• manga,  Uncategorized

    Osananajimi wa Boko no Hero! – Mizuki Tama

    Haruzake Nao is a sweet boy who has started work at a flower shop. His cousin, Monjirou, is the intimidating Vice President of the Tadano Group. Since childhood Monjirou has protected Nao from all sorts of trouble.
    While Monjirou may harbor secret intentions towards Nao, Nao himself may think of Monjirou as more than just a childhood friend. Monjirou is, after all, his hero!

    Ugh! Fucked up and cliched. There’s innocent and there’s weak and stupid.  There’s protective and there’s creepy and obsessive. Guess which one’s what.

    Monjirou and Nozawa was a better ship.

    (source: http://www.mangago.me)

  • book,  Uncategorized

    25821026

    Candy Man: Bitter Taffy – Amy Lane

    Rico Gonzalves-Macias didn’t expect to fall in love during his internship in New York—and he didn’t expect the boss’s son to out them both and get him fired either. When he returns to Sacramento stunned and heartbroken, he finds his cousin, Adam, and Adam’s boyfriend, Finn, haven’t just been house-sitting—they’ve made his once sterile apartment into a home.

    When Adam gets him a job interview with the adorable, magnetic, practically perfect Derek Huston, Rico feels especially out of his depth. Derek makes it no secret that he wants Rico, but Rico is just starting to figure out that he’s a beginner at the really important stuff and doesn’t want to jump into anything with both feet.

    Derek is a both-feet kind of guy. But he’s also made mistakes of his own and doesn’t want to pressure Rico into anything. Together they work to find a compromise between instant attraction and long-lasting love, and while they’re working, Rico gets a primer in why family isn’t always a bad idea. He needs to believe Derek can be his family before Derek’s formidable patience runs out—because even a practically perfect boyfriend is capable of being hurt.

    It was a scene worthy of a Mexican telenovela. Up and coming young man caught sleeping with his boss’s in-the-closet son. Father confronts young man in front of co-workers and throws him out of the office. Young man begs the rich man’s son “come with me”. Rich man’s son is dragged away by bodyguard.

    Such was the end of Rico Gonzalves-Macias’ promising internship in Manhattan. Out of job and nursing a broken heart, he returns to Sacramento and found that Adam and Finn made his minimalist apartment cozier. Of course fab matchmaking candy fairy Darrin has foreseen his return and promptly sics Derek Huston on him because Darrin knows Derek is good for Rico

    I like Rico. He looks like Adam but more metro. He is as nice as Adam but more social. He has experienced homophobia from his family but was able to find the courage to come out

    “Mami, this is Derek. He’s my boyfriend. We were on our way out—and so were Finn and Adam. We’ll be out in five minutes, and if you don’t want to see any gay people holding hands or kissing, you three had better be the holy fuck away from my place.”

    Sufjan Stevens in a suit as Rico Gonzalves-Macias

    image

    I like Derek. He is a blond, blue-eyed golden prince with a golden heart who lives in a cozy picture book cottage. He has great parents and a happy childhood and he want to share that happiness with Rico.

    “No, c’mon.” Rico studied him, unsure of what was wrong. “It’s been a great day.”
    Derek nodded and kissed him on the forehead. “Yeah. It has. I want a lot more like it. I want them with you.”
    Rico’s smile made a quick return and then retreated again. “Then what —”
    Derek bit his lip. “I just… I get the feeling you and Adam—you didn’t have much of that when you were kids. I just… I wanted to give it to you, that was all.”

    Alexander Skarsgard in a tux as Derek Huston

    image

    I like Rico and Derek. Their banter was enjoyable and the chemistry was fantastic although there were bits of dialogue that were too flowery and melodramatic. However, for the the most part, they were fun together. And in the sweltering heat, in the sea of cazh, they stick to their designer suits. I approve.

    Metrosexual yuppies doin’ their thang:

    Derek shook his head and turned, taking in Rico’s best spring suit and his dazzling emerald green tie.
    “Nice,” he purred, and then he made the once-around gesture with his finger. Rico rolled his eyes, but the suit had been one of his last purchases before he’d left New York, and he was sort of proud of it. He held his briefcase out at his side and did a smart little pivot, his dress shoes sliding easily on the short pile of the carpeting.
    Derek laughed and clapped his hands. “Very nice,” he said, and then, to Rico’s amusement, he did the same.
    His trim form was very nicely accentuated in something Hugo Boss, gray linen, with a melon-colored tie.Rico obliged him by clapping.

    Adam and Rico’s relationship is one of the best parts of the story.

    Adam has always hero worshiped his cousin and because of that Rico was able to achieve a lot of things. Rico, on the other hand, has always treated Adam like a brother.

    A telenovela is only as good as its villano. These come in the form of the harpy mami, Adam’s and Rico’s moms and their abuela, bitter homophobic women who showed up one day at their apartment (because Rico was avoiding his mami’s calls after getting shitty reception for coming out) and started the haranguing and the name calling and oh no! You did not just spit on Adam! At which point Finn went berserk and Adam had to bodily haul him away. Thankfully, the wonderful Stewart women were there to save the day. They shed light on the way of the gay and thus Rico’s mom was enlightened. “Magic fuckin’ happy people” make miracles happened. Do not get in their way.

    Bitter Taffy is a story about moving on and fresh starts. The characters draw you in and you end up emotionally attached.

    I really love the Candy Man world and its people.  I’m glad that almost everybody from the first book made appearances (more Adam and Finn is always a big plus). It makes everything more real and I want to be friends with these people. This series also makes me want to live in Sacramento. The neighborhood is so nice!

    This installment ends with big drama. Luckily, Rico knows whats good for him and held on to it. Darrin, on the other hand, ends up with another project. I can’t wait to start on that!

    So, on to Ezra and Miguel’s story…

    Rating:
    4 Stars – minor quibbles but I loved it to bits

    Soundtrack: Me & You
    Artist: Parekh & Singh
    Album: Ocean

    (source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25821026-bitter-taffy)

  • song,  Uncategorized


    [spotify id=”spotify%3Atrack%3A1roIUT1W28ZoxKyi4vN1m1&view=coverart” width=”540″ height=”620″ /]

    Soundtrack to Candy Man: Bitter Taffy by Amy Lane

  • manga,  Uncategorized

    Boku no Kawaii Stalker – Kingyobachi Deme

    Ikeda, high school student is a stalker of a nice, easy-going guy, Aizawa Kentaru… Aizawa’s things suddenly started to get missing about which he inform his friend only to find out later that all his thing were taken by Ikeda who clumsily, quite guy claim to be his stalker & ask his permission to appoint him as his official stalker. Will Aizawa accept Ikeda’s offer?

    Boku no Kawaii Stalker: went from creepy to passably cute

    A Farewell Song: 

    Best story of the collection. Bittersweet sempai-kohai drama. Please tell me they meet again after graduation. 

    A Short Road to School: Grade school kids getting to know each other. Nothing grand but s’alright

    (source: http://www.mangago.me)

  • manga,  Uncategorized

    REVIEW: Antisocial by Heidi Cullinan

    Antisocial – Heidi Cullinan

    A single stroke can change your world.

    Xander Fairchild can’t stand people in general and frat boys in particular, so when he’s forced to spend his summer working on his senior project with Skylar Stone, a silver-tongued Delta Sig with a trust fund who wants to make Xander over into a shiny new image, Xander is determined to resist. He came to idyllic, Japanese culture-soaked Benten College to hide and make manga, not to be transformed into a corporate clone in the eleventh hour.

    Skylar’s life has been laid out for him since before he was born, but all it takes is one look at Xander’s artwork, and the veneer around him begins to crack. Xander himself does plenty of damage too. There’s something about the antisocial artist’s refusal to yield that forces Skylar to acknowledge how much his own orchestrated future is killing him slowly…as is the truth about his gray-spectrum sexuality, which he hasn’t dared to speak aloud, even to himself.

    Through a summer of art and friendship, Xander and Skylar learn more about each other, themselves, and their feelings for one another. But as their senior year begins, they must decide if they will part ways and return to the dull futures they had planned, or if they will take a risk and leap into a brightly colored future—together.

    Wow! Just wow!

    Antisocial by Heidi Cullinan reminds me of my weaboo phrase once upon a time ago when i profess undying love of Japan, colored my hair and dress up like a third rate shounen anime character. Nowadays,i still love Japan but i have significantly tone down the clothes and hair to generic. I enjoyed all the manga and anime references found in book the as well as the various trivia on Japanese culture but when Xander started using broken Japanese as come-ons, I thought it was time to reel all that Japanese kink in.

    This book also reminds me of Amy Tasukada’s works. Both authors are fangirls of Japanese culture and were quite heavy handed in using it in their books but while Tasukada did manga-in-novel form style and had the sense to use Japanese characters, Cullinan did more of the blatant objectification and fetishizing of the culture, mostly white boys fapping to anything Japanese they encounter. There wasn’t any single Japanese character in the entire story. The dead Japanese professor does not count, he was off page and smacks of tokenism.

    The novel started out strong and I enjoyed the first half of the book. Mostly the part where Skylar was pursuing Xander. That was squee-tastic! I liked Xander more when he was grumpy and Skyler when he was Silverstoning his way into Xander’s life. Then they were a couple and the book turned out to be one of those ace books where the ace agonizes about being an ace then undergoes some sort of sexual awakening with the help of the allosexual partner. I know each ace have different experiences but I don’t like that trope because it seemed to cater more to the allosexuals rather than accepting the asexuals for what they are. I also don’t like having an ace character hating himself and thinking there’s something wrong with him. If that was not bad enough, the author ripped a page out of Bakuman wherein Skylar worked as a writer and Xander as an artist in a manga because one can write but can’t draw and the other can draw but can’t write just like in

    Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s famous manga. Ok, I’m out! I can’t take any of this shit anymore!

    DNF

    P.S.

    I really wanted to like this but I’m sorry, it was a disaster.

    For better books on the ace spectrum, I recommend the hilarious How To Be a Normal Person by TJ Klune and the utterly adorable, beyond brilliant His Quiet Agent by Ada Maria Soto.

    Rating:

    2 Stars – it’s a struggle to finish the damn book

    Soundtrack: To Be Alone
    Artist: Hozier
    Album:

    (source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35652776-antisocial)