I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #Kinoshita Keiko(3)

A slow-developed love story transpiring over childhood into the twenties with very painful moments. Some aspects are so realistic and gripping, I was completely absorbed, but others were so out-of-the-blue flaky, they left me wondering why they were there at all. I also felt the resolution glossed over the pain of those betrayals. Anyway, this manga isn't cute, adorable and fluffy, although one of the characters has those tendencies in childhood (why would anyone tag it like that? Just because it had a traditional happy ending doesn't make the story structure less traumatic.) And it CERtainly isn't a comedy, but it does deal with growing up and moving from wide-eyed trust and dependence into self-reliance, strength and awareness. That saves the rest and makes it worth a read, but I think if you're expecting sweetness and light, this is going to be a bitter one. Most heartbreaking moment: "When I was young, we had a dog" (Thinks) "And I violated it."

Interesting story about an average young man who lands a job, through his father's connections, as an assistant to a super-intellect and egoist, a professor with few organizational skills of his own.

Inspired by ante-WWII western domestic architecture and gardens, Kinoshita Keiko daydreamed up a story about Yukiyo, the gay man who inherited one such home, where he lives with Takashina, his lover, and Yuuta, the son of his ex-wife and the man he once loved, who suffered from depression and commit suicide many years previously. Filled with remorse for confessing to his late friend, and muddled by disappointment and unresolved grief, Yukiya swings wildly between seducing and rejecting Takashina. Things remain in stasis until Yuuta makes a confession of his own, summoning Yukiya's protective instincts. A slow building emotional simmer with some very beautiful watercolour drawings.