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

Sequel to Sayanara Game.

Easy paced love story between Ryuuta, an accountancy student, who spends his summers surfing and falling in love with Naoki, the owner of a small beachside pub where Ryuuta works. For Ryuuta, it's an unrequited love as Naoki is married, but there are personality problems between the Mister and Missus of which he is unaware until he discovers that Naoki has been abandoned. Now Ryuuta faces the difficult task of wooing a much older man with a painful past and a character that subconsciously armours himself against rejection. This is a lot to ask for a young man with relatively little life experience or wisdom. Instead, he must call upon a leap of faith. Unohana has crafted an interesting and insightful story with believable and entertaining side characters in a resort village setting far from urban distractions.

Cutesy wootsy story of an unsinkably positive and sweet fluffball of a boy and the scary dude with the Sanpaku stare who falls for him.

Superrich heir, Akag,i is a regular Eeyore of a man, always rained on by his very own personal thundercloud, and he has no problem shoving away the one bright and sunny person in his existence, Ichimori, who loves him and protects him from dastardly villains who want to get him mixed up in their schemes. Akagi isn't falling for any bit of it. The question on my mind is how a likeable dude like Ichimori, who clearly thinks about others first, could fall for such a gormless wet blanket. Also, I know that romance writing holds a special place in its twisted little heart for the superrich, and I know that valid schemes for getting these Scroogie creeps to spread some of their hoard is better than trying to trick it out of them (for some reason), but in this day and age, wealth is looking more like supervillain material than a sympathy set up.

Michiru, a dream-eating demon, gets caught by Taiga, the target of his hunger, who clearly misunderstands why he's always floating around.

Fumi rebounds straight from rejection to his accommodating kouhai, Hibiki, who, with a pair of glasses, looks exactly like the guy who rejected him. With smart, snappy dialogue and well-realized characterizations, this yaoi manga is more mature and interesting than the initial premise.

A lonely boy picks up a stray cat boy and slowly allows his heart to warm up.

Short stories themed on a sex tour company, which in the hands of Nishimura Shuuko, usually involve kinks. This one includes the 'King of the Ridge' public sex slave story. Unfortunately, the first story also includes the typical Interfering and Manipulative Bitch of Yaoi stereotyped female character.

There are a lot of preposterous notions in this manga, almost enough to make a reader yell "Rubbish!" and hurl their tablets across the room. Take the nonsense that any client who presents enough of a security risk to be stationed on an actual secret floor in a legitimate luxury hotel would be referred to as Mr. Secret Floor instead of the Japanese equivalent of Mr. Roberts or Mr. Jones, like everywhere else in the world. Or the idea that a writer, even a bestselling one like, say, Stephen King, would have enough clout or power to demand that their business partners either abase themselves, or go back to the office empty-handed. Setting aside the wealth-porn and power-pandering to concentrate on the story, it turned out to be a much better read than impressions left after the first couple of chapters. It really did. So, if you can grit your teeth for a little while, stick to it until the end, at the very least you won't feel uncontrollable rage. Probably. The romantic trope which drives the story along is whether Yagami, the diva-like best-selling writer, is exploiting first-time editor and wide-eyed man-child Aiba. They're certainly having sex. And a whole lot of it. But because the readers, like Aiba, can't tell if (a) Yagami demands humiliating sex from everyone in a business relationship with him, (b) the collection of pretty boys cluttering up his reception room comprise an actual sex-harem, or (c) one manipulative rival, in particular, out-foxes Aiba for Yagami's heart, let alone his business, most of the sex turns out to be unsettling instead of hot. Aiba, though still not as independent as I like 'em, turns out to be pluckier, more positive and more in possession of a spine than all earlier indications, and Yagami isn't quite as much of the obnoxious, self-centred and toxic boor as he first comes across. This is what makes this story worth reading until the end.

Multiple stories of standard cute yaoi scenarios. (1) Cupcake yakuza, (2) Misunderstanding about purity, (3) Prodigal returns to now-legal adult. Not bad, but mostly forgettable.