I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #dramedy(31)

I wasn't able to recover from the whiplash caused by jumping from "Oh, what a great stepbrother I now have!" to "Aargh, the gay, it burns! Get it away from me!" to "Let me protect you from being at the mercy of sex friends, and I love you!" to "Let me move in with you." I just couldn't believe that Ryouhei would switch from being a bigoted little homophobic shit stirring up trouble in his family circle to this noble self-sacrificing lover-boy who wants to protect Nanao from the degradation of casual sex and the wounds of sex friends. There wasn't enough of a emotional compulsion for it, and I am a person that tends to think that hate and love are often interlinked, whereas the opposite of love is disinterest, so if there was a believable bone in that sudden transformation, I would've thrown all my support behind it. There needed to be more story between one state and another, more transition. Without it, the book felt truncated, which is such a pity! Such an absolute crying shame! Because it was a great story up until Ryouhei suddenly offered to have sex with Nanao. It was going into utterly realistic and emotionally wrenching terrain up until then. It's just too bad.

This final volume in the Mainichi Seiten series is about the relationship which develops between introspective and care-ridden, Akinobu, the studious middle Obinata son, and ex-gangster family friend, Ryuu, whose turbulent past haunts him and who can't stand seeing him cry alone. The relationships, backstory and conflicts are established early enough that this story works as a stand-alone. I'm not fussed about the artwork, but Akinobu is drawn with precision and delicacy.

The cover illustration may lead you to believe this is a collection of stories about men getting kicked in the nuts. Chapter 4 implies that this means figuratively ... so far.

Dramedy about cops who cannot get along, but must work, live and, eventually, sleep together.

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.

This story is pure camp dramedy. It needs a Bow-chikka-bow-chikka soundtrack and some Dr. Evil & Cronies evul!cackling foley work mixed in. Someone must've slipped some LSD into the water supply.

Arrogant little prick, who we are clearly not meant to like, tries to bully an experienced older actor with a secret dominant side, has his ass handed back to him (used) and is surprised to discover he likes it. Rape-trope yaoi for those with a humiliation/submission kink.

An unwilling heir collides with an uncompromising butler.

A 29-year-old man, returning to his late mother's house, meets a cross-dressing senior high school boy who doesn't seem at all interested in drag. Upon meeting the boy's mother, the man learns that the outfit is actually a uniform intended to punish the boy for confessing that he is gay. Promising start, but the story slows down after with no apparent climax or resolution around the main conflict, which is—in spite of a red herring about inappropriate age-differences—between the boy and his mother, or rather, the mother and her prejudices about homosexuality.

Shinobu, on the rebound from his first big gay (unrequited, unconfessed) lurv, rebounds directly into impossibly hot and elite Kou at a gay bar. They share a night of hot sex, after which Shinobu scarpers off, leaving poor Kou stuck with room-money like he's nothing but a man-whore. Later that day, at work, the new president freshly returned from the States turns out to be ... surprise! Surprise! Drumroll, please! Wait for it! ... KOU, who takes to sexually harassing Shinobu likes it's Paris Fashion Week and Shinobu's bum-hole is a camera iris. Okeh, so far the story's a teensy bit predictable. Unpredictably, at the end of Chapter 2, Shinobu provides some refreshing honesty and a forthright explanation for his own behaviour, something which is almost unheard-of in yaoi. The rest of the story continues with this strong, new and interesting bend, with a very unexpected plot twist and reaction.