produced by Frontier Works.

An anime film adaptation, Twittering Birds Never Fly – The Clouds Gather, was announced on April 26, 2019, and released on February 15, 2020. The film is animated by Grizzly and produced by Blue Lynx.

The film’s primary production staff includes Kaori Makita as director and Hiroshi Seko as scriptwriter; the film’s score is composed by piano trio band H ZETTRIO. A sequel film, Twittering Birds Never Fly – The Storm Breaks, was announced on February 15, 2020. An as-of-yet untitled third Twittering Birds Never Fly film has also been announced.

Synopsis

The series follows Yashiro, a young, high-ranking yakuza boss and president of a front corporation. He is assigned a new bodyguard, Chikara Doumeki, who discovers that his employer is a hypersexual masochist. Yashiro develops an attraction to Doumeki, who rejects his advances. Yashiro later discovers that Doumeki is impotent and pursues a sadomasochistic relationship with him.

Review

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Hypersexual means just that – extremely sexually active. And boy, Yashiro is simply insatiable when it comes to sex. The funny thing is, his new driver Doumeki, is impotent. When your sexual target is someone who can’t get a hard-on, you either kick him out or do some psychoanalysis on him – weird yet it’s true. That’s what happened. Yashiro can get any men he wants, but he decided to stick with Doumeki for a change. There are also intriguing family issues about Doumeki, making him not just an ordinary boy toy. The fact that Doumeki responds to Yashiro in a frank in-your-face manner intrigues our Mafia boss – perhaps even giving him a hard-on himself.

Yashiro is a character that screams for attention, yet he’s doing it calmly. By instinct, you know there are plenty of issues you will discover about him. The same applies to Doumeki. By those points alone, this anime deserves a big spotlight.