I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #drama(235)

A gorgeous retelling of the Romeo x Juliet romance trope with two boys from very different backgrounds, one an onnagata at a traveling traditional theatre, the other the overburdened son of an arrogant and fearful doctor. They meet up in the doctor's small town where he holds too much power, recognize the same struggles in each other and reach a fateful decision. The ending surprised me. Quite an inspirational and happy-making story.

Inspired by ante-WWII western domestic architecture and gardens, Kinoshita Keiko daydreamed up a story about Yukiyo, the gay man who inherited one such home, where he lives with Takashina, his lover, and Yuuta, the son of his ex-wife and the man he once loved, who suffered from depression and commit suicide many years previously. Filled with remorse for confessing to his late friend, and muddled by disappointment and unresolved grief, Yukiya swings wildly between seducing and rejecting Takashina. Things remain in stasis until Yuuta makes a confession of his own, summoning Yukiya's protective instincts. A slow building emotional simmer with some very beautiful watercolour drawings.

supernatural vampire thriller.

Yuki is the fulcrum between his childhood friends, Chihiro and Ryuutarou, in this love triangle soap opera by Hiro Reiichi. Yuki is also an amateur mountaineer amongst professionals in a dangerous sport, and it's on one of these expeditions that he receives and accepts a love confession, which has the expected consequence of banishing the third friend from their circle of intimacy just as tragedy strikes. But all is not fair in love and war when it comes to yaoi, so this otherwise perfectly structured yaoi romance acquires a sentimental and slightly clunky resolution. Even so, it's a lively story and one of Hiro Reiichi's better ones.

Tomiura and Shirosaki are, both, neighbours, classmates at the same university and gay — a fact which Tomiura uncovers by pure chance when Shirosaki is abused by a former lover. Together, they discover they have more in common than a similar sexuality, and it is all these other attractions and intimacies which make Shirosaki reluctant to go further. Unfortunately, a promising beginning segued into a standard conclusion, with their reticence quickly dismissed, and the conflict added as an afterthought in Chapter 3. (2) Samiya and Toujou are dumped, have drunken rebound sex which turns out to be a little more serious for each other than they originally thought. (3) A gay boyfriend tries to come between his clueless boyfriend and the younger brother who won't allow it.

Homophobia and bullying set the backdrop for a story about the confusion and psychological turmoil of two high school boys learning to connect, one as a regretful former instigator of bullying, the other as a victim of homophobia. Strong characterizations, beautiful art, and an emotional story

A series of stories involving different obsessions and kinks: a fetish for hair,selfish demands over a lover's time, a photography fetish, the fear of being revealed as a homosexual, and emerging from a horrifying past through prison and cheating the yakuza.

One night, Mizushima, an assistant at Nanami Florist, steals a single rare white bloom from an exotic flowering shrub in a stranger's garden. The next day, wracked with guilt, he prepares a bouquet as an apology for the owner, unaware that his activity was already caught on camera. Before he can present his gift, the shrub's owner, Fujisawa Morihiro, confronts him at the shop and ends up hiring him to create a floral arrangement for the entrance to his mansion. Mizushima is pleased by this turn of events, and drawn to the loneliness of this wealthy man, but a mysterious young woman approaches him and warns him that his life is in danger. Are her accusations against Fujisawa legitimate or figurative, and has she exaggerated Mizushima's peril? Mizushima feels impelled to ignore her advice, setting a new series of events into motion. An interesting story premise (so far) which escalates quickly.

Kaede is a virtual shut-in, someone who has focused exclusively on academic achievement to the detriment of all socialization. He's innocent, but gullible, blamed for mistakes he never made and unable to defend himself; sweetnatured, but blind; hardworking, but pathologically shy; self-responsible, but fearful, awkward and ever-so-lonely. All he wants is a little warmth when he accidentally "falls" into a gay host club and meets with an enigmatic and handsome young escort who willingly accepts his idealistic projections, but at the usual cost. If Kaede can't even defend himself against silly mistakes he didn't make, how is he going to protect himself from the consequences of the mistake he's about to make, which looks enormous, especially now that two sinister observers have involved themselves?

A private detective takes up a cold case for a young man for whom he has developed an infatuation.