Bought an INKR membership to read “Elegant Yokai Apartment Life” and then spent last night crying over Gorou Kanbe’s “Don’t Call Me Daddy.” This is a spin-off/sequel to Kanbe’s “Don’t Call Me Dirty” (also available to read for free if you’re an INKR premium member), which stars earnest and naive Shouji, the only son of a single dad who befriends a local homeless man as he tries to recover from a failed relationship with another man. “Don’t Call Me Daddy” is, unsurprisingly, about Shouji’s dad Ryuuji--but more importantly about Ryuuji’s good friend Hanao, who turns out to have been Shouji’s other father more or less for the first few years of Shouji’s life. 

“Don’t Call Me Daddy” fools you with the first chapter into thinking it is about a slice of life “my two daddies” story, but there’s a 20 year (!!) time skip at the end of chapter one. Kanbe is much more interested in these two men in their 50+ year old forms which, yeah, me too. You know from “Don’t Call Me Dirty” that they don’t have wives, but they also don’t have each other, and not for the reasons you might think.Hanao is one of those wonderfully prickly bl oyajis who hides a fragile broken heart under layers and layers of high standards and self-denial -- catnip to both myself as a reader and a flamboyant younger doctor character in the manga named Dr. Haba who I’m surprised does not have his own spinoff. Ryuuji is a character type you’ve seen time and time again in bl, seemingly careless and carefree with a dog-like personality who turns out to see and feel a lot more than he’s letting on. Despite Hanao’s insistence that he’s not part of Ryuuji’s family, together in this short volume they navigate elder care, societal discrimination, raising a son, being sexually active in your later life, loneliness, and what it means to have and keep a family. I’m not claiming that this story is realistic, but it’s also interested in creating a fantastical romance out of ordinary, unromantic circumstances. I laughed, I cried, I went out on my patio hoping to see the moon. I thought about the weight of growing old. And I thought, well, it’s good that these two old men can share it together. 

Zantei Koibito, by Akiba Touko

An oldie but a goodie, this is a collection of three stories with no particular theme and no particular message. My favorite is without a doubt the title story (which gets three chapters), where Kurahashi, favorite capable subordinate to over-competent section manager Sakamoto, finds himself in an awkward morning after with Sakamoto, who mistakes the night before as a product of Kurahashi’s completely non-existent crush on Sakamoto. Kurahashi goes along with the misunderstanding, though, and eventually finds himself genuinely longing to be Kurahashi’s companion.

“Zantei Koibito” the title story is a funny combination of Nishida Higashi’s salaryman setups and Natsume Isaku’s Doushiyoumo Nai Keredo. The subordinate/boss pair who are a battle couple at the office is a trope, but one of my favorites, and to Akiba’s credit, the twist with Sakamoto not realizing Kurahashi had no romantic interest in him originally makes this particular pair stick out. Kurahashi never asked to be in the position of wanting to monopolize Sakamoto’s scant free time, and watching him in the first chapter crack under the frustration of not being able to see his (unwanted!) boyfriend is irony at its best. Sakamoto inspires everyone around him to do their best, but watching him change himself completely in an erroneous attempt to appeal to Kurahashi’s type (after he finds out that Kurahashi never crushed on him in the first place) is romantic and human without coming off as creepy or unhealthy, the way bl manga often portrays romance. I wish this couple got the whole five chapters, or at least a second volume, because such even-keeled, steady couples are hard to find, but it’s a good bite of fun as it is.

The second and third stories (a foreigner becomes a Buddhist monk (?!) after questioning his love for a childhood friend and two high school classmates reunite in college after one of them had spurned the other’s post-graduation confession) are serviceable, with the former feeling positively Yamamoto Kotetsuko a la Omairi Desu Yo. Nothing to write home about, but at least they don’t detract.

Super Lovers, by Abe Miyuki

This series leaves me very, very conflicted. On the one hand, it’s Abe Miyuki, so you know what to expect: complicit codependency, caretakers with inappropriate boundaries with their wards, implied child abuse (and I don’t mean in the sexual sense as some people describe Haru and Ren’s relationship, I mean in the very real “one of these children was physically abused by a parental figure” sense), purity as a weapon and a barrier, emotionally strong children, people having a hard time navigating their feelings towards their childhood heroes, icy hypercompetent women, a handful of naturally charismatic and beautiful men, and -- oh! the Kashiwagi family, of course, and Souryuu the school. I still plan to one day write up something about Komatta Toki, my favorite of her series, so for now suffice to say that Super Lovers is not a surprising addition to her oeuvre, nor is it a surprising addition to bl manga in general, and it’s basically Komatta Toki blended with the Mainichi Seiten series. I like both of those things. I generally like Abe Miyuki. I think I generally like Super Lovers. And yet.

“Older brother becomes father figure, has difficulties with one of the youngest in a romantic sense” pops up so often and so pervasively (just look at Yamamoto Kotetsuko’s latest, Bokura no Negai) that I am surprised “brought up by a stepbrother” isn’t a category on Baka-Updates, but something about the particular way this relationship is arranged in Super Lovers makes me fret. Outside of practical(?) concerns like genetic defects and its association with, yes, child sexual abuse and rape, one of the issues with incest is that it confuses interpersonal relationships. It makes the person you depend on to take care of you, clothe you, feed you, nurture you, etc. into your romantic partner, with all the issues of miscommunication, sexual negotiation, and emotional confusion that accompanies that. Blah blah relational trauma and traumatic bonding. 

My point isn’t that I think that’s necessarily happening with Haru and Ren, but rather if you look at their relationship critically and from a non-bl, totally third party perspective, I can’t help but see it. Maybe one of the most disturbing arcs is when Haru spurns Ren’s attempts to have sex with him, and Ren goes to their cousin Natsuo so he can “try it out.” Haru finds them and is furious, but Ren argues that if Haru isn’t going to have sex with him, then Ren might as well give up and have sex with anyone who’s willing -- which of course in Super Lovers would be his host-club-working (non-blood-related! but still totally) cousin instead of, say, his classmate. Fine, Haru tells Ren, you have sex with Natsuo, but if you do that, don’t expect to ever come home again. Ren sulkily comes home. He and Haru have words, and Haru says he doesn’t want to be sleeping in the same room with someone who claims to love him but would be willing to sleep with another man. “And of all people,” Haru complains, “why did you drag a relative like Natsuo into this?”

In the words of Daveed Diggs, whaaaaaaat. There are so many levels of crazy here that I can’t even parse. Abe Miyuki seems to treat Haru’s denial of his sexual desires towards Ren (which isn’t even that disciplined, he acts out on it all the time, and someone should tell Abe that the Lolita-esque narrative of “older man finds the unintentional advances of a younger, innocent lover irresistible” is nagl in this genre) as a joke or a bl trope setup (it’s funny because they’re always being interrupted by other people! OTHER PEOPLE LIKE HARU’S OWN BROTHERS), but it seems to me that Haru has a totally legitimate reason to not sex up a 16-year-old kid who imprinted on Haru when he was eight and is also financially and emotionally dependent. Haru can’t explain his feelings to Ren, because 1) it’d hurt Ren as a romantic partner, 2) it’d be awkward to explain that to Ren as a family member, and 3) Ren has no real understanding of how family dynamics work in the first place, so he has no context for Haru’s feelings (let’s not go into Haru’s own family emotional trauma). Haru’s hot-and-cold personality makes for an intense and intensely frustrating romantic partner, but his being Ren’s caretaker also means that when he threatens to turn Ren out of his home, it sounds far more ominous than a girlfriend turning her cheating boyfriend out of their shared apartment. Never mind that Haru would never abandon Ren like that -- the very act of saying it points to a very real power imbalance between these two. Meanwhile this makes two much older family figures that Ren has interacted with in a sexual context, one of whom (Haru) basically has the reluctant or implicit approval of the rest of Ren’s family to treat him like a tongyangxi. 

And again, I’m not saying that I think Haru and Ren’s relationship is unhealthy, or not any more unhealthy than any of the other super-all-encompassing and codependent relationships Abe Miyuki prefers. I like that Haru and Ren are grappling with exactly how a Hikaru Genji plot can go wrong, and in some ways that makes Super Lovers a better rendition of “raising your young lover” than other more shallow bl works which don’t even bother. But am I overthinking it? Does Abe Miyuki really want me to wonder about these issues, or are these just plot contrivances that have the good fortune of raising deeper questions about fake incest? My suspicion is that it’s, unfortunately, a mix of both, which is made more obvious by Aki and Shima, who sometimes have very insightful things to say about the Haru and Ren relationship and sometimes just act as the requisite “gently radiating kinkshaming” peanut gallery. 

(Speaking of Aki and Shima, that’s another tie between Super Lovers and Mainichi Seiten (is it a seasonal thing I’m not getting? Or is it just coincidence that this is a family of siblings and there’s an Aki and a Shima in both?) -- really makes you realize how niche and tropey bl manga is.)

Prince Charming, by Takaido Akemi

Prince Charming is not going to be to everyone's taste, but if it's to your taste, like it is to mine, then whooo boy are you in for a treat. Start with a main character (Asahina) who loves sex and is indifferent about teaching but then is about to lose his job bc of his sex hobbies, add in a feisty student (Yuasa) who has a boy's curiosity for Asahina and a man's possessive interest in being with Asahina, throw in Takaido's trademark humor and characterization with Yuasa's meddling friends Nagai and Kagami, and then add a vigorous and delightful dose of two almost love triangles that collapses into a love square, and you have Prince Charming. What's wonderful about this series is that the plot climaxes never quite come where you think they will. Yes, all the characters in this series are less than sexually monogamous, and yes, Asahina and Yuasa's primary motivations are to have their cakes and eat them too, but refreshingly, sex in this manga is neither the focus nor the answer. Instead, it's more focused on the tangle of relationships: Yuasa's constantly evolving friendship with Nagai, Asahina and Kagami trading teacher and student roles as they navigate sexual attraction and looking after Yuasa, Asahina and Yuasa trying to work out exactly how much commitment and investment they need from each other to feel satisfied. Takaido's characters are filled with contradictory desires, but instead of picking between them, they often try to take all of them at the same time, and instead of rescuing them from their messes, Takaido lets them wallow. Asahina should know better than to sleep with Yuasa -- he doesn't. Yuasa should know his friends and articulate his desires better -- he doesn't. Kagami should just let things well enough alone when it doesn't involve him -- he doesn't. And Nagai should either be hands-off and cool or passionate, not both -- but of course he is both. Which makes for a story that feels like it's full of false starts and promiscuous, distasteful characters, but I find them incredibly realistic and, more importantly, charming. Because the other thing about the people in Prince Charming is that they're never cruel or vengeful. In the middle of an ever tangling love square in volume 2, Kagami and Yuasa put themselves in harm's way for friendship more than for love, and there's a sense in volume 3 that the collapsing of Kagami's leg in the love triangle is more because he can't stand to keep betraying Yuasa's friendship than because he doesn't love Asahina. Kagami's last line in the main story is pretty telling ("I have so many kind people to take care of me!") because the atmosphere of Prince Charming is a happy, caring one. Asahina isn't the best teacher, but he wants the best for all three of his students. No one wants to be the bad guy, even when they're sleeping around. It sounds crazy and against everything bl manga usually stands for. But it works, and miracles of miracles, all four characters make it through to the end of three volumes as, reluctant or otherwise, friends. Probably the only thing that doesn't work for me here is the way Nagai's storyline is bundled up, with a graduated senpai and a blackmailer. The epilogue tries to shed light on the relationship, but only serves to confuse the themes without actually connecting them to the main story. Still, he's a strong enough player in the first two volumes, and is the wry, cool-headed character that the quartet needs, so I can't complain too much.

Caste Heaven, by Ogawa Chise

The obvious comparison is Motoni Modoru’s Rika the Breeder series, right down to the system of Kings, Queens, and Jacks. ‘Course, since only Motoni Modoru can be Motoni Modoru, Caste Heaven is far less twisted and sick and has sex scenes that are probably designed for you to feel sexy about them, instead of disgusted and morbidly intrigued. You know the drill: at a high school where social status is determined by finding the right playing card during a “caste game,” an array of characters find their fortunes reverse and reverse again as they negotiate the difficult lines between power and friendship. We start with Azusa, a former King who loses his rank and slips all the way to Joker, the class fool, but in typical Ogawa fashion, there are enough beta couples to fill their own series.

Just like Rika the Breeder, Ogawa’s high school is a parody of a parody, with social classes like “preps,” “nerds,” and “goths,” and the assumption of a role is complete – you lose your personality, your friends, and your position with each shift. Just like Rika the Breeder, the social pressure needed to sustain this kind of situation is assumed, and not explicit. But unlike Rika, the stakes always seem personal, never mythic. I’ve joked before that Rika is a shounen manga dressed up in bl manga clothes: it stars a plucky newcomer with a dead brother who may secretly be the ultimate big bad, only the superpower is sex and the damsel in distress is a dude they all call “mama” (Loveless follows this same formula, only softened for shounen-ai purposes, which is why Loveless got licensed and Rika the Breeder got canceled by Motoni Modoru herself). Caste Heaven is strictly bl. Karino’s motives for monopolizing Azusa are obvious and straightforward; Azusa has a backstory with his mom that explains him, for better or worse. Compared to the labyrinthe snarl of psychological trauma in Rika, Caste Heaven is a soap opera, just with a lot of violent rape.

Ogawa Chise has a thing for badly codependent relationships, with a “weaker” character hiding the fact that he’s manipulating his “stronger” companion into remaining with him for better or worse – and it’s always worse. Ogawa makes an argument in the latest chapters that this kind of manipulation is, in some ways, just a way to “protect” a love that would otherwise be crushed, but just like the caste game itself, Ogawa’s fondness for unhealthy possessive relationships is like the air itself to this story, and every twist is designed to dirty up an otherwise pure feeling. Unlike, say, Harada, who despite her deviance makes it quite clear when a relationship is trash and when it’s actually healthier than the characters’ other options, it’s hard to tell if Ogawa thinks these relationships are complete trash or secretly worth saving and that the creepy unhealthy dynamics that plague every single pairing is because of something entirely out of the characters’ control – the caste game, representing ruthless adult society and the expectations thereof.

In fact, it’s hard to tell what Ogawa is doing, period. I like the intersection of the Kuze-Atsumu couple with the trainwreck of Karino-Azusa circa chapter 8, because it shows two characters trying, and failing, to free themselves from the game, but chapter 9 went back to Ogawa’s thesis that the game gives a kind of freedom to the characters that society denies them. If that was true, then what about characters like Azusa and Atsumu, who are brutalized by the caste game but would be largely left alone by society at large? What about Yatori from chapter 10.5, who would fuck up Yukari with or without the help of the caste game? If only Ogawa would focus enough on seeing these storylines through instead of jumping to the next beta couple, we could get some answers, but that's what happens when you have Shimizu Yuki syndrome.

Itoshi no Mirai-kun, by Yoshida Yuuko

Bizarrely innocent and twisted/kinky at the same time. Hibiya’s best friend Mirai wants desperately to reflect sincerity in all things and so begins a string of questionable relationships with men who push their feelings onto him. Hibiya tries hard to keep Mirai from getting hurt, but begins to suspect his own feelings are less than pure. I think Yoshida Yuuko thinks this story is a happy one, but I can’t help feeling like she wasted the set-up, especially past chapter 3. Mirai is too pure for this world, in a literal sense — he becomes an intense mirror of the feelings of the people around him, and it’s impossible for anyone to handle that kind of unadulterated sincerity. The decisions Mirai makes are laughable, because he seems to operate in a world where no one can have bad intentions.

Hibiya rightly recognizes that the only way to save Mirai from himself is to ruin the very thing that makes Mirai himself — teach him to lie, and teach him to see that others lie, and that you can’t just accept other’s feelings for you unconditionally. Hibiya is at cross-purposes with himself, too, because teaching Mirai to see past veneers will allow Mirai to see that Hibiya is possessive and lustful, and this all gets twisted into a weird bundle of poor decision making on everyone’s part in chapter 3 that is honestly suspenseful and exciting.

But then there’s this slow slide into predictability in the last chapter, where Mirai’s innocence isn’t treated like the bomb it’s been in the earlier chapters and reverts back into bl tropes of the uneducated, bashful uke who can’t understand his own desires. Interesting, but disappointing, which was my feeling about Yoshida’s other works as well. In some ways, this is the lighter Toujo Asami, who trafficks very much in the same kind of relationship dynamics and intense, unbelievable main characters.

Despicable (Inu Mo Kawanai), by Psyche Delico

Two stories, both about bizarre love triangles. In one, two schoolboys develop an unhealthy cat-and-mouse game of affections, which involves roping in third parties as bait. One of them manages, in a Psyche Delico kind of way, to rope in a third party who bites as well as he takes to being chewed. In the second, a man falls in love with his brother-in-law, who is afraid he used marriage as a way of binding himself to a man who refuses to be helped. After his death, the brother in law and a best friend reminisce, and it ends, in a Psyche Delico kind of way, poorly.

I find Psyche Delico most interesting in what she doesn’t say, rather than what she actually puts in the mouths of her characters. This isn’t Choco Strawberry Vanilla levels of fascinating and fresh three person dynamics, but ultimately it’s one of the better fictional representations of what separates a crush from true love. The two professors/schoolboys in the first story are too afraid of rejection to have a loving, mutual relationship with each other, so (spoilers!) when the confession comes at the end, it doesn’t branch off into “old men finding each other” comfort and understanding; instead, it terminates the relationship and causes Okuzono to pursue the next thing — which just happens to be Utsugi, a guy who is too much like him and Yamashiro both for their own good. Utsugi, too, was most fascinated by Okuzono when Okuzono was at his darkest and most untouchable, i.e. most obsessed with Yamashiro, so one can only guess what the consummation of that relationship is going to look like, now that he finally has what he wants. You know that bit in bl manga where someone realizes, “I only loved you when you were in love with someone else”? That’s it, that’s the whole story.

The second half is interesting for the dissonant climax and conclusion. We’re looking at three guys who keep settling for their second best because they think or know their first choice is out of reach, but it’s a Penrose triangle of impossibility that feeds into itself: Masaki thinks Otohiko is only sleeping with him because he can’t get Daigo, and Otohiko can’t tell Masaki that he’s using Daigo as a reason to sleep with him, because he really does love Daigo, and so on. An interesting enough set-up, but Psyche Delico balanced atmosphere with emotional development and slighted the latter to lean more heavily on the former.

Bath Towel, by Toribito Hiromi

One day we’re going to have a long conversation about Toribito Hitomi’s obsession with incestuous relationships but today is not that day.

Main character Yuuji is drawn into a weird web centering around Anju, a classmate famous both for his beauty and his hedonism. Meanwhile we get involved with Yuuji’s brother who has had a crush on Anju for years and the mysterious Kaoru no Kimi, someone Anju claims is special to him. The plot-twist of Kaoru no Kimi’s identity is obvious to people familiar with Oniisama e…, though the joke is most likely a reference from Genji Monogatari. On the whole, it feels like Toribito bit off more than she can chew, with multiple love triangles, a main character who becomes a passive narrator, and a plot that doesn’t go anywhere. It’s like sloppier Takaguchi Satosumi (Poet Was Not… or Pink, perhaps?) and is interesting if only for the comparison to Toribito’s current work, which is much tighter and dramatically interesting.

Inu to Tsubame, by Amagakure Gido

Here’s the official summary: “Kaede is still mourning the loss of his brother when he is suddenly reunited with his childhood friend, Noro. As they get closer, Kaede shares his suspicion that he may have caused his brother’s death. After hearing this, Noro recommends animal therapy and lets Kaede use him as a pet dog. But one day, the dog suddenly kisses his owner…?”

The official summary and first chapter of this story hides the lede and makes it sound like the pet dog aspect between Kaede and Noro (the childhood friend) will play a bigger part than it actually does. The reality is that this story is very much about Kaede trying to understand and move on from his brother’s death, especially his belief that he caused his brother to commit suicide. Noro’s own unhappy childhood is hinted at, but Amagakure resists the temptation to make the whole story about people’s deeply unsettling family tragedies and instead gives most of the Noro screentime to his fascinatingly complex feelings towards Kaede. Chapter 2 is a standout, with Noro musing over Kaede’s selfishness and his own desire to both monopolize and be monopolized, and it neatly sets up Kaede’s own fear that he causes pain to the people around him by being demanding and nosy.

The intrusion of a friend of Kaede’s brother in the last two chapters is a little too convenient, but on par with the themes of self-discovery, acceptance, and regret. Tonally, the art is sparse and kinetic, with a lot of white space, which may be surprising for readers of Amagakure’s other works, like “Amaama to Inazuma.” There are a lot of bl manga out there about childhood friends and dead brothers, but this is a worthy addition.

Subarashii Shitsuren, by Nishida Higashi

Nishida Higashi, queen of the salaryman oneshot, collects five (and a half) stories here, about high-powered, overworked men and the high-powered, overworked men who love them. There’s a little variation with the third and fourth stories, which are set outside of the office, but the other three stories all star a chief and his secretary, but to very diverse ends.

I find the first and the fifth oneshot to be Nishida at her best and most bittersweet, which might be expected for a collection titled “marvelous heartbreak.” In the first, a man in love with his domineering section chief is suddenly forced to confront the impossibility of his love when he’s raped by an ex’s brother. In a bl trope reversal, the rape isn’t a catalyst for love, and the section chief’s family features heavily in the moral balance of the climax, which is tender and affirming even when it lets down its main character.

The same plot elements — a secretary in love with the president, a family, a dubiously consensual sex scene — come back for the last oneshot, but the conclusion is far sadder. Nishida’s plots are often about timing: bad timing that leads two characters to like each other in mismatched cycles, or coincidental timing that brings two people from completely different worlds together for life. In the fifth oneshot, though, the timing is uncharacteristically perfect, and the characters don’t have any misunderstandings about each other’s intentions or feelings, but it still ends marvelously, inescapably, in heartbreak.

Ikusen no Yoru, by Kinoshita Keiko

This story reminds me of a Japanese term “腐れ縁” (kusare-en), which means basically a destined but unwanted bond you have with someone. Sora and Tetsuya are childhood friends who become estranged, then reunited, then estranged again, all the way from childhood into adulthood. Tetsuya wants to protect Sora, but thinks the only way to do that is to make Sora depend on him, and Sora wants Tetsuya to recognize his own agency in a way Sora’s father can’t, which leaves us with two people talking at cross-purposes with an extra dollop of sexual tension on top. So of course Tetsuya runs away to college and gets a girlfriend, only to be called back to rescue Sora, and of course Sora has to escape from Tetsuya’s smothering, only for all three of them (Tetsuya, his ex-girlfriend, and Sora) to reconnect when they’re older. Things would be easier if Tetsu learned how to stop projecting his own insecurities all over his partner before he got back together with Sora, or if Sora learned how to advocate for himself before he reconnected with Tetsuya, but — kusare-en. Which is how we get three volumes of bad communication, followed by a strangely paltry climax bringing Tetsuya and Sora together.

I’m making this sound bad, but actually I really enjoyed it. It feels a little like Mimurake no Musuko, a similar three volume work about childhood friends, with a slow meandering plot and people behaving selfishly but not, necessarily, badly. I think what Kinoshita is trying to convey is the careful interplay of saving someone and helping yourself: Sora and Tetsuya couldn’t be together until Tetsuya stopped needing to see himself as the cool, collected white knight and Sora was able to choose Tetsuya because of love and not because he needed Tetsuya to save him. With that theme in mind, the aimless plot makes sense. They needed to fail first before they could learn to succeed.

An extra shout-out to Ryoutarou, Sora’s best friend, and Yui, Tetsuya’s ex/girlfriend, for being the MVPs of this series. Ryou is the pitch-perfect almost-ran boyfriend, and you get the sense that Kinoshita had to make him small-minded and less forceful so that he wouldn’t actually end up the better boyfriend for Sora. He’s awfully similar to Ogawa from Emotion Circuit only Sora has none of Maki’s self-awareness. Yui gets the Cornered Mouse/Chopped Carp treatment, as she’s clearly too good for Tetsuya and is unfortunately delegated to being a stepping stone (twice) for Tetsuya and Sora’s relationship, just like the ill-fated Natsuki and Tamaki.

Orutana, by Furutsuji Kikka

In both style and writing, incredibly similar to Shoowa’s Non Tea Room, which is also about a love triangle where all participants are hiding more than they are revealing (and where some of the participants are in a band!). Here, Miki’s childhood friend Keisuke introduces Miki to his current crush: a kouhai named Chiba. Miki, who has had a crush on Keisuke for a while, sublimates his feelings into seducing Chiba. What he doesn’t expect is for Chiba to 1) fall hard for Miki and 2) to decipher Miki’s real feelings about Keisuke. All the characters end up finding themselves torn between selfishness and their better selves: Miki wants to make things work with Chiba (who he sees as the epitome of everything he’ll never be — earnest and cute and a good kid) but can’t seem to really commit, Chiba lets his doubts about Miki’s feelings (which are well-founded!) inspire him to put Miki and Keisuke’s friendship in danger, and Keisuke doesn’t know how to prioritze his crush on Chiba and his friendship with Miki.

There’s a woodness to the placement and body language in the art, but in some areas the construction really shines. Chapter 2 is a particular stand-out: the bookends of “you sure are loved,” the speech bubbles of Chiba and Miki as they talk about first names, the thread that goes from Miki’s monologue to Keisuke’s childhood memories.

Despite Furutsuji’s lack of titles to her name, there’s a deftness to the characterization and writing. Keisuke feels straight despite his crush on Chiba, and he plays “straight, devoted friend” to Miki in a way that makes their friendship real, fleshed out with concrete, unique details that many other manga forget to add. Miki is the more experienced of the three, and starts off the story with a wicked streak, but he has a vulnerability that draw you to him like it must have drawn Keisuke. It’s not that he’s helpless, but you can tell when he’s going to make a bad decision or let a bad decision be made on him. And Chiba toes the line of victim and victimizing. I don’t buy the other readers’ comments that sympathize with Chiba, who was, it’s true, used by Miki in the beginning. Miki puts in a good faith effort to make right by Chiba’s feelings. It’s Chiba who uses Miki in the end, and I think his exit from the story is both poignant and fitting. He’s not villanized, but Furutsuji doesn’t want to vindicate him either.

In the end, it’s a story that feels really modern and young, but not immature. The resolution is kind to everyone, even Chiba, who has friends that will pull him out of his heartbreak, just as Keisuke is there for Miki’s heartbreaks. A solid read all around.

Messiah no Sentaku, by Harada

The end to Harada’s Messiah series (Messiah no Yakubi and Messiah no Kyojitsu) brings back the the nameless Messiah’s friend in an unexpected role: as the person behind the rape in the first one-shot. Turns out Friend was the one who hired Seme. Which brings up ALL SORTS of questions, like how did Friend and Seme meet, and how did Friend realize that Seme had the Skills (TM) to resist Messiah’s mouth, and most importantly, what the actual fuck?!

I don’t find the ending, where Messiah has to choose between an obsessive, boundary-ignoring, bullying rapist and a manipulative, monopolizing, and pathetic rape-conspiracist, to be funny or sweet, and honestly neither does Harada, who throws in a peanut-gallery who calls both choices “trash” and a strange “it’s all just a story!” implication to the final page, making Messiah and Seme metafictional characters to boot. Friend’s long rambling speech where he reveals his plans for Messiah’s sexual submission is disturbing in an over-the-top parodic way, especially when he misunderstands Messiah’s ability to see only him as a person apart from his penis as some sort of longcon hater joke by Messiah.

And that’s really Harada’s wheelhouse — sexy, dubious consent-y romps with not very nice characters. Still, something here smacks of victimization: Messiah feels too much like a victim who has spent all their life being sexually abused and thus can only respond with inappropriate sexuality, and when he’s caught between two abusers, he doesn’t make the obvious, self-empowered choice to leave. Instead, he feels like he’s forced to go along with one of them just because they like him (or, maybe, because he knows neither one of them would leave him alone even if he said no). Here’s hoping that Seme’s inability to understand “no means no” is mostly motivated by Friend’s money and disappears with the closing pages of this oneshot. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though. At least the sex is hot.

Ametora, by Yorita Saemi

Four stars for the concept, two for the execution, so we land somewhere around three stars. Tora, nicknamed Noroshi, and Amane are fellow researchers at the same university lab (considering the first chapter namedrops Feynman, I’m guessing mathematics). When Amane invites Noroshi to his uncle’s summer home, Noroshi accepts eagerly (Amane is an idol of sorts, and Noroshi is a little lost in a burgeoning crush), but doesn’t realize he’s going to be spending the weekend with Amane’s friends, one of whom — and Amane won’t say which! — is Amane’s ex.

The concept in theory is very good: it’s a mystery story and an unconventional love story both, with Noroshi as the incompetent detective, Amane as the femme fatale, and the unknown ex as the criminal. But there are about five subplots (Aiba? The ghostly old man? Amane’s ex’s tortured past? PRIME NUMBERS??) that aren’t resolved or tied in. As a result, you start the manga feeling like you’ve missed a chapter somewhere, and you end the manga feeling like the last pages of another story got pasted in.

Still, all the characters are lively and the story is unique, and as a whole Ametora reads like a weird bastard child of Nishida Higashi’s humor and Ima Ichiko’s plotting.

Sora no Seibun, by Momokuri Mikan

An odd debut by the mangaka who would later go on to do Strawberry 100% (?!) and whose most recent story, Gunjou ni Siren, is basically a more mature, better illustrated retread of this. But, without getting sidetracked, Sora no Seibun is I’ll/CKBC meets Kimi no Mukougawa.

Okamoto, a junior high basketball prodigy, ends up at a high school with a weak basketball team, but still manages to inspire his classmate — the tinier, completely amateur, but naturally gifted, Koizumi (one suspects Saint Kuroko Tetsuya watches over him). In typical bl fashion, basketball and a latent attraction forges a strong bond between them, but it’s shredded to pieces when Koizumi is chosen over Okamoto to be on the provincial tournament team. Added to the mix is Okamoto’s “distant relative” Yumi, who is something in between a sex friend and a girlfriend to Okamoto, and is hiding her own wounds (which, I might add, Okamoto is helping her lick).

There’s nothing revolutionary about the development of the story, which really is equal helpings of the basketball drama in I’ll and the rather rudimentary and tired machinations of Yumi + “we can’t be together/but you’re the only one for me/let’s sacrifice our emotions stupidly for the sake of drama” that you’d find in Kimi no Mukougawa. What saves it from the slush pile is an inspired ending that predates The Carp on the Chopping Block…, only with two characters walking together slowly in the summer instead of in the snow. Okamoto tries to let Koizumi down gently, but Koizumi parries with a loaded metaphor, comparing his feelings for Okamoto to Okamoto’s feelings for basketball. Though the last scene ends, abruptly, with none of the characters actually together, you can almost smell the sweat, hear the cicadas, and feel the hot sun as Okamoto and Koizumi reach an understanding somewhere in the middle of love and friendship. It’s very real, and oddly human. Can’t say I’d necessarily recommend it, but there’s something psychologically interesting hidden in the banality, and at the very least, I look forward to the rest of Gunjou ni Siren.

Dokonimo Nai Kuni, by Kusama Sakae

Two (or three) longer stories and one true oneshot to close out the volume. The first is probably Kusama Sakae at her atmospheric best (c.f. Carnivorous Animal’s Table Manners), about two soldiers learning to cope with the effects of the war ending. A two-parter about isolation and reintegrating into society, it lets the perfect amount of introspection remain unspoken, and the effect is heady, humid, and affecting. More disturbing if you compare it to the real life story ofHirou Onoda, but the privilege of fiction is that you can take and leave what you like of history.

And then, the “Between 1 and 2″/ “Between 0 and 1” stories. “Between 1 and 2” is a classic “bl chara doesn’t understand that childhood friend is a dude, not a lady” story, and skims lightly across the hinted-at dark sea of, essentially, childhood sexual trauma. Kusame doesn’t do much with the implied sexual predator in the story, and so the effect is simply froth (well-executed froth, but still froth). As for “Between 0 and 1,” though, the rape is explicit, textual, and disturbing, made worse by the fact that the characters don’t really address it. It’s a little like “Eien wa Arimasuka?“, that Ono x Tachibana dj for Antique Bakery that Yoshinaga drew herself, the one that breaks open their sexual tension, only Kusame doesn’t make the characters sit down and talk to each other afterwards like Yoshinaga does. Instead, both of them get lost in their own heads and then they yell at each other and then they start a relationship that mostly consists of goading each other on.

I don’t mean to be disapproving, and I think Kusame’s liner notes at the end show what she’s trying to do (the characters are a mended lid to each other’s broken pot). It’s thematically consistent with the first story and the last oneshot — to wit, a broken thing becomes stronger and more beautiful when it is mended with love. Whether or not you buy it depends on how you feel about the use of rape in stories. I wouldn’t say that Kusame is condoning the rape, but it’s certainly not treated with the weight I would think it deserved.

Overall, though, this collection is worth it for the first historical oneshot.

The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese & The Carp on the Chopping Block Jumps Twice, by Mizushiro Setona

Businessman Kyouichi is married, but that doesn’t stop him from getting into multiple affairs. His wife Chikako, by chance, hires Kyouichi’s college kouhai Imagase as a private investigator to uncover evidence of these affairs. Things seem like it’s all over for Kyouichi, except Imagase throws down an uncomfortable request: he’ll keep Kyouichi’s affairs from Chikako, as long as Kyouichi gives Imagase free reign over Kyouichi’s body.

Mizushiro has created two very different, and to be honest, not admirable, characters in Kyouichi and Imagase. Kyouichi is flighty, selfish, prone to get swept off his feet, indecisive in his worst moments, and sometimes just entirely emotionally not there. Imagase is clingy, and obsessive, and stalkerish, and downright negative. But at his best, Kyouichi is a sensitive lover, a man who wants to do good and right by the people who love him, and by the end of the series he is someone who has come to accept his faults and work hard to achieve happiness for the people around him. And at his best, Imagase is dedicated, and loyal to the teeth, and willing to wait, even forever, for Kyouichi to make the decisions he needs to make. And to watch them manage the difficulty that is their love, from the opening problems with Kyouichi’s wife Chikako to the final third player in Tamaki, and all of Kyouichi and Imagase’s ex-lovers in between, is a masterpiece of emotional drama.

There are deep underlying psychological problems with both Kyouichi and Imagase’s ability to connect with other people. They’re really different problems, and they collide, head on, in one breathtaking scene in the chapter “Owl” in the second volume where, silently, Mizushiro moves the panels from Kyouichi’s face, to Imagase’s tears, to the signs of their domestic life together: clean dishes, an ashtray, a potted plant, a bed. In plenty of conversations–where Imagase declares sex to be merely a stopgap solution to Kyouichi and Imagase’s communication problems, when Kyouichi asks his exgirlfriend what he should do if Imagase ever leaves him, in a truly heartbreaking sequence when Kyouichi and Imagase go to the beach together for the last time– Mizushiro manages to show you that sometimes love is about relationships that go horrible wrong, relationships that can’t go happily ever after into old age and beyond death. Like creating a blanket out of the spaces between threads, Kyouichi and Imagase are fashioning a relationship out of their inability to have a lasting relationship with each other, Kyouichi by adapting what he knows about pleasing women to Imagase’s image, and Imagase by learning to trust enough to sometimes let go. It can be really frustrating, and there were moments in The Carp on the Chopping Block, especially, where I wanted to reach into my computer and throttle both Imagase and Kyouichi and then drown them in Tokyo Bay. But that frustration and anger is also part of the beauty of The Cornered Mouse series, and in the end, there is no one better for Kyouichi than Imagase, and vica versa.

The supporting female characters, Natsuki (Kyouichi’s ex girlfriend) and Tamaki (Kyouichi’s coworker), are also painted with a deft and sympathetic hand. Chikako and one of Kyouichi’s earlier affairs smack a little too hard of bl manga’s general disregard for women characters, but Natsuki, in the end, is strong and realistic and as much a victim of circumstance as any of the other characters, and Tamaki will break your heart. The writing too, both in dialogue and inner monologue, is fantastic here. I never once felt I was meandering or wasting time in one of Kyouichi’s private monologues. But better than all of this are the moments of silence and unspoken feeling Mizushiro has planted throughout the story. Imagase, especially, comes through stronger in these moments, so that his moments of vulnerability are poignant in a way that, if shown through speech, his personality would never allow them to be.

True, the general plot of the story (Kyouichi gets attracted to a woman, Imagase gets jealous, they break up) seems to be repeated over and over again in this story. Kyouichi seems determined to believe that homosexuality is impossible and no homosexual men could be happy with each other. The story drags on for a bit, and I’m not entirely sure I buy into Kyouichi’s final denouement as a character.

But no work is perfect, and in the end, I think it’s outweighed by the complexity of The Cornered Mouse series that will keep you coming back for more. There are no bad guys and no good guys in this story. Everyone is in the wrong, and everyone was wronged, and everyone is just someone desperately trying to find their own little slice of happiness, no matter how selfish that might be. For Kyouichi and Imagase, their slice of happiness never comes to them in quite the way they planned. It’s beaten up, and bitter, and riddled with loopholes, and even still, after all they go through together, unstable and uncertain. I love, too, that Mizushiro doesn’t treat them like teenagers in love. They have their own concerns– their career, their ages, society, whether or not they still have the heart to carry themselves through a relationship fraught with arguments and suspicion and tears. But I want to believe they manage to hold onto that happiness, even after the last page of the comic is turned. And I’m sure that after reading it, you will want to believe that too.