Smell
Nagabe
Seven Seas – 10/21/2025
Shop: SMELL a book by Nagabe – Bookshop.org US
Artist: ながべ(nagabe) (@mucknagabe.bsky.social) — Bluesky
Nagabe’s Smell has marked a scent on me that I can’t seem to shake.
The Boys Love manga from artist and author Nagabe is expressively powerful, spanning the language divide between Japan and America. The beauty of Smell is in its ability to speak without talking. A small coming of queerness narrative breathing in the vulnerability of love as an act of translation. Clumsy, perverted, obsessive, and passionate in its first steps.
Split into 6 stages, the story follows Joseph, a border collie who catches his bloodhound classmate Noy sniffing his shirt. Curious about Noy’s fetish for scent, Joseph’s fascination grows into attraction as Noy’s desire transforms into his own and the two bond in their love for on another’s smell.
The manga is rooted in the POV of Joseph. His compulsion to understand Noy’s kink drives the increasing eroticism of this story, as it quickly enraptures Joseph. Smell becomes the displaced processing of the love these two characters feel for each other. Queer feelings in all their sensitive and abstract yearnings, as their mutual smelling becomes a love for one another’s musk. By the end of the manga, “I love your scent” is a deeper confession of love.
The use of smell and kink to explore bubbling emotions is emotive and intimate. The body acting on desires the mind struggles to express. Joseph is fraught internally, feeling himself an addict unable to understand his own compulsions, especially confused why with a boy. As someone who felt addicted to gay furry art because I didn’t fully understand my queer identity, I highly relate to this story.
The ways in which the body acts before the mind is depicted beautifully by the skilled drawings from Nagabe, who uses anthropomorphism and silence to great effect. Whether it’s in the wagging of tails to show excitement or the growth of arousal to one’s own embarrassment, the sexuality expressed in this story is clumsy and vulnerable.
It is telling that the first words spoken by Noy himself, a primarily silent character, is a statement of autonomy. By the end, Joseph and Noy’s relationship is mutual in exploration, embarrassed and trusting. This is intimacy perfect for a coming of queerness story in all of its fumbling heat.
“If they use words, they can at least communicate instantly, and if they don’t, I can create drama through their trial and error process of interacting. But for a story, I think I like the ones that don’t use words because it gives them a stronger sense of foreignness and makes it easier to depict the difference between humans and non-humans.”
Nagabe – Interview: The Creators of The Ancient Magus’ Bride and The Girl From the Other Side – 3/25/2021
Smell is a story of desire struggling to speak itself until its protagonists understand what’s inside them. Early love as a strange, erotic, and clumsy act of communication, less from the words and more from the mouth. Nagabe’s style is expressive, with an eye for blocking, medium, and character. Joseph and Noy Noy’s nonconforming and naive sexuality is profoundly queer and warmly felt. This is love as something human, or more accurately, love as something animal.