I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #Brothers(11)

Freaky Friday body-switching with Mishima Kazuhiko's usual over-the-top character histrionics. The tsundere is off the charts with this one, and while the story isn't that bad, as generic plots with overly used momentum devices go, it's like handling a snapping wild rodent with a sore paw and parasitic infection. Do you really want to go through all that?

Wow, this is wonderful. Incest doesn't normally turn me on, but this is gentle and slow-paced with just enough weirdly joyful melancholy to keep it interesting. The opening chapter is one of the most beautiful I've come across in yaoi manga.

A tragedy and its grief return in the form of bad dreams and self-realization for a young structural engineer whose brother died crossing an untested footbridge. I wouldn't really call this yaoi.

Three brothers with no housekeeping skills are left to fend for themselves, so the oldest hires a male housekeeper who comes with a surprising twist.

Hikaru, the gormless older son, is envious of his brother, Hijiro, who seems to surpass him with accomplishments and relationships, without understanding the platonic nature of his friendship with a younger student. The art tends to make all the men look like boys.

Twincest story about a young man who pretends that every sexual encounter he has with his twin brother is because his brother is dreaming, and what happens when he discovers that his brother is wide awake.

Setting aside that the main story combines yakuza and incest as an aniki uses a tougher love than the usual to rescue his younger sibling from imminent self-destruction, and that the side stories include a writer whose best inspiration for graphic gore and horror comes from romantic rejection, there is a streak of realism running through this manga which makes for a worthwhile read. Not that the stories are realistic and it inclines toward dramedy and, yes, sadistic psychological horror more than tender romance, but there is something refreshing and natural about the drawing style and the way the characters reveal themselves and their motives, which rescues it from being the same old yaoi.

Ever since he failed an academic achievement exam, Kazushi spends his time farting around with friends, girls, at karaoke and restaurants, any place but home where he has to face his disappointed parents and younger brother, Keishi, who keeps trying to reach him. One day, at an arcade, Kazushi forfeits his lips to a boy's kiss when he loses a wager, and Keishi catches sight. Kazushi learns what Keishi thinks of that after a stolen kiss when Keishi assumes Kazushi is fast asleep, and ths is, in turn, followed by one of the flattest conflict resolutions I've seen in a manga, a clunky scene which just doesn't fit with the realism of the initial chapters. It was as though the editor told Cam to wrap things up now and end this on a happy note, but I'm ambivalent about the way she did it.

Oneshot about fraternal twin incest where each partner is dishonest about their love for each other, treating their trysts as casual rebound affairs. Not bad, but not particularly exciting and new either.