I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #romance(460)

A shy and sensitive boy, who feels too afraid and socially awkward to express himself, engages in a powerful moment of nonverbal communication when he admires a handsome stranger, overcomes his fear for a brief moment when he is required to come to that stranger's defense after a wrongful accusation, and attracts love from the man in return. Since this is too much, the stranger tempers his passion to a mutual friendship, which has the shy boy all a-flutter, just as a few cautionary signs about the stranger's character are revealed. Good potential. Look forward to seeing where it leads.

A strange two-part short story by Yamane Ayano, whose two parts seem completely incongruous with each other. The first is almost comic, involving train chikkan and a heroic rescuer who is little better than the molester. The second is a touching and frightening ghost story which is almost too tragic to belong in such an otherwise light piece. In either case, it's engaging.

A boy with lacklustre study skills is sent to his cousin's summer home for tutoring and to study up for university entrance exams. Although he gets extra lessons, it isn't like the typical tutor x student yaoi. There is a real sense of connection and joy which happens first making this quite a refreshing and heartwarming story. There is a charming side story about manicurists.

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.

Chitose has the bad habit of hit-&-run seduction on gay men, teasing them until they fall for him, then dropping his heterosexuality like an anvil over all their hopes. But the tables turn when he comes across Narita, who turns seduction into a different sort of game, gambling that he can successfully seduce Chitose within a month, but no other stakes are declared, and no ante put up. So what does Chitose have to lose?

Iku is an unsociable otaku who avoids human contact after moving to Tokyo, but has acquired the uncanny ability to see ghosts ... or, more specifically, the ghost of Seo Mimori, on the pedestrian overpass near his apartment. Once Mimori realizes Iku can see and communicate with him, he follows Iku home and soon the pair are living together, except for that one moment at 10:45 every night when Mimori returns to the bridge to re-enact his last corporeal act. Stung by the feelings of helplessness brought on by his mother's attempted suicide when the effort of raising Iku grew too hard after his father abandoned them, Iku swears he will never let Mimori experience the moment of his death again, and his passion leads to Mimori falling in love with him. Iku starts sleuthing to find out who Seo Mimori was and how he came to be on the bridge. This leads him, not to the grave that he fully expects, but to a hospital bed and a new set of problems which are addressed in Ohanu's beautiful, but confusing to follow sequel, 23:45 Re:. It takes some skilled and careful mining to extract the gold from this story and the sequel, but it's worth every moment.

Cute story of a couple with no real problems to speak of and no real conflict to generate plot. So cute story, but not particularly memorable.

After a tragic life, rewarded by a singular serendipitous experience of the Sublime in External Nature involving an unspoiled South Sea paradise and a gorgeous native islander, Zomu achieves professional statues as a photographer, but his heart was so captivated by that one moment of Satori, everything else pales by comparison. The years and work grind at his soul, until at last, he finds himself divorced, half-blinded by lupus and longing to reconnect to that experience of Eden, and in particular, to the islander whose coming-of-age ceremony he witnessed. As fortune has it, the islander is Mani, a now-embittered specialist in auto-immune disorders, who has rejected his past, deserted his clan and tribe, and feels embarrassed by the ritual symbols of his connection to the islands. Zomu pushes forward with an attempt to bring Mani back to the sacred grounds from his youth, meeting opposition and resistance at every step. The result is a powerful and deeply felt story of two wounded men in their middle age coming to terms with the ferocious toll of existence and struggle on the spirit and their attempt to recapture Paradise Lost. Okadaya Tetuzoh's story is mature, enriching and beautifully drawn. READ THIS!!!

A highschool letter of confession goes amiss causing years of grief and frustration for these two. The story is cute, but the art work is a bit strange.

There isn't a socially awkward situation that Tsuchiya can't aggravate by making it even more socially awkward, but Serizawa does himself no favours by holding his cards a little too closely to the chest. Serizawa wants Tsuchiya to help out with planning school field trips to a region of Japan he seems to know intimately, but that's a cover for his real feelings, and Tsuchiya knows it and throws it back in his face. Asou Mitsuaki has a great sense of drama and can make the unlikeliest characters seem alive and in the moment. It helps that her artwork is so beautiful too.