I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #trauma(5)

A sombre reunion between Yuzuru and Daisuke, two former lovers who parted when Daisuke decided he wanted to become a professional athlete. It was Yuzuru who left, mysteriously, and now that Daisuke has had to abandon his dreams of playing professional baseball, and is divorcing his wife whose loyalty depended on his status in sports, he is forced to confront the past. The first chapter ends poorly, but the rest of the story improves.

Kyouya, an antisocial neurophysics researcher with a tragic past, is kidnapped and subjected to sexual stimulus experiments by a mad scientist who happens to be a professor at their university hospital. Kisaragi, who has seen Kyouya's better side, rescues him and secrets him in his brother's hospital, while the mad scientist is still hunting for him. An interesting premise and promising start. Sadly, it looks like the translators have dumped the project.

A series of oneshots in which violence and control are sub-themes: (1) an abused boy finds love in the arms of a kind widower with a baby daughter; (2) a middle manager who cannot smile falls for a new office worker who can't stop smiling; (3) a pair of salarymen negotiate their way through a master/pet relationship; (4) a pair of schoolboys with deceptive appearances negotiate their way through a master/slave relationship.

A heart transplant imbeds violent compulsions, foreign desires, and fragmented, very tragic memories belonging to the donor within the personality of a schoolboy. He believes and behaves as though he going mad in this supernatural thriller.

A finicky eater attracts the attention of the kinky homosexual chef of a fine bistro who combines tabletop sex with feedings in order to stimulate the young man's gourmand tastes, never realizing that a history of betrayal and deception factors into the young man's food aversions. An interesting take on the relationship between appetite and desire, the emotional impact of treachery and betrayal on the gut, the way misery wipes out self-worth and personal boundaries and creates the willingness to be used, and the healing effects of love, even kinky love. Zaria's art is, as always, gorgeous, and this is a surprisingly sweet story, even without the stickier ingredients.