is a yaoi manga series written and illustrated by Maki Murakami. The story follows the attempts of Shuichi Shindo and his band, Bad Luck, to become Japan's next musical sensation, and his struggles to capture Eiri Yuki's heart.
The manga was published by Gentosha and was serialized on Kimi to Boku starting in 1996 and ending in 2002. The manga has been licensed and published in English by Tokyopop, as well as a light novel. There is also the Gravitation Collection which consists of 6 volumes, each of which has two original volumes of Gravitation in it. A sequel, , was published in the web magazine Genzo from 2004 to 2009 and returned in 2011 to Web Spica.
Gravitation has also been adapted into a two episode OVA series in 1999 directed by Shinichi Watanabe and a thirteen-episode anime television series directed by Bob Shirohata. The TV series aired in Japan from October 4, 2000 to January 10, 2001, on WOWOW Wednesdays at 18:30 and was reaired on Tokyo MX in 2007. The anime goes to roughly volume 7 of the manga. Both have been licensed for North American release by Nozomi Entertainment.
Plot
The story surrounds an aspiring singer, Shuichi Shindou, and his band, Bad Luck (formed with his best friend Hiroshi Nakano, who is on guitar). Shuichi wants to become Japan's next big star, and follow in the footsteps of the famous idol Ryuichi Sakuma, lead singer of the now-disbanded legendary group Nittle Grasper. One evening, Shuichi is looking over lyrics for a song he is writing when his paper is blown away by the wind and picked up by a tall, blond haired (light brown in the manga) stranger. The man dismisses Shuichi's hard work as garbage, which hurts Shuichi deeply. Despite his anger, he is intrigued by the stranger. This will be their first encounter as Shuichi becomes fascinated by the stranger, who soon turns out to be the famous romance novelist, Eiri Yuki (real name: Uesugi). Both the manga and the anime follow this plot.
Gravitation EX. The story picks up directly after volume 12; Shuichi and Eiri find and agree to momentarily take care of Yuki Kitazawa's son, Riku. Shuichi kisses and conducts a short affair with Ryuichi Sakuma, who announces that he has always been in love with Shuichi. Eiri is in a car accident that causes him to temporarily lose his eyesight, and Reiji announces that she's making a movie about everything that has happened to them. Shuichi believes that this movie is the reason Ryuichi "pretended" to go after him, although Ryuichi's true motives remain unknown.
Development
The precursor to the Gravitation manga was a dōjinshi series titled Help!, which followed a similar story line but cast the characters in slightly different roles.
Murakami went to New York to research for a storyline later in Gravitation where the characters visit the city.
Murakami has created dōjinshi based on Gravitation which she describes as "pretty hard-core, adult stuff. Remix is softcore and Megamix is much more hardcore." She created the dōjinshi to explore tensions between the characters. Murakami penned a thirteen volume dōjinshi series called Gravitation Remix under the group Crocodile Ave. The dōjinshi are much more sexually explicit than the anime and deviate heavily from the manga storyline. Fans have requested that Tokyopop license Gravitation Remix, but Tokyopop regards the depiction of some characters to be too young and is concerned about themes of incest, and therefore has not licensed them.
In addition to the remixes, Murakami created four highly sexually explicit "Megamix" dōjinshi, dubbed Mega-gra, Megamix: Panda, Megamix: Kumagorou, and Megamix: Capybara. These also deviate from the storyline as the Remixes do, with Panda including shota content. A new Megamix is currently in the works, entitled Megamix Zebra. Megamix Zebra will feature Shuichi, Ryuichi, and Eiri in a threesome, with Shuichi as the seme.
Media
Manga
Written and illustrated by Maki Murakami, the manga was serialized in Gentosha's Kimi to Boku magazine between 1996 and 2002. Initially, a total of eleven tankōbon volumes were released by Sony Magazines between March 7, 1996, and December 25, 2000. Gentosha started to republish the series on April 24, 2002, concluding with the twelfth on August 24, 2002. A was released by Gentosha between April 25, and September 22, 2006.