I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #blackmail(15)

A high school punishment game prank leads to revenge porn blackmail.

A porn star comes to the rescue of a mouthy streetfighter in a pinch and demands a photo shoot as payback. It isn't the only rescue he provides, as streetfighter's rivals creep out from under their rocks.

Double feature: first story is about a sadistic actor with a fetish for asphyxiating his partners, and the manipulations his producer goes through behind the scenes to satisfy his kink without attracting unwanted attention from the press, and where that leads. The second story deals with a young man who falls for the jilted lover of his best friend, a man who is now married and expecting a baby, which appears to take its inspiration from the single Alexander Pope line of poetry about "Who breaks the butterfly on the wheel?" The first story has an ironic ending. The second is lovely.

Oppressed by his former boss who blackmailed him into an affair, Fujisawa suppresses his voice. When he is shunted to a satellite office, he finds himself at the mercy of Kishino, a subordinate who seems to know his secrets. In this story, self-expression and the freedom to be one's self are inextricably bound.

(1) Innocent young man staves off extortionists by prostituting his virginity with a scruffy stranger.