insaneneko

I figured I should do a "I LOVE THIS" post because sharing the squee is always a good thing. So...the following are things I love.

Castle Mango volume 1 by Ogura Muku (art) and Konohara Narise (story) is a manga I picked up thanks to wednesday_10_00 and OMG the cute is pure love. It's about a high school student who lives at the love hotel his mother runs (his father had run it until his death) along with his younger brother. They have themed rooms and a porn production decides to use various rooms for their movies. The director is a gay guy and the high school student gets it into his head that the director may have designs on his younger brother. So one night when the director is brought by his co-workers to sleep off major drunkenness the student decides to pretend they've had sex and guilts him into dating him. As a condition he wants the director to stay away from his younger brother. The director is a nice guy and vows to keep his hands off the student until the student is 18, but they do have interactions that bring them closer. Really adorable interactions that mostly emphasize intimacy rather than sex (sex =/ intimacy!). I so look forward to the next book. The student is one of those capable but not emotionally expressive kids, and he has a father complex. He wants to string the director along long enough to protect his younger brother, but finds himself drawn to the director. I worry about Konohara Narise springing a horrible turn of events later on as this series is so far mostly fluffy and sweet, but I'm going to classify my fears as just being a worrywart. Oh yes, and the art is fabulous. ♥

Merry Checker by Suzuki Tsuta is a spin-off of a manga I haven't read, Sangen Tonari no Tooi Hito. It's about a salaryman who runs a BBS-ish site where he writes about other people in a very perceptive and amusing manner. At a RL meet-up he gets to know a popular blogger who everything thought was a high school student (female), but turns out to be a very tall adult man. The story is sweet but not cloying. The salaryman and the blogger are both nice mature guys, dancing around their attraction to each other. The story doesn't fall into a lot of the genre cliches and just makes me feel warm and fuzzy. It is a bit shallow, but I can get behind this kind of shallow. My biggest complaint is that there should be another volume. I want to see them act adult and nice! And dorky with awkwardness and apologetic when they feel like they've hurt/offended the other person! The art is fabulous and the ( last panel of the manga ) is pure gold.

Switching to novels, Sore wa tsumi na anata no sei by Hagino Siro and illustrated by Natsume Isaku is something I reread quite often and had planned on summarizing because I love it so. Unfortunately I've become quite lazy lately (and it is LONG), so I'll just squee about it. It's about a high school student, Saiga, who is dumped by his girlfriend because she's fallen for some awesomely cool looking guy named Natsuki. He is incensed and goes looking for Natsuki to see for himself, and ends up falling down the stairs in front of him. And is confronted by a very good looking and very nice guy. He becomes a bit obsessed and basically stalks him. Except his stalking sucks and he's found out very quickly by Natsuki. They end up hanging out together. Saiga realizes over time that he's fallen for Natsuki, but Natsuki is very very very dense. Natsuki is used to keeping people at a distance because he's so good looking he's had people fawning over him his entire life, but isn't very perceptive when it comes to people he's let close. So Saiga has to make the first move. There is a lot going on in this quite long book (almost 300 pages) because Natsuki is dense and Saiga is spastic (and thus isn't the most efficient at getting what he wants). ( some things I really like about the sex ) Of course, the art is wonderful. Saiga is splendidly spastic in that way Natsume Isaku is very good at portraying in her manga.

Beauty & Ghost by Umino Sachi and illustrated by Isaka Jugoro starts off and ends hilariously. Sato Seiji is a salaryman who doesn't really like his job but feels pressured to do well because he's quite capable and is depended upon (and he's proud). He's even more stressed lately because of a younger employee, Sakaki Kouta, who he doesn't care for and is also quite capable. How does he deal with the stress? He finds kids in a playground and tells them scary stories. He is filled with unholy glee at the look of pure fear on their faces. He learns that Sakaki can't handle scary stories and is again filled with unholy glee telling scary stories to Sakaki and getting that white faced reaction. And get revenge for being a problem in his life. When he pushes Sakaki too far, not letting him cover his ears to avoid hearing any more scary stories, Sakaki shuts him up by kissing him. So cliched! But still so funny to read! The relationship develops over time with Sato being tsundere and Sakaki being one of those puppy-dog types. Very cliched but very funny.