I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #family(10)

Satou, a straight businessman with a kindergarten-aged son, falls for Takahashi, his gay neighbour, who loves children. Takahashi has endured censure and abuse, and Satou and his cute son had to deal with abandonment by his ex-wife, so they both bring their baggage to the relationship, and this manga shows how they deal with it and master their instincts. Satou is a little more authoritarian than I like in men, and I almost dropped the story at one point where he crosses the line, even if his first concern is for his son. The story is so fearsomely earnest and tries so hard to be wholesome and sweet almost into maudlin territory, it's difficult to stay offended for long. A lot of Kitazawa Kyou's stories tend to dance on the edge of that place where the autocratic seme almost overwhelms the compliant and good-hearted uke, so this is clearly a power dynamic preference of the mangaka's. It isn't mine, though, but this time, Kyou doesn't let the story go too far.

Emotions are wrung out all over the place in this story, after two gay men announce their intention to marry and family get involved. The story isn't about homophobia, however, but some slight familiarity with Japanese laws will make it less confusing: in Japan, gay marriage happens through adoption, and having one's name placed in an official family registry. This story is about the family that will be left behind. There are lots and lots and lots of tears and emoting, but it isn't really a tear-jerker.

Full of incesty goodness!

A series of oneshots in which violence and control are sub-themes: (1) an abused boy finds love in the arms of a kind widower with a baby daughter; (2) a middle manager who cannot smile falls for a new office worker who can't stop smiling; (3) a pair of salarymen negotiate their way through a master/pet relationship; (4) a pair of schoolboys with deceptive appearances negotiate their way through a master/slave relationship.

Now that their college students days are finishing, Haru thinks that his friendship with Kazushi, a friendship which began in early childhood, will continue to coast along at a platonic level indefinitely, so it's a crushing shock when Kazushi kisses him and confesses. At first, Haru reacts poorly, but when he sees Kazushi leaving him behind, he is overwhelmed by unrealized feelings. Realistic and smart, this is quite a good story about boys grappling with adulthood and self-realization.

I wasn't able to recover from the whiplash caused by jumping from "Oh, what a great stepbrother I now have!" to "Aargh, the gay, it burns! Get it away from me!" to "Let me protect you from being at the mercy of sex friends, and I love you!" to "Let me move in with you." I just couldn't believe that Ryouhei would switch from being a bigoted little homophobic shit stirring up trouble in his family circle to this noble self-sacrificing lover-boy who wants to protect Nanao from the degradation of casual sex and the wounds of sex friends. There wasn't enough of a emotional compulsion for it, and I am a person that tends to think that hate and love are often interlinked, whereas the opposite of love is disinterest, so if there was a believable bone in that sudden transformation, I would've thrown all my support behind it. There needed to be more story between one state and another, more transition. Without it, the book felt truncated, which is such a pity! Such an absolute crying shame! Because it was a great story up until Ryouhei suddenly offered to have sex with Nanao. It was going into utterly realistic and emotionally wrenching terrain up until then. It's just too bad.

Second sequel to Mainichi Seiten, the series about the all-gay Obinata household. After the dramatic revelations and realizations of Kodomo wa Tomaranai, schoolaged co-habitating "stepbrothers" Yuuta and Mayumi get to relax into acting their age—except they have grown up desires and aspirations which conflict with their maturity and ability to handle conflicts. There are trust issues, matters of self-responsibility, even little things like spending money. There is a very good reason the story is called Children's Time, even if it is about those children growing up. This story also brings in the character of Ryuu-nii, a figure from the Obinata past, and a very funny extra story at the end. Not sure I care for the rationalization which Yuuta gives for hating women. Don't believe that a bad experience with one person gives a person carte blanche to judge an entire gender, race, age group, body type or religion, and or to justify horrible behaviour toward them. I don't like yaoi or shounen ai which thinks that the cavalier treatment of girls or women is cool just because girls and women like hot guys getting off on each other. Loss of stars for that.

Unorthodox family arrangements await a newly arrived immigrant from New York. He tries his best to adapt to his new living quarters while trying not to rock the boat too much.

Slice of life story about a gay couple entrusted to raise the baby daughter of a female friend who happens to be a wartime photographer, and all the readjustment that requires from them.

Another slice of life drama from the Queen of Yaoi Soap Operas, Fuwa Shinri. This time stepbrothers, Sora (5 years older) and Tatsuki, love each other in every sense of the word, but they will never say it. Noooo .... instead they have to take each other and everyone else they love on a long and torturous journey that includes Tatsuki moving out, psychotic fans (Soru is a popular mystery novelist), stabbings, aggrieved girlfriends (and rightfully so), a miscarriage, runaway avoidance crap, incensed editors (and rightfully so), a near-death accident and drama-rama-rama! It's a darned good thing Tatsuki's ex-girlfriend isn't the stabbing sort, because in her case, he deserves it. Instead, he gets stabbed for something else. It's also a good thing that the relative who Tatsuki hates so much is so plain-spoken, or these two jackasses would take their closeted gay secrets to an early grave. In Sora's case, he nearly does anyway. So, yeah, it's a ride on the tearjerk express, but Fuwa Shinri does that so well, and even when the story's just too much to qualify as realistic, it still feels like it could happen.