I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #childhood friends(68)

Rare breed, but country hayseed, white werewolf comes to Tokyo, works at a host club and attracts the attention of a mean old vampire, in spite of Mama Werewolf's best warnings.

Abandoned by his mother, Tai-chan lives with his alcoholic father, but keeps his spirits almost unbelievably positive and cheerful for all the abuse he fends off. His neighbour, Maa-chan, has been nursing a crush on him forever, but it takes a sexual attack at school for him to show his intelligence and quick-thinking. A story that deals with heavy, depressing subject matters, but never in a way that the characters are buried under distress. It remains light and cheerful and hopeful for the couple's future.

A series of short stories about gay schoolboys. The first is a trio of childhood friends who cannot bear to separate as they grow older, and so expand from an original couple to a threesome. The second story is related, and shows the successful dissolution of the triad. The third involves gambling for a Master/Slave relationship, and getting real about circumventing incest. The fourth story has a similar theme about non-exploitive relationships, only with a promiscuous young man. There is lots of sex and passion, but it all seems to go a bit too far to make the jump from romance to realism.

High school photographer, Arata snaps action pictures of (mainly) Shoutarou and his basketball club teammates and sells the pictures to young women, who confess without success to Shoutarou. The two young men come to a slow realization about mutual attraction. I usually like Hayakawa Nojiko's manga, but this time I found the pacing very choppy and disjointed. I love her watercolours, but the fractured jumpiness, and sparsity of storytelling elements and background detail pushed me out too often this time.

Wonderful shounen ai fluff-puff stories: (1) A college student communicates with a boy, afflicted with a terrible illness, in the past via a magical implement. Obsessed with the mystery and strangeness, he devotes himself to this call from another time while ignoring the good friend at his side in the present. (2) A boy in the third year of high school coos over a childhood friend who is entering first year, misreading all the signals and signs that are being sent his way. Nanoka has come up with some very sweet stories which are perfect for light reading.

Catty girls make life hard for Kaoru who's just trying to look after his childhood friend, Goro, who was once such a cute little crybaby, but has now grown up so big, tall, cool, sexy, self-confident and ... come on, Kaoru! Take that ram-rod butt-plug out and let him in.

Threesome! Haruki and Ikumi both love Hiroo, but Hiroo still harbours delusions of not being gay. Poor boy, it's yaoi. He hasn't got a chance.

Another school-based story. This time childhood friends suddenly stop talking to each other after a night of drinking, and one of them can't remember why, although the other one seems to remember quite clearly.

A cutesy-wootsy fluffball of a story about a trio of childhood friends, 2 boys and 1 toy-chihuahua-type girl, where one of the boys has a crush on the other seemingly oblivious boy, and doesn't know how to be vulnerable or needy in front of his friends.