Mimi's manga / #BL(768)

Before I get to talking about the first book, I said below that I didn’t like how Hagiwara’s friend was written to start drama. I didn’t read the other book he was in until now so now I know that Yura does like Hagiwara. However, that is not shown in the first manga, so for him to be acting like an ass and for Maki to be jealous before you find out from reading the next book just makes them both look really petty and frustrating to read. Either way, I still hate that "trope" so much. It really dose not matter to me why he was an asshole. Overall, I thought this was cute. There were some sweet moments and I loved the family dynamic of it all. But there were a couple of things that pissed me off. Firstly, I never liked how people can’t have friends in BL manga without the lover being jealous of the friend. Hagiwara’s friend never acted like he was coming on to him or anything, they were just friends and Maki was jealous because he was hanging out with his friend. There’s also a point later where the friend got villainized for no reason other than to start “pointless drama”. The way he was later written and how Maki acted didn’t sit well with me either. I think the author was trying to go for something emotional and sad to make you go “awww I feel for them” when it just had me like “uhhh everyone’s being a bit problematic”. There are better, more emotional ways to have the mother be a point of conversation to touch on without the need to start pointless drama. Another minor thing that is just a pet peeve really, is the thought that Hagiwara had about not having a family because they’re both men. I would love for adoption or “found family” to be a big part of bl/gl manga so we can stop seeing this dumb thought be something to worry about. Lastly, the extra story. It was kind of dumb and not needed. It felt shallow like the only reason to write this short story was for the sex alone. Which, that ending sex scene I was not ok with at all. I do want to buy this as I need more family-oriented queer manga but I did wish I didn’t have to give it 3 stars. In the end, the only people that matter in this book are Ritsu and Kana. God bless these sweet baby boys!

I really hope this gets an official translation (update: it got an official english translation) because this was such a cute story to read, I'm definitely buying the physical Japanese soon. I did have a problem with how the apology went down with one of them (don't remember who, this is an old review) trying to force the other to do something sexual that the other person wasn't fully comfortable with. I mean, I'm glad they showed how pissed off the other was about being forced, but the way the apology was written felt so dead as if the author wanted to get straight to a sex scene. They could have spent more time making that apology much more emotional and believable especially when he got what he wanted in the end. That sort of bothered me.