I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #multiple stories(42)

(1) An office worker seems to always be returning a colleague's lost items. They wouldn't be left behind on purpose, would they? (2) A café's owner goes to the hospital leaving his son and the waiter behind to man the shop. An unlikely fairy godfather shows up to nurture romance. Nice art and good stories, but it doesn't look like this scanlation's going anywhere fast.

A series of earthy oneshots based on the hilarity and weirdness of sex, its humiliating aspects more than its transcendental romance. In this sense, the stories are truthful and realistic, but not easy going. Some of them are almost painfully embarrassing, but there is a kind of beauty in that. I have a lot more respect for Aniya Yuiji after this volume than I did before. Her artwork used to bother me, especially the sweatier, gruntier images. Now I appreciate what she's trying to say. The last story really sums it up. It's worth reading for that alone.

A wide range of mainly school-setting stories about friends becoming gay lovers. Some of the earlier art and translations are a bit rough and threw me out, but towards the end of the volume, both the translation and the stories improved drastically. The last story, about the real cost of adulthood, is excellent.

A gorgeous collection of stories by Minezuki Akira: (1) The first story isn't as engaging as the other two. In it, a fast-food manager falls in love at first sight with a proficiency expert sent by the parent company to monitor his shop. (2) A ghost or demon who feeds off of human warmth falls in love with a medicine seller who travels on his mountain during a snowstorm. (3) A sculpture student falls in love with his mentor, an artistic genius who sculpts by touch. The art is so beautiful.

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.

A series of cute, fluffy yaoi short stories playing on familiar tropes.

A series of stories featuring demanding or tsundere ukes, some more successful than others. The main story focuses on the heir of a bath house and a man who comes to help him as an attendant, and stays as his lover.

Amagi Reno, ergo crack.