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MANGA: Mujaki na Wanko to Nekokaburi
Mujaki na Wanko to Nekokaburi – Niyama
Yagi Naohito has a fear of being hated, so he always acts according to everyone?s ideals.With that mindset, he was half-jokingly labeled ?A coward? by Akasaka Tooru – a guy whom he met at a mixer that his friend half forcefully brought him along.After being overwhelmed by the young man on their way home, Yagi didn?t think that they?d end up meeting again a few days later. As a help to Akasaka who?d just lost his home and was at his wit?s end, they started living together. The man was supposed to be nothing but a burden but without noticing, he gradually become someone who Yagi could rely on..?
An Innocent Puppy Meets a Two-Faced Cat is an age-gap, salarymen romance with cat/dog dynamics. The dog personality in the relationship is Tooru, a young engineer whom 39-year-old cat personality Naohito met at a mixer.
Tooru’s habit of cheerfully blurting out whatever he thinks made him memorable to Naohito, who has a tendency to put on his people-pleasing face because he wants to be liked. He refers to this as his mask and one of the reasons why his relationships always fail. He feels his true personality leaves much to be desired.
Tooru is the younger seme, an interesting combination of pushy and endearing. He does not sekuhara his way into Naohito’s pants, but innocently pushes his way into the man’s life through candid praises and powering through Naohito’s protests. Tooru is straight but soon had his bisexual awakening because forced proximity with Naohito revealed the older man’s true personality which Tooru found adorable.
This manga has great potential but the execution could have been tighter. There were parts where I skimmed because they weren’t interesting or particularly relevant to the plot. Their romance was cute but lacked the oomph to generate squees. Still, this is good enough for a go.
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MANGA: Mamotte Agetai Sawatari-san
Mamotte Agetai Sawatari-san – Nanatsuno Wataru
Having lost his protection charm given by his Grandmother, Sawatari must now rely on his super lucky junor, Akutsu to ward off his unluck. Will their relationship turn into love?
I Want To Protect You, Sawatari-san is about a very unlucky guy, the superstitious Sawatari, taken under the wing of the super lucky kohai, Akutsu, who proceeds to protect him from mishaps. Sawatary proclaims he’s his lucky charm.
I loved the premise, but the manga left me conflicted. Older uke Sawatari is kinda adorable in that helpless klutzy dorky way. He’s straight, so he’s pretty much oblivious that much of his interactions with Akutsu were very couple-y. The two shacked up, and Akutsu does everything for him, goes everywhere with him. They even shared beds platonically. And then the dork blithely goes his merry straight way.
Akutsu, well, this guy feels off. He gave me Stalking Killing MC vibes, kinda looked like him too. A few characters even called him creepy. Thing with Akutsu is that his feelings seem to be only skin-deep. He’s attracted to Sawatari because who wouldn’t after all of Sawatari’s unwitting flirting. But the manga failed to effectively deliver his depth of feelings despite the shift to his POV. He was basically bored and found Sawatari interesting, and that’s about how far it goes.
However, this manga is still fun especially the side characters. These guys were a riot, blurting out ridiculous comments and making derpy faces. The characters are salarymen, but they come across as college kids.
Overall, entertaining, and steamy but could use a better seme.
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MANGA: Koko wa YES to Ittekure
Koko wa YES to Ittekure – Yoshii Haruaki
Am I a man? No.” “…? Sexual harassment.”
A love paradox between a boss and his subordinates who have a habit♥Motokawa, a non-ceremony man who can work but has no delicacy, I’m concerned about my subordinate Okumura.I usually have a bad mouth and play tinkering. I can appreciate his serious work attitude, and above all, he is cute when he laughs.
On the other hand, Okumura, who had been isolated after being exposed to gaiety in the company, remained completely unchanged even after learning the truth. Moreover, Motokawa, who nominated me as the person in charge of the large contract, moved me.
Okumura turns red even with casual physical contact.
Motokawa almost kissed Okumura…!!?I am not a fan of the age-gap trope due to real-world examples of predatory older men preying on much younger, barely legal women. I don’t know how they do it in MF, but in MM romance, writers try to make the trope more balanced by having the younger man as the pursuer.
Please Say Yes boldly takes the opposite approach by having the older man, and the boss at that, do the pursuing. I felt residual iffyness due to my dislike of the trope, but this manga not only completely won me over, it’s one of the most enjoyable I’ve read this year!
This is a funny and utterly adorable story of a middle-aged man’s bisexual awakening. Motokawa is pretty laidback, easy-going, and amicably divorced. Suddenly finding his subordinate Okumura’s face cute, he became curious about why the young man is always alone and avoided by his co-workers. Then, they were tasked to handle a client together, and soon the older man found himself falling for his subordinate.
Motokawa made me laugh. He had such derpy expressions. The manga’s charm lies in those moments that make Motokawa pause and realize things about Okumura he finds attractive. Then he blurts it out loud to Okumura’s embarrassment. And the thing with Motokawa he does it casually like he doesn’t realized he just slayed poor Okumura who goes why the hell is my straight boss saying this to me. It was both a courtship and an awakening, and it was endearing as hell!
Our sweet, blushy boy, Okumura, has trust issues after a scandal from his previous company. He’s the type of character you’ll want to build blanket forts for. He’s knows his falling for Motokawa but couldn’t trust himself or his boss.
The story touches upon homophobia in the workplace. Okumura lets himself be the scapegoat in that scandal to help his co-worker save face. Motokawa treating him like he does the rest of the staff, like normal, during their first meeting was memorable to him. Also, the bonus megane moe at the end!
This manga takes a refreshing approach to age-gap workplace romance, and it was a riot!
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MANGA: Hajime No Koi
Hajime no Koi – Nishimoto Rou
Hajime Mamiya decides to quit the yakuza business after the death of his boss. When riding on a bus, he meets Sho Kosaka, a college student who is close to his boyfriend. One day when Mamiya couldn’t forget Kosaka’s longing face towards his boyfriend, he reunites with him, who apparently works part-time at ‘Deriheru’. Mamiya doesn’t know how it feels to love someone, but he learns of Kosaka’s devotion to selling his body, and decides to buy all his time so that he doesn’t have to take other customers. A pure story of a slowly falling in love with a former yakuza who doesn’t know love and a college student who wants to love and be loved!
Yakuza BL is my jam, and here we have one bad boy turned first time gay with THE MOST GORGEOUS TATTOOS!!! Superbly rendered by the mangaka and showcased to fabulous effect!
Hajime no Koi is a play on the MC’s name, and falling in love for the first time. Hajime Mamiya started his life as a normal citizen when his boss died. On the bus, he contemplates love and what people sacrifice for it while staring at a lovesick young man, Sho Kosaka. Later, he meets him again and learns he’s a college student. Then much later, while looking at a sex working site he saw the familiar form and hired him.
The plot runs on the interplay of pure and criminal, starting with Hajime’s sincere attempts to live a normal life vs. how regular people see him. There’s his kind treatment of the naive sex worker Kosaka vs. how bad Kosaka’s supposed boyfriend treated him. There’s also focus on how pure and sweet Kosaka is, which leads me to my main gripe about this manga.
The characterization of Kosaka wasn’t done convincingly. The boy should have been adorable with his pretty face, blushy gazes and fluffy smiles. Instead, he pinged my yandere radar. And here I was expecting him to drop the sweet act any second and come at Hajime with an axe.
Things got a little better by Chapter 3, when Kosaka stopped peddling himself and became roommates with Hajime. And they adopted a cat. At this point, things were still very much platonic between the two, which is very endearing because they were rooting hard for each other to succeed. Kosaka is a vet student, and Hajime just landed his first legit job. It also helped we get glimpses of Kosaka’s thoughts, and ok, so he’s as sweet as he looks. Still, I didn’t warm up to him much.
Then, more complications arrived that only made me wish Hajime was paired with a different character, like his hella attractive former yakuza boss who’s now a law-abiding single dad or his food truck boss, which would make for an intriguing older men romance. My interest petered out, and I ended up skimming.
Tsk! I’m not having much luck with my BL manga lately.
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MANGA: Irony Distance
Irony Distance – Torita Chizu
I have a cat. A selfish, beautiful grey cat.
Few years have passed since I met a classmate with zero ability to make a living, Yuito, during high school.
Kotarou, who was attracted by Yuito’s mysterious and fleeting aura, has been gallantly taking care of him since then.
The spot beside Yuito, who gets close like a stray cat, is warm and vexing, making it hard for Kotarou to leave him alone
This complicated and smoldering feeling, is not just some friendship.Irony Distance is a romance that started during high school and continued years after. It is an attempt to make laziness look sexy, and you can guess from the get-go that the relationship between Yuito and Kotarou is unhealthy.
But the manga paints warm fuzzies over everything by comparing Yuito to a cat. It’s also lucky that he’s not an asshole, just seems to lack the ability? motivation? who knows, to take care of himself. And, he’s pretty, so he automatically pinged Kotarou’s protective vibes.
Overall, this one-shot is good enough to pass the time because the storytelling is actually done well. But I can’t get behind the romance for obvious reasons.
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MANGA: Hyakusou no Uraniwa
Hyakusou no Uraniwa – Aoi Aki
Once upon a time, Marcel’s sister fell in the forest while gathering herbs. Her injuries were grave and Marcel was at a loss for what to do, until a fearsome horned man appeared, offering help–in exchange for a promise. Now, ten years later, Marcel returns to the woods, steeling himself for death. Instead, he finds something quite different: a gentle soul, friendship…and perhaps something more.
Entangled With You: The Garden of 100 Grasses is a flora-themed collection, as beautifully rendered as it is poetic and poignant.
The main story is a Beauty and the Beast-inspired tale, but the beast here is only a beast in appearance. Gisel is a kind soul, lonely, with only books to keep him company.
Marcel and his sister, Bertha, are apothecaries who frequently go to the woods to gather herbs. After his sister was injured and Gisel helped them, Marcel promised to return after Bertha married.
It started with a misunderstanding, but Gisel and Marcel’s friendship grew deeper as the year passed. There’s very light conflict, if you could even call it that. The whole vibe was very cottage-core, even though they lived in a mansion.
The romance is very low-key, acknowledged only in smiles, kind gestures, and soft words. Their idyllic existence washed over me like a balm. Gentle, cozy, magical, and wholesome, the kind of story they would do if Ghibli created BL manga.
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MANGA: Bokura no Micro na Shuumatsu
Bokura no Micro na Shuumatsu – Marukido Maki
In 10 days, the world will be destroyed by a meteor. To spend his remaining time as comfortably as possible, bad-luck magnet Masumi decides to visit the library of his alma mater and read as much as he wants until the end comes. But in this hellish world, he meets a devil there: the one man from his past that he never wanted to see again, Ritsu. And if things weren’t bad enough, Ritsu has a favor to ask, a favor that Masumi could never have expected—-
Marukido Maki weaves an eccentric tale of human connection in a world on the brink of destruction in this emotional journey that will take its readers on a wild ride.
The End of the World, With You blurb grabbed me. It’s an apocalyptic second-chance romance, and we don’t see a lot of that around.
The story opens with the abysmally down-on-his-luck Masumi, deciding to spend his last remaining days until a meteor hits the earth in the library. There he bumps into his infamous ex, Ritsu.
Seriously, worst seme ever! Second only to the one in Boyfriend 17. Ritsu is a lying, cheating scum, an unrepentant fuckboy who sleeps with anything that catches his fancy. He did this while seducing the naive and insecure Masumi, who, later learned about the misdeeds the hard way. To top it off, he threatened to out poor Masumi to everyone when confronted. The bastard broke Masumi’s mind and spirit so badly that he ruined the rest of his life.
Ten years later, Masumi the dork, despite recalling the bad memories, let himself get roped into another shady activity by Ritsu. I couldn’t give any fucks about the couple at first, but the story’s hidden charm snuck up on me in the form of a quest, two lost students, and strange coincidences.
Suddenly, I understood why this was good enough to warrant a live-action movie. It’s a poignant story of reconnections and new friendships unfolding through an eventful trip across Japan. Not only do the twists come out of nowhere, but Masumi’s hurts are also so bone-deep and palpable that my chest hurts for the guy. It didn’t help Ritsu was a douche through most of the story. I was rooting hard for Masumi!
Ritsu had his redemption arc but it was almost too little too late. That it took an actual apocalypse for him to make it up to Masumi didn’t commend him to anyone. Yet, the mangaka skillfully salvaged what is salvageable about Ritsu, and I could believe he kept his promise in the end.
Don’t let my rants about Ritsu put you off this manga. It’s twisty, emotional and will make you believe in miracles.
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MANGA: Himekoi
Himekoi – Mitsuya Bond
A long time ago, a divine fox saved Mikazuki village from famine. In return, the fox took one of the villagers as his bride. To this day, the villagers hold a marital ceremony every year at the summer festival. The descendant of the fox and the descendant of the bride marry, and then they spend one night together. The villagers believe that this ceremony continues to protect them from disaster. It just so turns out that, this year, those two descendants are Kanata and Kuro, and, this summer, it is their turn to marry and have sex. There’s one problem — unlike Kanata, who believes in their village’s customs, Kuro does not seem too keen on his fate. Kuro’s apathy hurts Kanata, who always felt that he didn’t quite mind, as long as he was with Kuro…
Fox brides of the BL variety is catnip to me. Masked Love is an adorable childhood friends-to-lovers story about two boys destined to be married because of town tradition.
Villagers believe the well-being of their town was due to fox protection in exchange for a bride. Kanata is the descendant of the bride, and Kuro is the descendant of the fox. They were to be married during the festival. The ritual culminates in the consummation of their marriage. But Kuro’s lack of interest had Kanata mired in doubts, and soon they noticed a series of unfortunate events around town.
Everything was very cute and sweet. It’s all the squee-tastic things we love about friends to lovers. Then by Chapter 3, things became messy when it shifted to the dads’ POVs. These two were the chosen couple from the last generation, but they were also each engaged to women to continue the lines.
The plot did something more convoluted by throwing a third boy between Kuro and Kanata. Also something something blah blah about Kuro and Kanata not having to be engaged with women just to force a happy ending.
I didn’t know what was happening anymore. I skimmed and gave up. What a waste of fox brides!
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MANGA: Yukkuri Aruite Jyuugofun
Yukkuri Aruite Jyuugofun – Aioiuo
This is a story about two middle school boys of the same age, Tetsu and Yuki, who went to an autumn festival. On the way to the festival at a nearby shrine, Tetsu, wearing a mask for some reason, is in a sulky mood. A Hyottoko mask, a railroad crossing, an unseasonable yukata, and mini-cakes. “A Leisurely 15 Minutes on Foot” to the festival grounds, it’s an extraordinary autumn night that closes the distance between two friends.
15 Minutes If You Walk Slowly is a friends-to-lovers romance between two middle school kids set during the Autumn festival.
It is implied the two MCs are neighbors and/or their families are close enough to consider each other siblings. The one in the mask, Tetsu, is sulking because he’s not getting the attention he wants from the one in yukata, Yuki.
This is my second manga from the author, and it seems their thing is food-centric erotica (Gozen 3:00 no Ice Cream). There is no sex scene here but there is a steamy kissing scene involving candy. Prior to that, it’s super fluffy, a lot of blush-y gazes and an emotional confession.
This is a classic trope delivered very effectively, a super cute one-shot in an idyllic setting with lovely artwork to match.
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MANGA: Uso Ka Makoto Ka
Uso Ka Makoto Ka – Tobi Washio
One day, Taiyou, a popular guy because of his good looks, was asked by a senior student at his part-time job to take care of his cousin, Tsukihiko, who is attending the same university as Taiyou.
However, Tsukihiko is rude to him from the beginning to the end, Taiyou still tries to be lenient towards him, but on the inside, he’s on the verge of exploding because of him!
Suddenly, Tsukihiko confessed his feelings to Taiyou and took him to an empty classroom where he made his move…!
Lie or Truth is a senpai/kohai, childhood connection romance between two university students.
This is an older uke, younger seme romance where the seme, Tsukihiko, is cold, blunt, and dub cons his way into the uke, Taiyou’s pants. I was initially meh about Tsukihiko, but as the story progressed, he somehow won me over.
The two MCs initially got off the wrong foot. Taiyou, known to be popular and cheerful, approached Tsukihiko as a favor to his work colleague, requesting he looks after his cousin. But the younger man bluntly told him his smile was fake and gave him the cold shoulder. Then out of the blue, Tsukihiko confessed, and Taiyou rejected him as revenge. It began a little game of notice me kohai/senpai.
The key aspect here is the childhood connection that began a lifelong devotion to one’s crush. I love this trope, and the execution was perfectly balanced between hot/cold, humorous, fluffy, light angst, and steam.
And dub-conning Tsukihiko, I forgave because he acknowledged going too far and apologized for putting Taiyou in that spot. The forehead kiss was everything!
The guy on the cover is Taiyou. Tsukihiko’s character is drawn with overlong bangs covering his face. And you can bet it hides an uber-cool seme face! Check out bonus chapters.
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