I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #abandonment(5)

A stray cat who lives in the garden of a gay man who is being abused by a brutal partner, asks the moon to change it into a man so it may protect the one he loves. Another sweet kitty begs for the ability to convey feelings of love from the man he loves to the man's former lover. Stories that are so sweet and pure, they cuddle up and purr.

Abandoned and betrayed by his lover, Shinshu must also fulfil his contractual obligations whilst healing from a broken arm. Fushimi is assigned to assist and help him cope, but because of the recent betrayal, Shinshu feels too pitiful and vulnerable. His pride won't allow him to accept Fushimi's kindness, especially when it seems that Fushimi has other motives. It is more than Shinshu's broken arm which gets stitched together in this lovely romance about healing, forgiveness and moving on.

A surprising story about a mangaka with stellar talent in his field, but complete ineptitude in everything else, and his faithful friend who diligently cares for him, until the friend realizes his motives may be less pure and altruistic than he originally believed. Yamimaru Enjin's story may not seem that subtle on the surface, but she depicts Niki, the artist, with so much sensitivity and realism as a person who almost seems borderline autistic with his inability to accurately appraise the situations around him, his complete dependency on Shoji, and his lack of facility to cope with life. Shoji's personal struggles are painful in their own right, as he fights off his own inner demons and copes with the feeling of being used as a servant and dismissed as a man worthy of love and respect. This is a good, complicated story with tragedy in the past and treachery in the mix.

This compilation has a lot more going on under the surface than it seems. The first story appears to be the record of a series of squabbles between the insecure uke, Kan-chan, and his overly confident lover, Osamu, but turns out to be an elody to the psychological after-effects of death, grief, loss and abandonment, with hints of suicide. I like the underlying profoundness, which makes up for a certain pedestrian quality to Meiji Kanako's art. The second story tackles the same themes, but with a man whose parents abandoned him as a child, and the measures he takes to ensure he is never alone, but never loved. These stories are very bleak and, yet, if you can move past the melancholia, so beautiful and rich.

The artwork for this manga is gorgeous and delicate, as are the stories, although their threads are so subtle and character-centric, they can be a bit tricky to follow, all interconnected by a common character or precipitating event in common. (1) Sunose, a straight university student falls for his cat-like and uncommunicative gay professor, Yukimura, who is too bashful and insecure to admit the love is mutual, even after a frank conversation behind closed doors with former lover, Kitakami, reveals Yukimura's true feeling and is overheard by his beloved, Sunose; (2) Backstory: it seems that Kitakami, a renowned painter, makes a habit of revealing, too intimately, the inner souls of his models, who usually also become his lovers, just as he paints their nude bodies too explicitly. Although the hitherto heterosexual, Yukimura, is forewarned of this propensity, he throws caution to the wind and agrees to be both Kitakama's model and lover, although he refuses to promise his heart or his fidelity. (3) Seiji, Akira's stepbrother, invites himself into Akira's workplace, a mahjong gambling parlour, to coax him into returning home, unleashing a storm of feelings that Akira has never been able to resolve about being abandoned, first, by his mother and, then, by his lover. A small cameo by Kitakami, in high school, links this story to Yukimura's. (5) Sarashima Satoshi, Akira's co-worker, also happens to be his roommate. He is blessed with above-average intuition and discovers, through the slightest sign, one of which Akira cannot possibly be aware, that Akira is depressed because he was abandoned by someone with whom he once regularly slept. The main plot engines are driven by abandonment, loneliness, recklessness or subconscious signals which reveal too much, followed by feelings of being overexposed and too vulnerable, withdrawals, inadequate communication and misunderstandings. One of my favourites!