Tatoeba Konna Koi no Hanashi
In some ways, this is an incredibly generic (but sweet!) story: Akira develops a friendship with a commenter on his food blog, Nanjou, who turns out to be a businessman who moves to Tokyo just to live and start a relationship with Akira. Nanjou is straightforward to the point of stubbornness; no semblance of genre-common dubious consent here, Nanjou insists on texting Akira whenever he's ready to hold hands, kiss, or have sex. Akira, on the other hand, is relatably human, unwilling (for good reason) to invest in this bizarre relationship with Nanjou and still trying to play both sides, like with his sex friend who he knows doesn't love him but with whom he still gets attached and emotional... all while Nanjou is his roommate! The twist, of course, is that this manga is based on a true story!! Yanagi, the real Akira, talks about how wonderfully insightful Hamada was and how quickly she was able to get to the core of his character, and I think that's evident from how much Akira shines for me in this story. Nanjou is more opaque to me, and exhausts/frustrates me the same way he does with Akira, but feels less real. Maybe that's because it's Yanagi that Hamada spoke to. It doesn't detract from the story much, but in some ways the most interesting part of this series isn't the story itself but the interviews with Yanagai at the end.
Principle