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

A spin-off and continuation of the series started in Mainichi Seiten where an all-male family of 2 moves in with an all-male family of 4. This story deals with Yuuta and Mayumi, both 16-year-old "stepbrothers" (not biologically connected) who share a bedroom. Mayumi's cheerfulness and pluck seems like a front to Yuuta who senses that there are some serious issues being blocked from resolution, and who resolves to find out what the problems are before this destroys Mayumi. The story also addresses the reality of being lovers in an overcrowded house (poor neighbours!) A lively and interesting tale with spirited, realistic characters.

Fourth installment in the Mainichi Seiten series about the all-gay Obinata household. In this one, Shouu's unflinching honesty about his relationship with Yuuta causes his adopted son to come face-to-face with the traumas of his past and how he was formed by them. Unable to cope, he runs back to the neighbourhood of his youth, leaving everyone behind ... even Mayumi?

Second to last in Sugano Akira's sprawling Mainichi Seiten series about the noisy all-gay Obinata household, this volume deals with a disagreement between the explosive eldest, Taiga and Akinobu, the quiet and studious middle son, over an offer of university study overseas. Taiga is gripped by a past of deprivation and want, and it colours all his efforts and sacrifices when it comes to his family, but is this what is even troubling Akinobu, who hasn't been able to sleep? And how much of Taiga's frustration is also blue-balls syndrome, since his relationship with Shuu still hasn't been consumated (seriously)? Whenever Taiga is featured, the storyline goes a bit wackadoo and zany, because the guy can't seem to communicate without shouting at the top of his lungs. This tends to pitch the story into bathos, but it's important to read as a set up for the final and most interesting (in my opinion) story in this series, Akinobu and Ryuu-nii's relationship in Hanaya no Nikai de.

Hilarious, with none of bitterness or bite that Abe Akane usually adds. A young gay man falls for a writer who's so off in his make belief dreamworld that the real world barely exists for him, and provides care for him like looking after a toddler. Things change when the clueless writer phones up a call girl in order to relieve some tension.

Two-shot by Chiba Ryouko featuring teachers, one sloppy, one neat, who work alongside each other and gradually fall in love—in the latter case, aided and abetted by one colleague's attractive smell. The second story involves neighbours and childhood friends, one weak, the other stronger, who have always been attracted to each other, but never knew. The stronger (and much younger) boy is always getting into fights, and it's sad to see his injuries.

Years after leaving, Asahi returns home to his parent's restaurant in Kanagawa, ostensibly to help out his recently widowed mother, but mainly to heal his own heart which has been shattered by the betrayal of his gay lover in Tokyo. Asahi's mother puts him in charge of looking after professor Yuzuru Togame, who lives in such a state of preoccupation with his research and writing, that he can't be trusted not to walk off a train platform. A night of rebound lovemaking turns out to be a similar sort of platform for these two men who couldn't be further apart in personality, but who complement each other with an amazing intensity. This is one of those wonderful pitch-perfect yaoi treasures!

There's more than meets the eye with a boy who is suddenly uprooted and sent on his own to a countryside school, and there's even more surprises in store with the boys who befriend him.

A sweet little love story about a sensitive young man who has harboured a crush on his sempai from school since they were on the same baseball team together. Sempai, who has been frozen in his growth since seriously taking on the duty of raising his sister, is slowly waking up to the shift from romantic love to actual investment in the future of another person and how much it costs, which makes for a very interesting and well-structured story. No villains, here. There are small conflicts about social propriety, but the main argument which needs resolution is rooted in the differences between automatic emotional reactivity and self-realization, which makes for a splendid story about maturation and adulthood.

Ultra-responsible college student with part-time job takes on the task of looking after his nephew while sis is away for 2 months. Meets up with old school chum/wanking partner at the grocery store while the kid is having a melt-down because he can't afford to buy the beef for stroganoff. Bing! Bang! Boom! They strike up an arrangement which basically means they all live together. A variation of the "locked together in a broom closet" fantasy. The only thing that's off about this story is that college student doesn't realize, somehow, that it's weird and not entirely innocent when your school chum gives you hand jobs.

Unorthodox family arrangements await a newly arrived immigrant from New York. He tries his best to adapt to his new living quarters while trying not to rock the boat too much.