muse ✨'s manga / #multiple stories(215)

Dropped after the first story. Sweet but too much unnecessary drama.

Three stories of first love. The photographer's story was the most poignant for me, but all of these were a bit too short for the reader to fall in love alongside them.

I read the first story and it's really sweet! A realistic look at not-quite one-sided love, but how two people don't reach the same level of feeling at the same time, told through the story of a boy who bought a cell phone so he could take photographs of a school friend whom he meets on the roof on Tuesdays.

The second story is the best one. Two boys forcibly separated two years ago find one another in high school.

The first few were cute, but then there was the typical "I shouldn't sleep with my students but whoops" story, and then the style seemed to change, so I stopped.

A very sweet, mature collection of oneshots. Chapter five is sad but not devastating. The rest mostly focus on the beginning or rekindling of relationships. Really calming and nice.

Nice although not particularly memorable. The moral code enforcers at school have a few romances among them, and there is one romance between a student who thinks sleeps around and the teacher he's fallen for (post graduation).

The uncle's story is the most poignant. The others are a little hard to follow but enjoyable. Overall this has a melancholy feel, even in the happier relationships.

These are good, solid one-shots. 1 - Two friends have a drunken hookup that becomes serious 2 - Childhood friends harbor feelings for each other going back to kindergarten, but are held back by societal expectations 3 - A flower wishes to meet the man who cares for him 4 - A future heir who has been sheltered his whole life is told to live for one month with a low-level employee at his grandfather's company, who shows him the world. note to self: this is the one you look for all the time with the two friends who hook up during a heat wave

The teacher/student grow close but kept things professional (snow day aside), have shared interests, the student makes all advances, the teacher puts a stop to them, and only after graduation do they discuss a relationship or do anything physical. They genuinely cared for each other and I really loved their story. I especially liked that our MC came out to his best friends, who were lovely and supportive. A+ for that. His friends have their own story (and these two have a cameo!) in the manga Bokura ga Koi wo Ushinau Riyuu. I tagged both with this story's title so they're easy to find. The seventh chapter is a story of unrequited love and being someone stand-in. It's bittersweet but not hopeless. Stings, though. The second-to-last chapter is about two men who never told each other how they felt while they were at school and met twelve years later, when one is married and the other thinking about marriage. They have to hurt the people in their lives or recognize this goes no further. The final line is about a fruitless tree making fruit, so it rings hopeful. The final chapter is our MC & his sensei when the MC is away at school, on a weekend visit. :-)