I adore Doushiyoumonai keredo volumes 1 and 2 by Natsume Isaku. It's about a salaryman and his boss and their romance. It's cute and silly and fun. I love that though the two aren't perfect, neither are they irritating. Shimano, the salaryman, isn't just any salaryman. He's the son of the company president who will someday succeed his father. He's good-looking, smart, good at everything. His boss Kurokawa doesn't treat him particularly well, but Shimano comes to appreciate Kurokawa's gruff kindness. Yeah, it's been there, done that. But it does conventional so well. And they make such a cute couple. It also helps that I really like this artist's style.

( much squeeing with many pictures )

Otona Keikenchi is finally a Nekota Yonezou manga I wholeheartedly love. She has such pretty art, but her other manga just didn't work for me. This one? Is silly and fluffy and makes me smile. It's about a popular and attractive high school student who has a big problem: he's impotent. He tries a lot of things, but the only thing that works is a slightly scary underclassman. I love that the seme (in personality as well as in sexual position) is much shorter.

Even though the story is quite conventional, the sweetness of the uke and his friends just makes me laugh (though glasses friend isn't always a nice guy, he's a good friend to uke). The contrast with the severe personality of the seme is fun. There's a side story about the two friends that's also adorable and funny.









( random prettiness )

I really hate how much my time has been sucked up by RL...I haven't been able to write up posts or respond to comments or anything this past week. I was hoping to take the weekend to get down and post, but it looks like I will be busy with other things. So I figured I'd make some time tonight for a quick post on a manga I've been meaning to talk about for a while...

The manga Bokura ni matsuwaru etc by Kuyugo basically consists of two stories. The first features the two students on the cover. I found it to be rather bland, mostly because the characters did not interest me at all. The story is very conventional, but I barely noticed it while yawning at the blah-ness of the characters. The other is about a scruffy divorced guy and the young adorable guy who is found half-dead (from getting totally lost trying to find scruffy divorced guy's house...even though it's like a stone's throw away from the train station) and ends up staying there. It's a simple (and predictable) story but it has the exact type of romantic relationship I love. XD There's just something about a grumpy older guy and an earnest and awkward younger guy that really works for me.


Scruffy guy and young adorable guy:




And to be completely gratuitous, the pretty pretty back cover:



The sad thing is, I'm not sure who he is...Not that I really care if he's some random hot guy. I appreciate eye candy very deeply.

Just wanted to share a couple of manga I've fallen in love with. No damn clue if they are licensed or being scanlated, sorry. :P Hopefully they are, because they are both very enjoyable.

No Color by Natsume Isaku is about neighbors serious student Sakamoto and easy-going but driven part-timer Iida. Sakamoto is often irritated with the noisy Iida as he tries to study, but he is even more inconvenienced when Iida moves in with him after Iida's room explodes and has to be renovated...Aaand things just kind of go from there. XD;

The manga is not very original, but terribly delightful. It helps that the artist illustrated Junjou Island, a novel I adore, and it kind of has a similar dopey feel (if not quite as retarded). There's a bit of breaking out of the mold of parental expectations, learning to be honest with what you really want, some misunderstanding, and a lot of sweetness. The art is very clean and attractive. There are a couple of very pretty panels, and the way their first time happens is pretty damn hilarious.


( some panels )

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Kiss Blue by Kinoshita Keiko is even more predictible and cliched, but instead of being yet another ho-hum been-there-done-that manga it was a shining example of when superb execution trumps hackneyed storylines and characterizations. Tomosaka and Noda are college students. They were friends from...at least junior high? In any case, Tomosaka is a serious, low-key, nice guy. Noda is also mostly a nice guy, just one of those that have two or three girlfriends at one time. A certain incident makes Tomosaka realize that...He's in love with Noda!! The requisite suppression and denial and suffering follow, leading to the most annoying cliched development that can happen in these situations...That instead of annoying me actually made me feel really bad and sad for the characters. The beauty of this manga, for me, was the mood. It feels slightly reserved, a tad bit detached, but with flashes of the underlying fierce emotion allowed out in tightly controlled phrases expressing Tomosaka's feelings.

As this is only the first book, I have no idea how the story is resolved. The second book, Kiss Blue II, comes out next week. Hopefully I'll have it in my greedy little hands soon after, but in some ways I don't feel an absolutely burning need to read it. I'm worried that the end will be predictable yet lame or suprising but retarded...And I like the uncertainty at the end of the first volume. Even if the end sucks, the first book is so strong I'd reccomend it (with a warning not to read the second volume!) to people who don't need closure to enjoy a well-told story of that type.


( a nothing scene )

My mini-squee moment of the day: Unprofessional by madsciencechick, a Conrad-focused Conrad/Yuuri KKM fic that is short and sweet. I adore how Conrad just can't help himself, and his relationship with his men.


I just read a manga featuring a hetare seme x violent uke (one of my favorite BL tropes) that just made me laugh so much. Violence na Kimi ga Suki by Araya Miki is about the pathetically shy and introverted Myouenji and his stunningly ridiculous first meeting with the scary, violent Kuroda, who becomes the love of his life. My enjoyment of the manga came from Myoueji's total pathetic nature and his desperate, single-minded admiration and love for Kuroda. His attempt to become stronger to be able to stand next to Kuroda as an equal was just so...earnest, yet so misguided it was adorable.



I particularly love the spread above--it encapsulates Myouenji's earnestness and lameness (notice the streams of tears).

The big weakness of the story is the uke--his personality does not shine the way Myouenji's does, and it's a pity because a properly executed hetare seme x violent uke dynamic just sparkles and is so much fun. But I think Myouenji makes the manga worth reading. I uploaded the first scanlated chapter, grab it here and check it out. A zip of all the scanlated chapters (which I believe is the entire story) is here.

Just wanted to add a disclaimer--I'm not saying the manga is good. It isn't. I just enjoyed reading it because it was fun, flaws and all.

ETA: There was an extra part to this manga that was released today (or was it yesterday?). In any case, here it is.

It's been a while since I've come across a sweet, angsty BL manga like I Want to Become Your Bird by Homerun Ken. The summary from the back of the volume is as such:

High school student Koyama Kei is doing his best. He's never known love and doesn't think he wants to. When he feels lonely, he'll let anyone who to hold him. Whether is a teacher, or another classmate. Then Kei meets Med-Student Fujii, and looking at his gentle smile, Kei feels something he's never felt before start to grow in his chest. Is this...love? But Fujii is his older sister's boyfriend. A forbidden love story begins to unfold.

It has the gentle heart-twinging angsty youthful romance I love so much, with Kei trying so hard to cope with his feelings and being so cute and sweet. Just check out the excerpt below for an example of the art and the atmosphere of the story. I like Kei's relationships with his uncle and his sister. I like what a nice guy Fujii is, and that he can take action when necessary. XD And I love love love the very last page (I'm such a sucker for that kind of thing).

( Excerpt )

Download the entire thing in one zip: I Want to Become Your Bird

This past week I rediscovered a Kano Shiuko manga I had picked up earlier this year and rather enjoyed. I've been having a great time rereading the thing and thought I'd pimp it. I did a cursory search for scanlations and they don't seem to exist. I could be wrong. *shrugs*

In any case, the manga is called Konna otoko ni dare ga shita (Who made such a man), and it has four unrelated stories included. They are, in order of how much I like them, are:

Konna otoko ni dare ga shita: This is about a guy who collects for loan sharks (yakuza perhaps?) who is bumming over at the house of a woman with debt who's run off, leaving her son. He meets the kid's teacher, who turns out to be a classmate from high school, and a former fuck buddy. Of course they end up in bed, and ultimately together. Why do I like this? Because the uke is HOT, and wanton, and is always jumping the seme. I love ukes who are ukes because they love it (and not because of height or age or girly disposition) and are beyond enthusiastic about sex. The relationship between the very serious and upright seme and the loose and carefree (and slutty yet manly) uke is just hilarious (and cute). XD

Sanzai Ecstasy (Extravagant Ecstasy): This is about a guy who was a regular salaryman who really looks like a sexy seme type (with glasses!) who loses his job (he gets risutora'd). He loses a lot of other stuff, too, and ends up kind of drifting until he gets picked up by a guy who decides he could be used as bait for the entrap the gay man in a compromising pose and blackmail him for money scheme. Other stuff happens, but what I like is that the main character really looks like a seme but is actually an uke. He even has an image change which makes him look even MORE like a seme and yet he's uke. The story's not bad, and there's hot sex (of course). XD

37°C: I love how it starts with a door to door salesman knocking on the door of a guy who happens to have a cold. He tries to sell some of his medicine, but instead gets invited in for some sex. For some reason this results in the salesman taking care of the guy while he's sick. Of course it means the salesman gets sick, and this results in a reversal of roles, including insertion of suppository and more sex while sick. There's a story lurking behind it all, but I wasn't very impressed by it. I was, however, happy about the sex while wearing a white lab coat scene.

Kuroitobira (Black Door): Frankly, I don't like this story. It's about a high school student who is kidnapped and confined by a teacher. It includes (forced) sex with a (female) dummy, rape, and a really unsatisfying and confusing ending. *shrugs*

In any case, three out of four is pretty good, right? I love this manga. ^___^

( click to see some pics )