I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #twisted(8)

Yeah, blergh. Somebody licked some moldy wallpaper and started to hallucinate. This manga was the result.

Tamaquis Wren specializes in yaoi where the uke surrenders himself to love so much, he gives up his own dignity. Dignity is reinstated by love returned, a classic romance trope. This story is hardcore, however, for, instead of love, the sole motivation is vengeance, and there is no surrender, just rage-fueled detachment and dissociation. To extract the cruelest revenge he can, Yan, the son of a murdered king, becomes the favourite catamite in the court of the Chinese Emperor who committed regicide against Yan's beloved father. Bent on destroying his enemies and slowly debauching the Emperor past his body's capacity for tolerance, the only revenge Yan can extract is what he has, himself, endured. In the end, in spite of page after page of strangely utilitarian sex and seduction with child rape, gang rape, slavery, sex cults, drugs, felching, castration, BDSM, odd sex toys, vegetable-slicing(!) and a huge and surprising reveal right at the end, the story is empty and cold, just like Yan. Weirdly, it's the court intrigue and politics that move it beyond mere shota wish-fulfilment smut fantasy and redeem it (for me; I can't abide child rape), transforming it into Wren's best work. It isn't romantic at all and, for once, Wren doesn't pretend that soul-crushing depravity and oppression are romantic. Wren's drawings are distinctive and stylized, but here they focus on lips, hair, eyes, skin and a boy whose naked body is modified to look like a young woman's. Everyone else is nameless, fully dressed and, either a wild-eyed and lust-maddened rapist, or a fellow scheming manipulator — distorted through the lens of obsession. Yan is an interesting character who gains his individual freedom, revenge and personal power, although nothing else — certainly not love.

Predator teacher preys on lonely, isolated and underaged students who are probably enduring abuse at home, grooms them for abuse, then rapes them. Yes, because the students are underaged, it's rape.

One-shots about dark fetishes: humiliation, terror, rape, gang rape, public sex, train chikan and voyeurism. No dancing around the issue of consent here; it's all heavy, emotionally detached blunt!smut which left me dry, bored and feeling sorry for the afflicted character.

Twisted period drama about a family with dark secrets and madness, leading to modern era abuse.

A story about real cruelty and manslaughter.

Here is a sad tale about obsession and grief. If Natsuke could rewind the years back to high school when he rejected an ardent confession from Haruomi, the boy he led on, would he? Haruomi hasn't moved forward, instead numbing his pain in masochistic encounters with anonymous men, all strangers upon whom he projects Natsuke's face. When Haruomi uses the occasion of the marriage of a mutual friend to engage at long last in a similar sort of cold, painful sex with Natsuke, he is still unfulfilled. Natsuke remains obstinate and unmoved, even through a clumsy blackmail attempt. What will it take to break through this emotional stalemate?