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

Two different stories about men struggling to come to terms with attraction to other men, linked together with a family connection and a bathhouse. Lovely drawings.

Multiple emotion-oriented stories about men discovering their attraction to each other in a variety of scenarios and settings, rendered in Minazuki Akira's beautiful art. Gentle-paced and accentuating realism and realization.

Ogata, the stoic bouncer at a flashy danceclub, develops a fascination for Saya, a patron of his club, who always seems to pick up girls without doing anything to them. So far so easy and real, usual Ogeretsu Tanaka. But wait for Chapter Three where plot complications come with a vengeance.

This final volume in the Mainichi Seiten series is about the relationship which develops between introspective and care-ridden, Akinobu, the studious middle Obinata son, and ex-gangster family friend, Ryuu, whose turbulent past haunts him and who can't stand seeing him cry alone. The relationships, backstory and conflicts are established early enough that this story works as a stand-alone. I'm not fussed about the artwork, but Akinobu is drawn with precision and delicacy.

The adventures of Chii, a kitten who gets separated from her mother, and finds her way into a good family.

Broken arms, broken ribs, this calligrapher needs to start absorbing some calcium to build up his bone density. Of course, then his young cousin would have to find another excuse for letting him jump his bones.

A overstretched and teetering vignette which feels as though the mangaka was working through personal discomfort with certain themes, primarily age disparities between sex partners, one underaged, and straight boys experimenting with gay sex. The set-up of an averted gang-rape, however, is all out-of-proportion as a plot-device means of establishing an adolescent's attraction toward his saviour, compared to the hints of male prostitution which merit barely the bat of an eye. The former wipes out all semblance of realism, but the latter depends on it. The resolution is all mature tenderness, self-awareness and concern, quite the about-switch compared to the initial casualness of the encounter which involves infidelity from both. Is the adult self-aware, or not? Partially, I guess. Is it realistic, or not? Elements of it are, enough to provoke some thinky-thoughts—not particularly profound ones, although better than most yaoi, and certainly enough to reveal that the mangaka shows promise. The art is beautiful. I liked it and would like to see the author do more work, but with the guidance of a very good editor who understands realism and can urge her to discard the more excessive stretches.

Most school-centered teacher x student pairings are not realistic. This is one which is. It takes a long time for the older man to warm up to his pupil, and the story explains each reason why very carefully.

Manic-paced soap opera, the first 2 volumes in a long series of family dramedies, with the main emphasis on comedy, about the Obinata family of orphaned boys—except for the oldest, their sister Shima, a fire-breathing tigress of a journalist off on the hunt for wild news stories on a continent where she's likely to find some doozies, and who provides the pivotal engine that gets this plot driving, a marriage, followed in rapid succession by a desertion—and the two new Lost Boys who land in their The-Whole-World-is-Gay Never-Neverland constructed just for fujoshii. This one focuses on the love story between the eldest "Lost Boys", Taiga and Shuu, whose reticence to merge is informed by past hurt. Boisterous and noisy as any household of boys would probably be, there is just enough realism and slice-of-life to keep it interesting. The art is old school. Some of the scans are hard to read, but it's important to get this one under your belt if you plan to read the series. My favourite, so far, is the final one of the series, Hanaya no Nakai de. Respect is due to Sugano Akira for generating enough story and character to keep this series going on so long. It's up there with Kodaka Kazuma for massive volumes of entertaining boy love.