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

Shinohara Satoru has moved from the country (and newly wed sister) to a 6-tatami mat apartment in Tokyo in order to achieve his dreams of independence. Izumi Yuushin, his new neighbour, tests that resolve to the limits as he is aware of all Satoru's shortcomings on the personal responsibility scale. How's that? Well, Yuushin is a free spirited kind of guy himself, and moved away from his own doting mother in order to perform as an actor in a theatre troupe, and it isn't as though he wasn't in that same boat himself, once. The gay attraction business is just a side effect from being caring individuals, but the free-spirited acting stuff throws enough doubt into this idiot couple's miso soup that there is actually some conflict, resolution and plot to go along with this little family soap opera.

Two businessmen with a past are trapped in an elevator, which gives them the chance to explore suppressed longings, regrets and bittersweet ruefulness.

Series of oneshots and two-parters all dealing with seduction.

Wizard and real estate agent go house-hunting together. Some evil force tries to interfere with their plans and gets discovered and dealt with. I kind of wish that Imai Yuumi showed me that story instead of telling it to me in snatches between the more mundane angsting over 'he loves me, he loves me not'. Still, the story is cute so far. It is will be more exciting later on, won't it?

A gorgeous retelling of the Romeo x Juliet romance trope with two boys from very different backgrounds, one an onnagata at a traveling traditional theatre, the other the overburdened son of an arrogant and fearful doctor. They meet up in the doctor's small town where he holds too much power, recognize the same struggles in each other and reach a fateful decision. The ending surprised me. Quite an inspirational and happy-making story.

Inspired by ante-WWII western domestic architecture and gardens, Kinoshita Keiko daydreamed up a story about Yukiyo, the gay man who inherited one such home, where he lives with Takashina, his lover, and Yuuta, the son of his ex-wife and the man he once loved, who suffered from depression and commit suicide many years previously. Filled with remorse for confessing to his late friend, and muddled by disappointment and unresolved grief, Yukiya swings wildly between seducing and rejecting Takashina. Things remain in stasis until Yuuta makes a confession of his own, summoning Yukiya's protective instincts. A slow building emotional simmer with some very beautiful watercolour drawings.

Domestic couple story. Hajiwara, a single gay man who had been rejected as a child by his father and stepmother after the remarriage, vows he will never put another child through this experience and swears off all family men, no matter how attractive he finds them. Fortunately, he is no match for Yuuto Maki and his very cute son, Ritsu. There are moments in the story that give pause, but the overwhelming feel of the manga is cutesy wootsy.

Yuki is the fulcrum between his childhood friends, Chihiro and Ryuutarou, in this love triangle soap opera by Hiro Reiichi. Yuki is also an amateur mountaineer amongst professionals in a dangerous sport, and it's on one of these expeditions that he receives and accepts a love confession, which has the expected consequence of banishing the third friend from their circle of intimacy just as tragedy strikes. But all is not fair in love and war when it comes to yaoi, so this otherwise perfectly structured yaoi romance acquires a sentimental and slightly clunky resolution. Even so, it's a lively story and one of Hiro Reiichi's better ones.

A food truck chef and a salaryman connect over the love of sweet pancakes.

A company president courts a fickle and seductive bartender.