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

Hans Christian Anderson's allegory about female vanity "The Red Shoes" and the Archers' 1948 cinematic adaptation form the backdrop to Ogawa Chise's romp through the cut-throat business of haute couture in which pairs of bespoke stiletto heels become totems for sexual power and Yuriy Abalkin, the muse, high priestess and prostitute for Alex, whose designs and creations are sought by Yuriy's uncle. Client after client uses Yuriy until he starts to disintegrate into madness and makes a desperate ploy to win the heart of his beloved Alex. This story is a hardcore grand opera of soap and typical of Ogawa Chise, luxurious in bathos and hysterical melodrama. This bitter cup of cynicism is definitely mixed with a good dose of wry.

1950s jazz standard "Mona Lisa" is the leitmotif for this crime thriller about two yakuza middlemen who fall madly in love with each other's *respectable* personnae, and can't let the delusion or deception drop even when they catch each other in the middle of an unwitting double-cross. The stakes are high and the reader is kept on the edge of her seat while these two men try to find a path through incredible opposition and peril back to each other.