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

An interesting and interwoven series of love stories involving homosexual couples and/or gay men with unrequited passions for other men, all connected by their proximity and living arrangements within a rural Japanese region. (1) Within minutes of Masakawa commanding his landlord, Daiki, to fetch him a "cute little maid-boy" to service him "even at night", entomophobic newcomer, Itokawa Kazuto, runs stark naked and screaming into the arms of his neighbour, Dr. Hitomi Masakawa, after a nest of caterpillars drops into his bath. Masakawa understandably takes this as a sign of inevitable fate, although it seems Kazuto has some tragic inhibiting business in his past and needs to catch up so they're both on the same page. (2) Daiki, potter and landlord, is head-over-heels for Hanaoka town chairman and Yakubanoi reconstruction section manager, Kuroi Sawato, who is also the enigmatic lead singer of an indie band with heaps of fangirls who provide lots of free field labour. In order to provide his enigmatic housebound brother, Enma, with the right home, Sawato agrees to kiss Daiki, whom he despises, once a day. (3) After ex-Yakuza boss, Youmei, saves Hizuru from having his organs sold off, Hizuru adores him. Youmei's only interest in him, however, is as a servant.

This prequel to Wild Fangs follows the story of man-beast Mao's brother, Kiri, and the man who manages to subjugate him. It goes into greater detail on the subject of war and Kiri's role in the conflict.

The origin story for the man-beasts, who fell to earth when chunks of the heaven worlds broke off ... (prequel to Wild Rose and Wild Fangs.)

Natsume hides his depression by burying himself in work and overtime, but neglects his home. Touji is a cleaner at the company he hires to shovel out his apartment. On the pretext of losing his phone in Natsume's apartment, Touji handcuffs him to his couch, tells him he has had a premonition that they are meant to be together, and procedes to fellate him. Natsume is outraged, but after an electrifying start, Fujiyama Hyouta tones the story down to something much more subtle. The appearance of Touji's cousin sets up the premise of a mystery, but it isn't revealed in this story. Readers have to tackle the sequel, Akutai wa Ude no Naka de Futatabi, for that.

In this sequel to Akutai wa Toiki to Mazariau, we learn the tragic mystery in Touji's past which explains his strange behaviour toward Natsume and that of his cousin. A harrowing story with a real Boo!Hiss!Villain involving murder, kidnapping, assault and rape, but with the realization of love to warm our heroes through it.

A man's inability to speak his heart allows misunderstandings to arise with his lovers and problems to go unreconciled. When his first love makes a sudden reappearance, will he change his habits?

About five years ago, the Young Adult fiction section at my local indie bookstore was a sea of vampires, werewolves and zombies. If a person wasn't into dark supernatural quasi-erotic fiction, they had little choice. It wasn't just Twilight either, because before that came Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire, which re-ignited the somewhat dormant genre. It's pretty clear that people who like vampire stories have specific erotic itches to scratch, since basically, a vampire is the strongest, broodiest outsider in the psychic schoolyard, the antithesis of Clean-cut Jock and Wholesome Sweetheart, and a character trope of which this particular mangaka, Takakura Tomoko, seems to be inordinately fond. It would be interesting to document all the romance buttons a vampire story needs to push to satisfy the readers who like those sorts of stories, things like smoldering looks, uber-sexual confidence, pushy lines. This manga with Dean the Vampire (dies) hits all the right buttons and scratches all the right itches, but for those who've read enough vampire fiction or watched their fill of vampire movies, it probably will seem like a rerun. Oh well, there are always readers for whom this sort of thing doesn't get tiresome, and there are always readers who are brand new to the genre. For everyone else, I would suggest Robin McKinley's Sunshine.

Two old guys realize their feelings for each other when one of them is called back to mother to consider an arranged marriage. Yep, he's 50 and mom still calls the shots. The comments are hilarious, since everyone seems to think that a guy's dick drops off at 50. Not according to mangaka Katsuragi (though I don't think anyone would push down their best mate in the hallway at that age without fear of spraining, breaking or tearing something.)

A humiliation kink story about the downfall of a proud young aristocrat, Shingo, who is forced, by inherited debt, to become a male prostitute, and is trained into this service by Zen, the brothel's enforcer, who has suffered at the hand's of Shingo's father.