vignette00's manga / #oneshots(43)

Three separate stories where one member of the couple is a little bit twisted and in his own head. Primarily sex scenes (hence the low rating on my part), so if you're into very smutty bl, this is for you. Probably my favorite is the second chapter of the high school story, where one of the characters breaks out a truly hysterical mating dance. Story three (office workers) opens with a sex scene that may be dubcon, but all in all, most of the story is just slightly nasty good fun.

I have to be honest, I loved this collection. The first story should come with trigger warnings, because it starts off so sweetly you don't realize what you're in for -- it's a brilliant exploration of its own thesis statement, which is, "what happens after the love story?" An unrequited love becomes a requited love, but one side of the couple becomes intensely, emotionally obsessed with the love succeeding, to the point where it becomes self-destructive and hard to watch. Jaryuu always has a little bit of that psychotic darkness swirling in her stories, and this one was definitely threatening you with that cliff into the tragic, only she pulls you back the last minute. I can't say the characters really found a solution, but they seem to be trying for a "happily ever after," so rest assured that the midway point of the first story is not indicative of its ending. Then, the second story is an oddly coded non-bl, between a transwoman and a wayward young man who turns out to have been a childhood friend of the woman. It's not a romance, really, more like a found family kind of story that hints at a deeper, but maybe simply platonic? connection between the two characters. It's heartwarming in a very nontraditional way, or at least nontraditional for bl. I have to give props to Jaryuu for not making the transwoman necessarily "pass" as a woman -- there's a celebration of gender noncomformity, and while that's a punchline for a joke or two, it's never portrayed narratively as a negative or disgusting thing. Again, a non-ending. The last is a story of two classmates that jumps around in the timeline and always seems to be hinting at something less fluffy, but really it's just a story about two people whose high school romance was thwarted and get a chance to reconnect now that they're older. The art and character archetypes are familiar but loving and warm. Not a standout, but not a dud either.

A student finds out that his classmate is having sex with a teacher who is going to get married (to a woman, mind) in October. The oneshot is mostly two (very good) sex scenes -- one between the classmate and the teacher that the main character accidentally witnesses, and then the other between the main chara and his classmate during the confrontation. Despite that, there's a tangible sadness to the ending, which manages to convey a slow fade of intense emotions in maybe two pages. I kept waiting for the title ("you said, laughing") to drop, and I think it does, on the rooftop, in a way that hints at deeper feelings. Intriguing, and all the more so for being a short oneshot.