I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #actors(4)

This is like Love Stage fanfiction, except no kisses were exchanged ... yet.

Series of short stories: (1) Nioujima Kou is a popular television star, who harbours huge insecurities, and Kouyagi Masaru is the new director in charge of his show. Can Masaru help Kou overcome his fears? (3) Shimon, an actor, always stands in his genius father's shadow. Haru is a stray cat-type who he uses to work out his frustrations, but Shimon doesn't treat Haru well and only realizes his worth when he is gone. What will he do to get Haru back?

Minase Masara likes to write stories about rivals. In this case, the rivals for the affections of teen idol, but lousy actor, Sakakibara Ao, are the award-winning screenwriter, Kou Higashihara, whom Ao knew (and had a crush on) in high school as Ryota Azuma, and the handsome and famous actor, Wakatabe, whose skills onscreen leave no one unimpressed. It doesn't seem as though Higashihara is a rival at first, since his rejection of Ao's confession in high school was unnecessarily perfunctory, and he has some very crushing things to say to Ao about his acting, urging him at the start to quit the production. The trouble is that a large continuity problem appears in the story between Chapter 4, when Wakatabe urges Ao to develope his sexual charisma onscreen by developing a crush that "burns him from the inside out" and follows it up by asking him go out with him, with an event which happens, later, in Volume 2, Chapter 2 (page 27), that evinces so much surprise from Ao, the reader has to wonder where he's been. Admittedly, a lot of time has passed between the two volumes, but why would such a glaring hole in the plot development go unmissed? It isn't exactly clear, yet, how the story connects to Cinderella either, other than that there are stepbrothers and they are working Ao rather hard (although he needs the professional development, so that's a good thing.) Even so, the story is lively and interesting and rendered with Minase Masara's usual beautiful drawings.

Youka Nitta's sweeping soap opera about Katou Youji and Iwake Kyousuke, two AV actors who risk everything to be true to themselves and each other. This story starts at the beginning of their relationship while they still work as porn actors, through negotiating their places and integrity in Japan's Byzantine entertainment industry, until they emerge with the approval of families, friends and colleagues; live together in their own home; make the movies they want, and eventually take responsibility for a production company, enduring treachery, censure, humiliation, attempted murder and even a huge earthquake in the process. The boys get a little overwrought at times, and ending feels a little truncated, no doubt in part to Youko Nitta's scandal, but the sex is hot and the overall arch is absorbing. A yaoi classic.