muse ✨'s manga / #age gap(107)

Azuma, the teenaged son of a deceased kimono maker, falls for the mysterious Matsuoka--a man who insists on caring for Azuma and his sickly mother, saying he is only paying back a kindness. As he falls in love, Azuma grows jealous of his father's memory, believing that he was Matsuoka's savior, but his eyes are opened in more than one way when he visits Matsuoka in Tokyo. Original notes: A beautiful story. Matsuoka seeks to repay the kindness of the only person who ever treated him as human, the young son of a former employer. This author is spectacular.

First story: a high school student crushes on a guy and follows him to a gay bar. The guy will sleep with anyone and has never been in love, so they navigate the pitfalls of a new relationship. A sweet story, although not very well developed. The second story is completely skippable: tsundere to the extreme plus noncon that's handwaved because there was no penetration and a pervy teacher. No thanks.

A demanding young man in his early 20s struggling with his confidence falls in love with his tailor. This story broke a lot of genre stereotypes and it was incredibly touching and even erotic at times, but it always remained tasteful. I wish it were ten times longer. At Fujocon 2021, Scarlet said in her livestream that of all of her characters, Tetsuya is the one she would date. She also said he was the quietest during sex. Now we know!

A thirty-year-old man falls for the young, sweet bartender at the bar he frequents. I really wanted to see the scene of them having dinner with the bartender's dad!

A company's future president is in a relationship with his long-time tutor Chiharu - a possessive, emotional man who is so afraid Kazuki will leave him, he takes him to a cabin and slaps a chain on his ankle for a few days. Not the healthiest relationship - I wouldn't recommend anyone DO this - but it's fiction and they're really into each other.

Chapters 1-3: High schooler Haato feels a bond with his abusive mother's former lover Shibusawa, a member of the yakuza and the only person to have shown him kindness. Years later, Haato is working as a host and is openly in love with Shibusawa, who toes the line of a relationship but never crosses it until Haato loses someone close to him. The last story is about two coworkers: a man confesses to a coworker he sees feeding stray cats outside their building. ETA June 2020: After rereading the first story for the billionth time, I bought the manga. Hisashi does marry, but his husband dies post-story. We pick him back up here when he is 39 (chapter 5): https://www.mangago.me/read-manga/akanai_tobira/ July 2021: this might be the story I’ve read the most. Even more than the one about the hot dad who gets back together with his boyfriend after 20 years. Something about this makes me feel so sad and so moved. I wish there were more than just three chapters. I would love to know more about their daily life after they lived together.

AW! This is really sweet. The art does have some wacky proportions, but the kid is precious and these two like each other.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Two stories about men concerned with their weight or age, and the younger men who love them as they are.

An absolutely beautiful, mature, and bittersweet story. When his lover, hospital director Tsutsumi, doesn't recover after a stroke, Nakamichi - a pediatric surgeon - quietly cares for him while accepting his inevitable loss. His private grief is interrupted when Tsutsumi's son begins an internship at the hospital and expresses extreme disapproval of Nakamichi's relationship with his father. What follows is a gradual story of understanding. As the younger Tsutsumi comes to know Nakamichi, he grows angry at his father for keeping Nakamichi a secret, and eventually his feelings turn to love. I'm so happy I read this in spite of the slightly lower rating. This was such a thoughtful, powerful story - it made me cry many times. Although Sensei is essentially absent throughout the story, he plays an integral part. We never quite see Nakamichi get past him, although his affection for the younger Tsutsumi has grown to the point where Nakamichi is ready to accept him as his lover by the end of the story. What struck me most was how much Nakamichi changed after he transferred to the country hospital; I wonder how happy he truly was before. I feel he'd resigned himself to scraps of stolen happiness - like the cup - but never imagined a lifetime of it. The hospitals themselves seem like metaphors for Nakamichi's mental state: the city hospital is sophisticated but confusing. It's so large, the staff doesn't even realize Nakamichi was the one who cared for sensei before he died, just as no one recognized his grief. But the country hospital is small, simple, and surrounded by nature. The people are friendly and help each other. Now that I think about it, Nakamichi and the younger Tsutsumi's relationship is associated with nature and the outdoors, beginning with their moment in the hospital garden when Tsutsumi falls out of a window and then holds Nakamichi as he cries. In contrast to his father, the younger Tsutsumi is open about his affection for Nakamichi, even crawling into his hospital bed toward the end of the story. And while Nakamichi's relationship with sensei had been completely behind closed doors, utterly secret, in the final scene, just as Nakamichi has decided to accept the younger Tsutsumi's feelings, someone slides open the door to reveal both of them in the bath. I so appreciate the subtlety of the writing in this story and its exploration of complicated feelings. I look forward to reading more by this mangaka.