I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #Tsunoda Ryoku(3)

Miyashiro Miyagi, whose job at the traditional Japanese restaurant, Tachibana, and entire fortunes exist solely because of Kazuki-Taichou's recognition of his ability and hard work, is threatened in his position by the heir to Tachibana, and must endure both scrutiny and suspicion due to his unknown family connections. Meanwhile, he is being sexually harassed by Haruhi, the assistant chef from Tachibana's affiliate restaurant. Miyagi's heart is filled with gratitude to Kazuki for all his support, but are his affections returned? Or are Kazuki and Haruhi hiding something from him?—Something crucial to his livelihood? This story is rich with well-developed characters and driven by a strong, interesting plot filled with intrigue. The sex scenes are ample, well-balanced in terms of power distribution and very, very satisfying. It is one of my old-time favourites!

Ace marketer, Ishikawa, out-performs everyone in the marketing department of this highly competitive firm, but when he has a bad day, he takes out his frustrations by sexually assaulting his gay co-worker, Takayama, who has just landed a big contract. Will Takayama be able to turn this into victory? Tsunoda Ryoku always spins a good story, and her workplace dramas actually involve people working at their jobs. This one requires moving past the rape-trope (which Blue claims — April 24, 2014 10:27 pm, http://www.mangago.com/home/mangatopic/520995/ — was incorrectly translated according to her licensed copy), but unlike most of these sorts of stories, this one ends with a more equal power distribution than it starts off with. It's worth reading for that alone.

I like Tsunoda Ryoku's stories, usually, but this one is too difficult to follow. I can't tell if the chapter order is messed up, or the scanlation is strange, or the whole plot structure is off-kilter. First we have a Mr. Hothead x Mr Icicle situation. Then Hothead suddenly turns into Hotpants and Icicle melts and becomes Puddle. Hotpants gets sent to Purgatory and Puddle's evil identical twin Headfucker shows up. Then things got really confusing, especially when some random story about a guy with a ponytail and some other guy with glasses dropped from the ceiling. After struggling through 200-some odd pages, I gave up. It took less work to break the Enigma Code.