I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #Comedy(251)

Iyogi is forced by the student council president to confront his irrational fear of foreigners by squiring the French-Japanese transfer student, Enzou, around the school. As he overcomes his fear enough to realize that Enzou has grown-up problems, Iyogi also finds the courage to help Enzou face them. With sympathy comes respect, and in time, love, but Enzou has to return to France for his ailing mother's health and there is no future for them. Although I appreciated how the tragic backstory of Enzou's mother and father created the key structural support for this particular story's resolution, I found that the story lost the absorbing realism that initially saved it from being dull. I think this story would've been better served without a happy ending, as a tale of loss and regret and the repetitive nature of karma ... or, if happiness and the resolution of sad karma was necessary, to place it against the context of delayed gratification and the effect of absence on the hearts of these two young men. All the same, the story is what it is and there is no point crying over lost potential. It's a good story. It could've been a GREAT one, a true masterpiece, but instead it's just a good one.

Mizuki, fire-breathing perfectionist of a waiter, meets Takeru, foreign grabby-handed newcomer with no service-related experience to speak of and, yet, who was recommended as a waiter by the Big Boss in Rome. Combustion happens. Other languages are spoken. Does Takeru tame Mizuki? This is yaoi, so something's gotta give ... Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we'll ever find out what.

Let that be a lesson to anyone who listens in on somebody else's ipads.

The trials and tribs of Tsuji, airhead, and Aizawa, the stoic, as they chart the course of gay relationship after lifelong friendship. Hilarious line: "I am sad that this makes me so happy." (Just read it and find out why.) Asou Kai is very perceptive at emotional content and behaviour. It makes for lively and interesting stories. Bonus, her artwork is attractive, too.

Butler sub-genre. A young master with a heavy workload has to deal with his sister's baby and an uncooperative, possibly scheming, butler. The extended family dynamics are funny, too.

A world where monsters and human exist on the same dimension, but are kept segregated by law.

"Wah-wah, my GF broke up with me!" "Good, let's use that as an excuse to get drunk and sloppy." SMOOOOCH. "I was drunk, ergo that kiss may or may not reflect my real feelings, depending on whether or not you liked it."

Proper and upstanding salary man unknowingly crosses the Gay Park of Sex, and gets reeled in by a "Queen Wolf" in an unusual departure from longstanding yaoi tropes. He realizes he's In Lurv after seeing other gay men try the sauve and smooth thing with his attacker, which feels like about 12 seconds into the story, and I won't spoil the ending. Not the worst story I've read, but it doesn't really make my pulse quicken either.

A very loud, warm, caring, self-assertive and very straight construction boss finds out his icy, finicky, elite supervisor is actually a blushing 28-year-old virgin, so tries to fix that for him. Smut ensues of the frottage kind and, then, the sex-toy-in-public fetish. Actually, this hits a few fetishes, including muscles (although not bara), aging virgin, men's room sex and lower class seme. Screwball comedy, but cute. (2) Story about a man who is so into his unrequited love for a neighbour that he fails to notice how much his neighbour's brother likes him. (3) "Beware the Lifeguard" — that's for sure. Trigger warnings on this one.