Aijin Wa Korosareru
Aijin wa Korosareru is, I think, less about love than it is about rejection and abandonment and the pure instinctual fear people have of not being wanted. That's what makes this story so strong. Hikari is deeply, deeply traumatized by his father's departure and his mother's insanity/emotional issues, and it makes him desperate for acceptance and love, so much so that when Kizaki reaches out even that little bit, Hikari grabs on. Which makes Haizawa and Hikari's relationship all that more painful, because Haizawa is one of those amazing characters that I think can only be found in sad, heartrending yaoi manga. Haizawa is sarcastic, and caustic, and manipulative, and mysterious from the beginning, and he probably has abandonment issues the length of his arm, but he thinks he's survived. He thinks he's over them, living his life, being a new man, and Hikari frightens him because Hikari hasn't. Hikari is a pure boy with pure emotions and he is at once drawn and repulsed by Haizawa, but Haizawa is scared and now I'm just psycho-analyzing this manga too much. Umetaro makes deeply flawed characters who are alive and emotional and filled with dimension, especially with Haizawa and Kizaki. I love how at first you think Kizaki is just going to be a minor character but then Umetarou draws Kizaki closer and closer to the heart of the story. Umetarou always gives Haizawa this subtly adult and mocking smile, which will become important later of course, and Haizawa is a man with so many faces and so many sides but the story makes them all believable. And this is a story about change, about growing up, about dealing with abandonment, about wanting just one person in the world to be happy that you were born, and I love it because even though there are not serious plot twists, what you think is going to happen doesn't. There is room for so many cliches, but the story doesn't go there. It takes middle ground, and takes you with it.
Orutana
In both style and writing, incredibly similar to Shoowa's "Non Tea Room" (http://www.mangago.me/read-manga/non_tea_room/), which is also about a love triangle where all participants are hiding more than they are revealing (and where some of the participants are in a band!). Here, Miki's childhood friend Keisuke introduces Miki to his current crush: a kouhai named Chiba. Miki, who has had a crush on Keisuke for a while, sublimates his feelings into seducing Chiba. What he doesn't expect is for Chiba to 1) fall hard for Miki and 2) to decipher Miki's real feelings about Keisuke. All the characters end up finding themselves torn between selfishness and their better selves: Miki wants to make things work with Chiba (who he sees as the epitome of everything he'll never be -- earnest and cute and a good kid) but can't seem to really commit, Chiba lets his doubts about Miki's feelings (which are well-founded!) inspire him to put Miki and Keisuke's friendship in danger, and Keisuke doesn't know how to prioritze his crush on Chiba and his friendship with Miki. There's a woodness to the placement and body language in the art, but in some areas the construction really shines. Chapter 2 is a particular stand-out: the bookends of "you sure are loved," the speech bubbles of Chiba and Miki as they talk about first names, the thread that goes from Miki's monologue to Keisuke's childhood memories. Despite Furutsuji's lack of titles to her name, there's a deftness to the characterization and writing. Keisuke feels straight despite his crush on Chiba, and he plays "straight, devoted friend" to Miki in a way that makes their friendship real, fleshed out with concrete, unique details that many other manga forget to add. Miki is the more experienced of the three, and starts off the story with a wicked streak, but he has a vulnerability that draw you to him like it must have drawn Keisuke. It's not that he's helpless, but you can tell when he's going to make a bad decision or let a bad decision be made on him. And Chiba toes the line of victim and victimizing. I don't buy the other readers' comments that sympathize with Chiba, who was, it's true, used by Miki in the beginning. Miki puts in a good faith effort to make right by Chiba's feelings. It's Chiba who uses Miki in the end, and I think his exit from the story is both poignant and fitting. He's not villanized, but Furutsuji doesn't want to vindicate him either. In the end, it's a story that feels really modern and young, but not immature. The resolution is kind to everyone, even Chiba, who has friends that will pull him out of his heartbreak, just as Keisuke is there for Miki's heartbreaks. A solid read all around.
Despicable
Two stories, both about bizarre love triangles. In one, two schoolboys develop an unhealthy cat-and-mouse game of affections, which involves roping in third parties as bait. One of them manages, in a Psyche Delico kind of way, to rope in a third party who bites as well as he takes to being chewed. In the second, a man falls in love with his brother-in-law, who is afraid he used marriage as a way of binding himself to a man who refuses to be helped. After his death, the brother in law and a best friend reminisce, and it ends, in a Psyche Delico kind of way, poorly. I find Psyche Delico most interesting in what she doesn't say, rather than what she actually puts in the mouths of her characters. This isn't "Choco Strawberry Vanilla" levels of fascinating and fresh three person dynamics, but ultimately it's one of the better fictional representations of what separates a crush from true love. The two professors/schoolboys in the first story are too afraid of rejection to have a loving, mutual relationship with each other, so (spoilers!) when the confession comes at the end, it doesn't branch off into "old men finding each other" comfort and understanding; instead, it terminates the relationship and causes Okuzono to pursue the next thing -- which just happens to be Utsugi, a guy who is too much like him and Yamashiro both for their own good. Utsugi, too, was most fascinated by Okuzono when Okuzono was at his darkest and most untouchable, i.e. most obsessed with Yamashiro, so one can only guess what the consummation of that relationship is going to look like, now that he finally has what he wants. You know that bit in bl manga where someone realizes, "I only loved you when you were in love with someone else"? That's it, that's the whole story. The second half is interesting for the dissonant climax and conclusion. We're looking at three guys who keep settling for their second best because they think or know their first choice is out of reach, but it's a Penrose triangle of impossibility that feeds into itself: Masaki thinks Otohiko is only sleeping with him because he can't get Daigo, and Otohiko can't tell Masaki that he's using Daigo as a reason to sleep with him, because he really does love Daigo, and so on. An interesting enough set-up, but Psyche Delico balanced atmosphere with emotional development and slighted the latter to lean more heavily on the former.
Subarashii Shitsuren
Nishida Higashi, queen of the salaryman oneshot, collects five (and a half) stories here, about high-powered, overworked men and the high-powered, overworked men who love them. There's a little variation with the third and fourth stories, which are set outside of the office, but the other three stories all star a chief and his secretary, but to very diverse ends. I find the first and the fifth oneshot to be Nishida at her best and most bittersweet, which might be expected for a collection titled "marvelous heartbreak." In the first, a man in love with his domineering section chief is suddenly forced to confront the impossibility of his love when he's raped by an ex's brother. In a bl reversal, the rape isn't a catalyst for love, and the section chief's family features heavily in the moral balance of the climax, which is tender and affirming even when it lets down its main character. The same plot elements -- a secretary in love with the president, a family, a dubiously consensual sex scene -- come back for the last oneshot, but the conclusion is far sadder. Nishida's plots are often about timing: bad timing that leads two characters to like each other in mismatched cycles, or coincidental timing that brings two people from completely different worlds together for life. In the fifth oneshot, though, the timing is uncharacteristically perfect, and the characters don't have any misunderstandings about each other's intentions or feelings, but it still ends marvelously, inescapably, in heartbreak.
Yakozen