I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #slice of life(123)

Two businessmen with a past are trapped in an elevator, which gives them the chance to explore suppressed longings, regrets and bittersweet ruefulness.

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.

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.

A food truck chef and a salaryman connect over the love of sweet pancakes.

Yunoguchi Arata, a radio host and DJ develops an obsession over a purehearted, but introverted, fan named Sakurabashi Itsuki. The feeling is mutual, but the age difference presents an obstacle. Itsuke is much younger, and although his friendship with Arata inspires him to act courageously, this story doesn't overlook the difficulties his fears and lack of experience present. Because of this, it is more powerfully Bildungsroman than most yaoi. Beautiful art, believable characters and a fresh, lively story.

Asano is gobsmacked when Kakei, a taciturn coworker, suddenly ups and confesses. Asano can't imagine what Kakei sees in him, and so far, it seems that Kakei is wondering the same thing. Asano and Kakei are both prickly and uncommunicative, which makes this a surprisingly funny story.

Easy paced love story between Ryuuta, an accountancy student, who spends his summers surfing and falling in love with Naoki, the owner of a small beachside pub where Ryuuta works. For Ryuuta, it's an unrequited love as Naoki is married, but there are personality problems between the Mister and Missus of which he is unaware until he discovers that Naoki has been abandoned. Now Ryuuta faces the difficult task of wooing a much older man with a painful past and a character that subconsciously armours himself against rejection. This is a lot to ask for a young man with relatively little life experience or wisdom. Instead, he must call upon a leap of faith. Unohana has crafted an interesting and insightful story with believable and entertaining side characters in a resort village setting far from urban distractions.

Superrich heir, Akag,i is a regular Eeyore of a man, always rained on by his very own personal thundercloud, and he has no problem shoving away the one bright and sunny person in his existence, Ichimori, who loves him and protects him from dastardly villains who want to get him mixed up in their schemes. Akagi isn't falling for any bit of it. The question on my mind is how a likeable dude like Ichimori, who clearly thinks about others first, could fall for such a gormless wet blanket. Also, I know that romance writing holds a special place in its twisted little heart for the superrich, and I know that valid schemes for getting these Scroogie creeps to spread some of their hoard is better than trying to trick it out of them (for some reason), but in this day and age, wealth is looking more like supervillain material than a sympathy set up.

A lonely boy picks up a stray cat boy and slowly allows his heart to warm up.

After collapsing from work exhaustion, Nagisa returns to the fishing village he abandoned after Minato, the friend he loved out of a trio of highschool mates, drowned to death in an infamous pond, where he sets up in his dead grandfather's derelict house, and reunites with the remaining friend, Kaito. The story starts with ruminations on divinity and existential angst.