I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #rivals(9)

Hikaru, seme porn star, is sought after by Masaya, a straight man who wants to top him, but Hikaru is touchy and determined never to be a bottom. Masaya challenges him to a porn contest. Mostly I don't care who tops, just as long as they have hot and dirty sex, which doesn't look like it's going to happen ...

Udou's bitterness and breezy cruelty towards others is rooted in an unrequited love for Kiyotake, a basketball teammate from high school. His misery and jealousy has prompted him to commit despicable acts against the very person he loved, twice. Now, in college, karma has caught up to him and his feelings are revealed in all their rawness, but what does Kiyotake have to say about them? Here is how one man's kindness can redeem someone who has fallen so completely. Ogawa Chise's stories often go over the top into outright madness, but this story hits all the right emotional notes without going too far.

Human/animal hybrids with some of the more endearing and aggravating traits of their pet natures work for a temporary replacement worker agency, developing relationships with the owners who hire them.

Series of one-shots involving salarymen.

There sure is a whole lot of sex going on here for someone who wants to teach somebody else about tea ceremonies ...

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.

(1) Short and cute story about rival tennis players with different styles who have the hots for each other, but only one of them realizes it. Climax involves trickery.

The insecure and explosive tsundere, Sougorou, heir to the onagata/oyama roles in a Kabuki dynasty, is forced by circumstances to portray a humble and affectionate spouse to his hated rival, Gensuke, who is more than happy in this role. Although tsundere characters usually tend to irritate the crap out of me, I'm looking forward to this one.

Cutesy-wootsy story about high school buddies, Otona and Osanai. Otona is hovering around puberty and wants to fall in love and be taken seriously as an adult. Osanai drops hints like crazy, but Otona is pretty slow on the uptake. And along comes Mr. Charisma, the new teacher, for added rivalry complications.