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

A series of three interlocking stories about boys coming to the realization that they are gay. In prequel, Lovers and Souls, Tooru's lover dies just as Tooru realizes he's in love. In Rules, Tooru is messed up and works as a male prostitute, but makes a play for Hikaru, who looks like the man he loved. Hikaru, a bisexual man whose heart was broken in the prequel Hydra, will have nothing to do with prostitutes. He initiates a high school boy, Yuki, on the rebound from an unrequited love for a classmate, Atori. By the time Yuki finally summons the courage to confess to Atori, Hikaru has fascinated Yuki. Atori is, at first, outraged by the confession, then curious about gay love, which causes him to wander into Shinjuku, where he winds up meeting Tooru. Miyamoto Kano's stories are bittersweet, full of heartache as well as relief and compassion. This one is less bitter than its prequels, although these young men seem to live on a knife's edge.

Were-cats: combo human and feline. A wild tom cat attracts a leopard. Cuteness and lotsa buttsexing ensue. First in a series.

Manic-paced soap opera, the first 2 volumes in a long series of family dramedies, with the main emphasis on comedy, about the Obinata family of orphaned boys—except for the oldest, their sister Shima, a fire-breathing tigress of a journalist off on the hunt for wild news stories on a continent where she's likely to find some doozies, and who provides the pivotal engine that gets this plot driving, a marriage, followed in rapid succession by a desertion—and the two new Lost Boys who land in their The-Whole-World-is-Gay Never-Neverland constructed just for fujoshii. This one focuses on the love story between the eldest "Lost Boys", Taiga and Shuu, whose reticence to merge is informed by past hurt. Boisterous and noisy as any household of boys would probably be, there is just enough realism and slice-of-life to keep it interesting. The art is old school. Some of the scans are hard to read, but it's important to get this one under your belt if you plan to read the series. My favourite, so far, is the final one of the series, Hanaya no Nakai de. Respect is due to Sugano Akira for generating enough story and character to keep this series going on so long. It's up there with Kodaka Kazuma for massive volumes of entertaining boy love.

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.