Kejora's manga / #cooking(3)

4 stars // It was good! I haven't read one shots in awhile and this one is a cute warm up for more to come. A brief summary is that there's a dude who gets this erotic feeling whenever he eats good food and there's another dude who could only eat his own cooking because no other food is ever good enough for him. The premise is straight-forward and we're immediately thinking that "ah okay this is how they're going to end up" One thing about this that i wish would have been different is i kind of wanted the brown-haired dude to be the seme, it would've been a really interesting dynamic to see the usually so cold and quiet, scary-looking dude to be vulnerable only for the cheerful dude, but eh if that happened we wouldn't get the very fun sexual metaphors of sex and cooking which i enjoyed a lot.

3 stars // A "little" bit too sweet and fluffy for my taste, but i guess that's just me being the edgy emo death and darkness that i am, but this is really really cute!! Overloaded with cuteness i am now in cuteness heaven where it's filled with nothing but cute babies and dogs. First off i would like to point the absolute madness that is them getting straight to the "i will marry you" even though they just met like, two to three hours ago, that's something in manga that i'll never understand like they just got it on right from the beginning and work from there, but since this is a cute story i'll let it pass. Also maybe it's because the art style but i don't find Uke very delinquent-ish at all, like the earrings and the way he dresses literally doesn't help when he has that kind of face, it'd probably look better if he had sanpaku eyes and actually *looks* scary and intimidating, but maybe it wouldn't fit the art style vibe so there's no helping it. The whole story in general was a mix, you have funny moments, sad moments, happy and fluffy ones, and of course the star of the show Satoru-kun the pudding lover! I'm not a fan of stories with babies as a plot device but i'd be lying if i don't find them cute as fuck, i would kill for Satoru, he deserves all the puings. Not much to say other than, go abroad and get officially married there! You can do that! Or just buy wedding rings and get officiated on your own! (I literally thought a wedding ring was gonna be in the story but it's not, a waste of opportunity T-T)

3 stars // and so begins my journey of reviewing Kurahashi Tomo-sensei's works. A few years ago sensei sat at top ten of my favorite BL creators, now i don't even know if i truly, genuinely, like sensei's works. At first glance they look interesting, the concept and characters vary and seldom use mainstream tropes, the art is very pretty, it's almost like a Natsume Isaku-feel with the sensei's works, but it is just, not. Take this one for an example, to be honest the premise was interesting, an age gap isn't a stranger in BL stories and at the time i was actually actively looking for them because i had a crush for someone 10 years older so i wanted to just throw my feelings into those age gap mangas. I came across this manga while searching and thought, "oh ok, interesting, and it's Kurahashi Tomo" Straight to the review-- it was, for the most part, very underwhelming. It wasn't bad, but it's not sensei's best works either. The plot is literally a straight line, it's so, so easy, and instead of creating actual drama that could maybe spice up the shape of the plot, it just, halts itself in the middle because of the Uke's conflicted feelings of wanting to protect the Seme's "youth" and that he should find better people. WHat? I was literally sitting there, confused as fuck. Wasn't he the one that picked him up and feed him in his own home? You could argue that he was just trying to be a nice person but Uke admitted it himself that part of him brought the Seme home because of his face, meaning he had ulterior motives but probably regretted it once the deed was done. And also, the Seme's whole existence is weird, what do you mean he just got kicked out by his girlfriend and is now flat out homeless and then p a s s e d out in the middle of a busy road? And by God he just met the Uke for a day and now he's in love with him, how does his brain work? And isn't he supposed to be straight? Where's the denial and questioning his existence part?? What?? And also, i don't even know how sensei wanted the readers to like, feel the emotions of the second couple's story in the end when the two of them were responsible for traumatizing the Uke, IN HIS OWN HOME. Like are we just going to forget that they're the ones who forced the fling to happen resulting in Uke's feelings getting fucking hurt and broken because a married man just fucked him and then after that immediately regrets it and chose his wife, man the things that could do to someone's pride? And they didn't even do like a proper apology, it was done half-jokingly and i don't know how Uke is still accepting them in his house, i would've kicked them out because i don't want to see their faces anymore. It was all just a mess, it's not confusing plot-wise because it's so obvious what's going to happen, it just urks me the things that happened to get there, flipping through the pages were boring it almost looked like i was speedrunning it, didn't even bother to read the second couple's story whole-heartedly because by that point i was just done. Why three stars then you ask? idk, i guess for nostalgia reasons, there's nothing *wrong* about this manga it's just very boring, and pretty art is my wekaness so three stars, if i didn't like the art style it'll probably be two stars ╮(￣ω￣;)╭