I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #obsession(7)

Serial adulterer, Kyouichi, is blackmailed into being kissed by Imagase, a college friend, who now works as a private detective investigating unfaithful spouses. Kyouichi doesn't have the courage to turn down any woman who makes a pass at him, but he denies that he is gay. This is a mature and, sometimes, heartbreaking story about the deeply flawed straight man beloved by a gay man. It isn't easy going, even at the end.

A sombre reunion between Yuzuru and Daisuke, two former lovers who parted when Daisuke decided he wanted to become a professional athlete. It was Yuzuru who left, mysteriously, and now that Daisuke has had to abandon his dreams of playing professional baseball, and is divorcing his wife whose loyalty depended on his status in sports, he is forced to confront the past. The first chapter ends poorly, but the rest of the story improves.

Miyamoto Kamo's classic yaoi story about Ryuu, the boy with the tattoo and dark past who transfers from Osaka to Tokyo, Hitomi, the fellow schoolboy who falls for him, and Taiga, the boy who falls for Hitomi. Spanning about a decade, this beautifully illustrated and slow-moving story follows their unrequited passions, reveals Ryuu's tragic past and uncovers treachery in the present. An absolutely superb tale in every sense! Realistic and deeply satisfying to read.

A misbehaving diva of a failed actor, Nanami Jin, is sent to a doujin mangaka's studio to learn how to be a proper model, the career he gave up when his idol, supermodel Kase Yutai, retired. Jin keeps up his tantrums and egotism until he discovers that this mangaka happens to be Kase.

Haru has an obsessive attachment to his brother's best friend, Soudai, and follows him compulsively from school to school, even into club activities. Suddenly, however, Soudai becomes aware of how Haru struggles to overtake him and withdraws to a place which is, for all purposes, unreachable. What will Haru do?

College student, Hamura Yuzuki, a track-and-field athlete who has competed at the National Championship level during middle and senior high school, focuses strictly on pole-vault to the detriment of his team, because of a casual comment by Akishima Jin, a fellow athlete with whom he parted ways after graduation, about the sky being the means through which they are connected. He cannot forget Jin or detach from the past, and this causes problems with his girlfriend, one of which leads to a coincidental reunion with his obsession.

Here is a sad tale about obsession and grief. If Natsuke could rewind the years back to high school when he rejected an ardent confession from Haruomi, the boy he led on, would he? Haruomi hasn't moved forward, instead numbing his pain in masochistic encounters with anonymous men, all strangers upon whom he projects Natsuke's face. When Haruomi uses the occasion of the marriage of a mutual friend to engage at long last in a similar sort of cold, painful sex with Natsuke, he is still unfulfilled. Natsuke remains obstinate and unmoved, even through a clumsy blackmail attempt. What will it take to break through this emotional stalemate?