I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #violence(9)

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

These two stories gave me pause. They are interesting, but tough, and more realistic, than romantic, with bittersweet resolutions. (1) Chizumi's postpones dealing with his unresolved feelings for a dead friend by raising the friend's son, Ibuki, and having grief-relief sex with his other friend, Yatabe. When Ibuki confesses, Chizumi indulges his infatuation far too much for my personal comfort, but he does realize his mistake and takes action to correct it. Unfortunately, it throws his entire motive for rearing Ibuki into the realm of exploitation, rather than a sincere concern for his well-being, and he wounds Ibuki with, both, the inevitable rejection and the wildly disparate balance of power (Ibuki being completely dependent and vulnerable in their situation.) Realistically, people do betray ones who love them this way, without atoning or making amends, but it leaves a bitter aftertaste. Not quite as bitter as (2) the relationship between Kazuhi and Ichiyama, where atonement is expressed through violence. Yamakami Ryou's stories have an unsettling sense of personal contradiction, with pain and betrayal at the heart, but they are insightful and highly readable dramas, well worth the time and effort.

Udou's bitterness and breezy cruelty towards others is rooted in an unrequited love for Kiyotake, a basketball teammate from high school. His misery and jealousy has prompted him to commit despicable acts against the very person he loved, twice. Now, in college, karma has caught up to him and his feelings are revealed in all their rawness, but what does Kiyotake have to say about them? Here is how one man's kindness can redeem someone who has fallen so completely. Ogawa Chise's stories often go over the top into outright madness, but this story hits all the right emotional notes without going too far.

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 street-curb pick up leads to a drinking session and gay sex for a young man who is concerned about keeping his guest safe from physical abuse.

A variety of different slice-of-life stories ranging from older virgins, violent rapists, roommates ... all somewhat melancholy and jaded.

Can a flawless beauty become more beautiful once scarred? A manager seems to think so, after he takes over the life of a supermodel whose beauty and career are destroyed after a violent criminal maims and scars him with a knife attack. He will gain nothing for himself out of this project, except the love of a dependent man. Interesting and complex story, in which the surprise ending is a distinct lack of O. Henry twist.

1950s jazz standard "Mona Lisa" is the leitmotif for this crime thriller about two yakuza middlemen who fall madly in love with each other's *respectable* personnae, and can't let the delusion or deception drop even when they catch each other in the middle of an unwitting double-cross. The stakes are high and the reader is kept on the edge of her seat while these two men try to find a path through incredible opposition and peril back to each other.

A boy at school tries to rise above his loser friends with dark and tragic results.