I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #Minase Masara(4)

Burnt in the past, Kazaoka has made it a rule never to spend more than a single night with his lovers. Masato shares a key moment in his life with Kazaoka, one which has left him languishing with a secret crush. Years afterward, he sees Kazaoka's picture on the back leaf of a book published under the pen name of a popular, prize-winning and very successful author, so he tracks Kazaoka down. When Kazaoka doesn't recognize him, Masato deceives him in order to release his pent-up emotions. What happens when Kazaoka discovers he has been tricked and the other secrets Masato is hiding from him? Classic Minase Masara, with the most hilarious letter from a mangaka published on the back pages that I've ever read.

Minase Masara likes to write stories about rivals. In this case, the rivals for the affections of teen idol, but lousy actor, Sakakibara Ao, are the award-winning screenwriter, Kou Higashihara, whom Ao knew (and had a crush on) in high school as Ryota Azuma, and the handsome and famous actor, Wakatabe, whose skills onscreen leave no one unimpressed. It doesn't seem as though Higashihara is a rival at first, since his rejection of Ao's confession in high school was unnecessarily perfunctory, and he has some very crushing things to say to Ao about his acting, urging him at the start to quit the production. The trouble is that a large continuity problem appears in the story between Chapter 4, when Wakatabe urges Ao to develope his sexual charisma onscreen by developing a crush that "burns him from the inside out" and follows it up by asking him go out with him, with an event which happens, later, in Volume 2, Chapter 2 (page 27), that evinces so much surprise from Ao, the reader has to wonder where he's been. Admittedly, a lot of time has passed between the two volumes, but why would such a glaring hole in the plot development go unmissed? It isn't exactly clear, yet, how the story connects to Cinderella either, other than that there are stepbrothers and they are working Ao rather hard (although he needs the professional development, so that's a good thing.) Even so, the story is lively and interesting and rendered with Minase Masara's usual beautiful drawings.

A sombre reunion between Yuzuru and Daisuke, two former lovers who parted when Daisuke decided he wanted to become a professional athlete. It was Yuzuru who left, mysteriously, and now that Daisuke has had to abandon his dreams of playing professional baseball, and is divorcing his wife whose loyalty depended on his status in sports, he is forced to confront the past. The first chapter ends poorly, but the rest of the story improves.