I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #multiple stories(42)

Three lovely shounen ai from the Queen of Fluff, Kojima Lalako; but make no mistake, these stories are complex and subtle missives on the difficulties of negotiating homosexual partnerships in a community and culture of intolerance. (1) Two young boys elope from the countryside, but are too young, inexperienced and short on resources for the adult problems of living in a city, so that their misadventure results in tragedy, but not because of a very cute pet piglet. (2) Troubles arise between two childhood friends whose affections deepen into love, in spite of one of them becoming a Johnny's Entertainment-style idol. Realistic apologies in this one. (3) Supernatural intervention teaches an emotionally repressed young homosexual to express his true feelings after horrific violence disturbs his neighbourhood. One of my favourites.

PWP of kinks and fetishes, BDSM involving mostly bondage and toys (carrots?), Dubcon ("No, no ... why are you stopping?"), the usual "secured loan default" white slave scenario, ie., predictable and somewhat vanilla. I find the misshapen heads a little hard to appreciate. The shortened foreheads make me think of microcephaly and birth defects, not handsome men.

Multiple formulaic stories mainly around the theme of a luxury hotel chain with a cupcake yakuza short at the end. The concierge spends more time messing around the bed and bath of his schmancy French lover of than serving his clients, but at least he's serving someone.

(1) A bored student discovers that his teacher is a vampire who uses pills to suppress his urge for blood. Then he decides to play with his teacher. (2) A secret room behind the science lab becomes a private space for two lovers when time seems to phase in and out. (3) The astronomy club has one member, and there is a reason for it.

Fuwa Shinri is great at yaoi soap operas. In this series of short stories, we read about gay men who stay closeted for the sake of family, pesky fan girls who want to out them, divorce and child abuse, rape and the odd ways survivors punish themselves for having been raped ... They are generally quite authentic apart from some of the outward emotional reactions which seem a bit overt, but still within plausibility. One very realistic element is that not all the conflicts are resolved or the injuries healed. Fuwa Shinri is good at this sort of story.

Series of oneshots and two-parters all dealing with seduction.

(1) A cutesy courtship between a bashful company president and a sunny delivery man. (2) The angel of destiny screws up tying a red thread on the pinky of a lonely 30-year-old virgin so that they can have sex together. (3) A competitive entry-level salesman uses the thought of sexual power over his sempai to aim for first place in the company. This one's quite sexy. (4 and 5) Schoolboy idiot couples. (6) A salaryman, constantly harassed by his Shachou at work, a man who was his sempai at school, decides to turn the tables and accept his offer. (7) The same couple decide to actually do the deed, but end up having hallway sex in front of a mirror. Most of the stories are fairly stock, although the third one seems more memorable to me. I wish there had been a continuation of that one instead.

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.

(1) A fudanshi otaku delays developing his relationship with his boyfriend out of fear for his "secret".

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.