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

University dorm roommates develop an attachment to each other over the pain of family estrangement and loss.

Series of very realistic short stories on the theme of unrequited love, usually from a gay young man toward a heterosexual young man who is his friend.

An old-school compilation of mainly PWP yaoi short stories drawn in a dated style. The stories aren't bad: (1) A rickshaw driver runs off with a client who turns out to be in denial about having a crush on him for years, (2) Just as a gay Tokyo-based hairdresser fears he's falling too deeply in love, his father dies, prompting a mad dash to Okinawa after turning off his cellphone and hiding his contacts, (3) A series of afternoon delight trysts between a Japanese salaryman and an American GI stationed in Japan turns out to mean more than either wants to admit, (4) A highschooler seme wants to make graduation as special as possible for his uke, and (5) A boy becomes inspired to learn piano after being relieved from a shock and fright by a dancer.

Not Takagi Ryou's best stuff by any stretch. Multiple stories which fall a bit flat and dull for lack of adequate character development and subtlety. She seems to do better with fantasies.

Two short stories and a spin-off. (1) A hedge-fund manager, who always tries to buy off his sexual partners with money, hires a detective to find his former sex-friend in order to reclaim an exorbitant sum he stole. Neither anticipate what happens when they find him. (2) Drinking buddies turn into lovers, but can't seem to abandon the competitive streak in bed. (3) The lover who absconded with the hedge-fund manager's petty cash comes crashing into his past when a yakuza enforcer shows up and asks him to resume his duties as the heir. To put him off, the lover gives him a task he thinks is well beyond him: to make love until he comes. Interesting and with an authentic vibe, but not particularly realistic. Monden Akika has a thing for Ojii-samas and scruffy men.

Hate sex interwarbs warfare between a troll-for-hire and a social media manager, with the troll being raped and blackmailed for comeuppance.

Multiple stories: (1) A haunted guitar presents a dejected teenager with a mysterious, but beloved, ghost and a family riddle. (2) Phone sex and identity confusion makes for a slapstick romance. (3) The love of dogs saves an abused young man from his captor. Kano Shuiko's characters tend to have a goofball authenticity to them. They seem very real, although the situations they find themselves in do not. Interesting stories that sometimes go a little too far.

(1) Niwa, a well-groomed and smartly attired college student, is paired up for a class presentation with Hitomi, who hides his shyness and socially awkward mannerisms behind a grim beard and gloomy curtain or hair. Hitomi turns out to be gentle, gracious and accomplished in surprising ways, but it isn't until a radical makeover exposes his beauty, and the women who once blew him off start clustering around him that Niwa realizes the true nature of his feelings. (2)Touta has appalling luck, but it only seems to strike whenever he's in the proximity of his childhood friend, Kei-chan, who has taken to carrying 3 extra sets of clothes for Touta to change into at school, since they are sure to be ruined by the end of each day. It seems there is a reason for this bad luck, but it needs a third party to call it out.

(1) A conventional sex-for-goodies story—in this case, the hot designer and his clothes—turns romantic when it turns out that the designer got more than just a toy-boy out of the deal. The continuity isn't quite as seamless, however, so read carefully.

Beautifully drawn, tentative shounen ai stories which address the issue of men coming to terms with taboos. The first deals with an age-gap that requires the boy and man to restrain themselves. The second is about autonomy and vulnerability to harassment. The stories deal with the subjects in a well-reasoned, calm and mature slice-of-life fashion. There is nothing unsettling or surreal.