Tag Archives: josei

Kanojo ga Suki na Mono wa Homo de Atte Boku de wa Nai/ She Likes Gays, but Not Me by Asahara Naoto/Hirahara Akira

Oh boy. 

Another complicated one. 

Content warning: homophobia, pedophilia, suicide, and suicidal ideation. 

SPOILERS

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This manga is based on a novel by Asahara Naoto. Note: not a light novel, a novel. The manga retelling is complete in three volumes (all of which I was able to get from my library, but you can also find it here on Mangadex.)

I don’t know anything about Asahara-sensei, other than that Manga Updates thinks he is a man. Conflictingly, when reporting on Asahara’s death at 38 in 2023 of malignant lymphoma, Anime News Network uses they/them pronouns. That might just be because there is simply not a lot about Asahara to be found in English. Since most other sources that I checked use he/him, I will as well. If someone knows for certain that Asahara-sensei is X gender, please drop me a comment and I will correct.

What I really wish I knew is whether or not Asahara-sensei, himself, is gay. Wikipedia never directly confirms or denies Asahara’s sexuality. However, they cite an interview in Japanese and indirectly quote him as saying, “…because the novel is centered on people with incompatible attributes coming to an understanding, namely with Jun’s sexuality and Miura’s interest in yaoi, it can be enjoyed by people who are not sexual minorities as well.” That sort of implies that he wrote the novel for gay people, perhaps because he is also gay. 

Whether or not Asahara is gay only really matters when I get to the parts of the story that I found somewhat problematic. 

The manga She Likes Gays but Not Me is part of a whole bunch of alternate media that Asahara’s novel inspired. There was an eight episode 2019 live-action TV show (Fujoshi, Ukkari Gay ni Kokuru/ A Fujoshi Thoughtlessly Confesses to a Gay Man), as well as a live-action film in 2021 entitled Kanojo ga Suki na Mono wa/What She Likes Are. (Which is awkward in English? My Japanese is juvenile in comprehension, but just looking at that title, I’d have translated it to something more like Things She Likes, but… what do I know?)

The manga was serialized from February 2019 to March of 2020 as a kind of accompaniment to the TV show.

It’s got a clever opening that hooked me right away. Our hero, Andou Jun, a closeted high schooler, is shopping at a bookstore in Shinjiku one day and runs into a girl from his class, Miura Sae. Miura is shopping in the BL section and randomly blurts out that she’s a fujoshi. Realizing her awkward mistake, she immediately runs after him and begs Andou to keep her secret. Of course, Andou has a secret of his own. He’s gay.

Miura sort of attaches herself to Andou and, when he asks her why she likes stories with gay men in it, she fan girls at him about the universe of BL and how she knows it’s fantasy but that’s okay because it’s not like she’s ever going to know a real gay man.

Thus begins the grand irony of the manga and, in many ways, its theme. Andou Jun is everything hero BL heroes are not. His life is objectively terrible. His secret keeps Andou very socially isolated. He’s regularly hooking-up with an older married man he thinks maybe he’s in love with, but he feels it sort of doesn’t matter because what he’d really rather be is straight. Androu wants to be “normal” and grow up to have a wife and a kid and make his family proud and all those sorts of things that seem to be really ingrained in Japanese men, particularly only or eldest sons. But, as Andou says several times, his dick just doesn’t agree with this plan. It only gets up for men twice his age.

Andou has an online mentor/friend whom he only knows as Mr. Fahrenheit. He and Mr. Fahrenheit share a love of older men and the music of Queen. We learn that Mr. Fahrenheit is HIV+ and that his older lover has recently died due to complications of full blown AIDS. Mr. Fahrenheit’s story is pretty harrowing, as his HIV status outed him to a family that then denied him access to his lover’s funeral. 

Meanwhile, in high school, Andou is getting pressured to date the obviously smitten Miura even though his very straight (though crotch-grabbing) childhood bestie has been attracted to her for some time. In a classic ferris wheel scene, Andou eventually caves and kisses her. They start dating.

Next comes the pressure for sex. Andou gives it the old college try, but he just can not perform. 

There’s a whole bunch of other high school drama that I will let you experience for yourself if you decide to give this one a go. 

The thing I mostly want to talk about is Mr. Fahrenheit and Andou’s older lover. 

In one of their late night, online discussions, Mr. Fahrenheit asks Andou to do him a favor. Should he die, he wants Andou to collect his favorite Queen CD from his parents and place it on the grave of his lover, the one his family refused to let him mourn properly. Andou agrees, but tries to reassure Mr. Fahrenheit that being HIV+ is not an automatic death sentence. He could live for a long, long time!

However, Mr. Fahrenheit takes matters into his own hands. It’s only days later that, while on a trip to a hot spring, Andou receives an automated text message from Mr. Fahrenheit. He never planned to wait to die naturally. He killed himself in order to be with his lover. 

When, in the third volume, Andou goes to collect the CD, we discover that Mr. Fahrenheit is actually a middle schooler. We don’t know what grade exactly Mr. Fahrenheit was in, but that means he’s 11 to 14 years old. 

That stopped me hard. 

Add to this revelation that, all along, from the very start, we know that Andou’s older lover has a daddy kink. Specifically, he wants Andou to call him Daddy during sex. This initially rolled off me because, hey, no kink shaming, right? You know, it’s not for me, but some people like this sort of thing. Go for it.

 However, later, when Andou decides to make a clean break from everyone and breaks up with his lover, we learn that his lover’s kink was literally because he has the hots for his own son. Like, there is a very explicit moment when Andou’s lover talks about having come across his kid’s porn stash and suddenly realized his kid was a man and he was turned on. Since then, he sought out young men to LITERALLY REPLACE HIS OWN CHILD in bed.

These are the only two gay relationships we see in the entire manga, y’all.

The only ones.

There is not a single healthy, happy, non-pedophile relationship in the entire three volumes of this manga.

The only other queer person we meet is a big-breasted femme lesbian who runs a gay bar that apparently serves minors and who fully supports Andou, an underage high schooler, hooking up with a married man in his 40s.

This manga and the book it was based on was praised for its “realistic depiction of gay people.”

I sure hope not?!

Like, I get that the premise of this manga (and its other supporting/original material) is, at its essence, trying to draw a hard line between the fantasy that yaoi fans have about queer life and “real life.” I am not trying to imply that gay men–or queer folks of any stripe–have it easy. I certainly didn’t, coming of age as I did in the late 1980s. I get that lots of folks may have fallen in, their first time, with questionable lovers because there weren’t a lot of other options for them for whatever reason. Had I stayed in small-town Wisconsin, that might have been me. Especially in an era where age gaps just didn’t hit like they do now. And, I don’t know how this is viewed in Japan. Different cultures and all that. I try very hard not to judge.

But 14 at the MOST? That’s not a relationship, that’s predation. I fully believe that Mr. Fahrenheit might have felt that he was in love, but he was 14 or even younger and having unprotected sex with a grown man. I would feel a whole helluva a lot better about this story in general if Androu wasn’t also not somewhere between 15 and 18 and getting fucked by someone in his 40s who wants to pretend he’s doing it with his own biological child.

Once again, I don’t know what to tell you all. The novel is clearly for adults, but the manga was serialized in a josei BL magazine, Comic Bridge (Kadokawa). So the audience was mature women… but, of course, I found this in the teen section of my library. I’m also not against teens reading about this stuff? But I sure hope it’s not anyone’s first exposure to manga or gay men since it highlights the most destructive and harmful stereotypes–that us queers are literally predators preying on children. 

Holy shit, y’all this was a tough ride. Especially since it is very much sold as a story based on that meet-cute at the bookstore. 

I guess, read at your own risk?

I have good things to say about it, too. The story is compelling!  I read the whole thing in a matter of hours! The art style isn’t my favorite, but it did not detract from the story in any way. I really liked Muira’s character? She was complicated in her own right and not sidelined in any way. I would even go so far as to say that Mauira proved to be a sincere friend to Andou all the way through. 

I was also intrigued by the fact that the concept that there is a separate BL World from our own came up again in this manga. I had literally never heard the idea that all BL exists in another dimension that has different rules before reading A Man Who Defies The World of BL. I mean, I know A/B/O is its own world? But all BL? Never heard of it.

Apparently, I am a fake yaoi fan.
If you read this (or chose to do so now) let me know what you think of She Like Gays, but Not Me!

Te no Hira Neko / Fairy Cat (Volume 1) by Takano Hisa

I actually read Te no Hira Neko / Fairy Cat some days ago, but I’ve been struggling with figuring out how best to review it. The problem? It’s about a guy who discovers that a palm-sized fairy cat has moved into his house.

I have now spoiled absolutely everything that happens in volume 1. Manga-Updates suggests that this story is complete in two volumes, which… I mean, it really depends on your tolerance for page after page of absolutely adorable pictures of a tiny Siamese cat.

SPOILERS

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So, I am not going to say that you can’t love this manga. In fact, I’m going to say that I think that maybe this manga is exactly what you need. It may be the cure for what ails you in 2025 because this story is not only beautiful to look at, it’s also entirely stress free.

 

The only stress that this story has caused me is that I spent a lot of time trying to find out whether or not a palm-sized cat was a creature of Japanese myth and legend already known to the native audience or if this adorable palm-sized cat was entirely made up from the mind of Takano-sensei. There are a lot of cat yokai, so I’m still not 100% certain, but my guess is that this little “fairy cat” is original and not based on folklore 

My only caveat is that if you are not a fan of really, extremely boring slice-of-life stories where very little happens DO NOT read this. Like, the entire plot is, “Oh, I seem to have acquired a palm-sized cat, how cool!” and “Will it sleep with me tonight?” and “Where did it go? Oh, it’s still here.” These are the sorts of dramas encountered within the over 147 pages of Te no Hira Neko / Fairy Cat.

Am I saying this is bad? NO. I love this book. 10/10 recommend. But, only if you like this sort of thing!  Listen, I could (and have) read multiple volumes of Chi’s Sweet Home and, honestly, this book is cuter (at least in a more realistic cat drawing way.)  a lot of ways not much happens in Chi’s Sweet Home either. Chi learns his own name, uses the litterbox appropriately, discovers things in the house, gets up to some (mostly) harmless mischief…  that’s kind of a lot of what’s going on here.

So, yeah, read it? Especially if all you can handle right now is some cute pictures.

You Can’t Live All on Your Own by Tsuno Mizoko

The next up from my library haul is Hitori de Ikiru wa Mamanaranu / You Can’t Live All on Your Own.

SPOILERS

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This manga is the kind of slice-of-life story that I live for. It follows four adult women just living their lives as roommates. Shuuko is our main character, in so much as there is one in this ensemble cast. She’s an average office worker who is approaching the dreaded age of 30–the age by which many Japanese women are expected to be married. In fact, the general theme of the three-volume series revolves around this general anxiety for the other three women involved: Eika, Misaki and Shio.  

As you continue through the chapters, you learn a little more about the others. Eika is the ambitious one. It’s not clear where she is in the actual hierarchy of her office, but she’s striving to advance. Because she’s often out late making connections at nomikai or attending weekend seminars, Eika gets the nickname ‘dad.’ (‘Mom’ is Shio, who works at home as a freelancer. And, yes, I already ship them.)

Misaki is the only one that I’m not sure what she does for an actual job, though she seems to be making some kind of living as a musician. She, of all of them, has a boyfriend—or so she thought. Turns out, he considers her just a f*ck buddy, who sometimes stays over long enough to cook a meal for him. Yeah, I hate him, too, but Misaki is determined to try to win him over.

I hate to say it, but I’m rooting for these women to fail. I really like what I see of their cozy home life, and it would be nice for all of them to just become comfortable being where they are. Maybe that’s what the title is implying—while they can’t live alone, they could create a made family together? But that’s very nontraditional and it’s so hard to know with josei comics. It’s possible that the volume series will end with everyone saying goodbye and the last panel will be a forlorn and empty apartment. Or, more likely, a quick panel of some new group of young adults moving in to show the cycle of life continuing, as it does.

I dunno. I’d probably be okay with the latter.

According to Manga Updates, this story is complete in three volumes. No one is pirating it I the traditional sense, as in scanning and translating things not yet available via official channels, though I did link the title above to a place where you can read the first volume online.

I would fully recommend this one, if you like the things I like. I enjoy the art. The lines are simple, but realistic. All three characters are distinct, visually, as well as personality-wise. A lot is done with silences.

But I also recognize that this kind of story isn’t for everyone. There’s no sweeping romance. No superpowers. Nothing profoundly dramatic. But, I enjoyed it a lot.

Kashikokute Yuuki Aru Kodomo / A Smart and Courageous Child by Yamamoto Miki

Have I ever mentioned that, while I sometimes complain about it, I have a very manga-positive library system? Because I really do. I found this odd little duck of a story: A Smart and Courageous Child in the adult manga section of my local library.

It’s very simple in a lot of ways, but it is  definitely a grown-up story.

SPOILERS

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The one-shot opens with Sara silently letting her husband Kouta know that they are expecting a baby. She basically points to children playing and then to herself. Kouta is overjoyed. This moment is drawn with intense emotions that you can just feel coming up off the color pencil sketches. 

Sara is an interesting protagonist because she’s somewhat difficult to take seriously at the start. She’s so incredibly gungho about all the things that she wants her expectant child to do and become that the reader–or at least this oneI–initially worry that this is the kind of parent who imagines children as fully moldable clay, not small people with their own interests, wants, and needs. 

Sara and Kouta have this insane list of things they want their child to do and talk incessantly about how they’re going to have a smart and courageous child.

The problems begin when Sara becomes obsessed with a magazine called Child (fully fictitious so far as I can tell)  that apparently features young people of note. For instance, it’s here that Sara reads about Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani equality education activist, who won the Nobel Peace Prize at 17 (for those of you less familiar with Malala, spoiler: she’s still alive today.)  But this story takes place in 2012, when that was uncertain, as she was attacked and shot in the head by gunmen who stormed her school bus

When this news is broadcast about the attack, Sara is just about at her due date, and, suddenly, Sara isn’t so sure about bringing smart and courageous girls into the world. She spends her days at home as she becomes more and more overdue reading The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and One of Us:The Story of a Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad and other things like this and getting more and more depressed about the idea of bringing a child into a world that’s this dangerous and awful.

It’s horrifically relatable–probably to anyone alive in these times, but definitely to parents (of any kind.).

As MangaKast readers may know, I started this site in part so that my son and I could squee about the manga we were reading together (this site started as a podcast, hence its name.) So, my wife and I went through a lot of these same feelings when she was pregnant, like  is it responsible to even consider trying to conceive when the world is the way it is? How do you protect your children from the worst? Can you?

And, ultimately, Sara and Kouta come to a place where they realize that people get hurt as part of living. LIterally, in the case of the manga, they accidentally bump into two young girls that are racing a crossing light and so they have a kind of physical epiphany that, not only can you not protect your child from physical harm, you might accidentally be party to hurting someone else’s child. And it’s kind of just how it goes as a human. The risk that comes with living, ultimately, is worth it.

As weird as that sounds, it’s just what Sara needs to let go and allow this child to come into the world. 

My only hope at the end is that Sara and Kouta lighten up on the workload they planned for this child and won’t be too disappointed if she turns out to be self-indulgent and not particularly bright! Some of us just aren’t all that! I say as someone who is clearly a disappointment to her own folks. 

At any rate, would I recommend it? I don’t know. The art is absolutely beautiful. It’s also really unusual to see colored pencil work like this in a manga, so if nothing else, if you come across it you should just flip through it for the art. The story itself? I mean, it will put you through some feelings if you’re inclined to feel things about pregnancy and childbirth. 

If not, you can pass on it. 

Seihantai na Watashitachi / Pupposites Attract (Vols 1-2) by Natusna Hono

Seihantai na Watashitachi / Pupposites Attract is proof that I can actually enjoy the occasional straight romance.

SPOILERS

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I picked Pupposites Attract on a whim at my local library. Admittedly, I judged this one by its cover because it very much reminded me of the cute, clean style of She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat. 

This manga is predicated on the fact that dogs are just cute and the people who are walking them are likely to meet. I mean? It’s difficult to go wrong with this kind of meet-cute

The story also plays up the idea of opposites. Our main heroine, Chiharu Kagura, is a petite, unimposing woman with a giant Rottweiler. Our main hero, Kiyotaka Tsujii,  is an oversized man with a tiny Pomeranian. 

Naturally, he’s a firefighter; she’s an elementary school teacher. 

What is there to say about this, really? The two just keep running into each other until there are reasons to exchange contact information. When last I left the two (at the end of volume 2) they were looking into maybe overnighting at a pet friendly hotel. A secondary romance has been introduced with Kiyotaka’s younger brother, with whom he lives and shares ownership of the little doggo,  and one of the women who work at the inn who has a shiba inu named “aniki,” (the yakuza term for big brother.). 

I think that it’s telling that the mangaka had to already introduce a second romance, given that the stakes are almost nonexistent between Kiyotaka and Chiharu. Like, they are clearly meant for each other. I don’t know HOW they will possibly screw this up. The dogs like each other! It was kind of over, as far as I was concerned, as soon as it was clear that the dogs were into it.

But, honestly? This is about the amount of conflict I am looking for in my reading at the moment. Given that I am an American during… *gestures at politics* …. this nightmare fuel, I’mjust as grateful not to be worrying about the protagonists of a romance manga, you know?

So do I recommend it? Sure, why not? The art is very cute and straightforward in a way that I appreciate. It’s not terribly complex, but neither is it too ‘wispy’ or otherwise distracting. 

You need something light and simple right now? Pupposites Attract might be for you. 

This one does have an official English language release, so feel free to look for it where you might find manga for sale. Otherwise, a link to an online version of the manga can be found in the hyperlink in the first paragraph. 

Manga Updates tells me that there are three volumes of this out in Japan and that the series is ongoing. So, if you get addicted to this, there should be lots more to come. 

Suizou ga Kowaretara, Sukoshi Ikiyasuku Narimashita / My Pancreas Broke But My Life Got Better by Nagata Kabi

I’m really not sure why I keep doing this to myself.

When I bought this book, I had a very telling conversation with the clerk who checked me out. They looked at this book as they were ringing it up and just sighed, “God, I hope Nagata is okay.” I was like, “Seriously, I saw this book and thought, ‘Oh thank god, she’s still alive.'” We shared a meaningful look and then all they said was, “Right?”

I mean, it’s probably good that Nagata is living her life out loud, in front of so many people. Surely, I am not the only one who got to the end of My Pancreas Broke But My Life Got Better, and said, “Uh, is it though?”

SPOILERS

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As I believe I noted in my previous review of My Wandering Warrior Existence, it was clear to me at the end of My Alcoholic Escape From Reality that Nagata-sensei never actually dealt with her alcohol problem. She ends that book saying she’s on the road to recovery, while explaining to us in pictures she has professionally published–OUT LOUD–exactly HOW she is cheating on the strict “no alcohol” restriction of her illness. As someone who spent several years around actual recovering alcoholics, this is what one might call being an active user. You don’t get to call yourself recovering, if you’re “only drinking a little.” You’re just an active alcoholic who is better at hiding it.

In the current autobiographical book, My Pancreas Broke But My Life Got Better, Nagata-sensei’s continued drinking has finally come back to bite her in the butt–or pancreas, as the case may be.

Once again, I found this to be a difficult read.

We are supposed to be hilariously scandalized by her hospital break and, at this point, I really just can’t. None of this is remotely funny any more. I no longer even trust the little hopeful signs that things ARE improving.

I want to. I want to believe in the last part of this title, “But my life got better,” but once again Nagata-sensei continues to lie us and to herself, out loud, on the page, in black and white (well, black and white and orange.)

Witness, the very ending section where she’s talking about the pros and cons of being sober:

She’s telling us, very plainly, right here in this one panel, that this is never, ever going to last.

Look, Alcoholics Anonymous isn’t a cure-all. Meetings don’t work for everyone, neither does group therapy. But, she is saying that she avoids these Very Well Established and known to be decently successful programs so rigorously that she doesn’t even know if some of the feelings she’s having as she tries to dry out are common among other people who have gone through this exact same thing. That is a literal safety net–a community you can turn to as you struggle day to day–that she’s admittedly, intentionally avoiding.

I understand, even if Nagata-sensei doesn’t, that she suffers from extreme, severe social anxiety and that makes attending any of these sorts of social things like meetings, etc., extremely difficult. I also understand that just getting on the right meds for someone with this kind of cripplingly anxious can be difficult because you actually have to go and talk honestly to the psychiatrist about what you need.

But, then someone needs to intervene. Get her on the right meds, get her to the meetings, because I don’t know that it’s clear to her (or to the audience reading this book) that she can actually die from acute pancreatitis. Her organs could start failing and I’m not entirely convinced, after having read this, that they haven’t already started to. Some of the things she’s already going through–TMI things about her inability to control her bowels, how bloated her emaciated body looks–these are the kinds things that would be (and have been) real wake up calls to a lot of hardcore alcoholics.

And I have to wonder–because this is how she makes her money–if she isn’t feeling a certain kind of twisted pressure to avoid honest recovery. She already notes that she feels that, sober, she can’t read or even enjoy music the way she used to. I’m sure she’s also pondered the question, “What will I even write about if I get my act together?”

I kind of hate that Nagata-sensei’s popularity means that she’s become the standard for a lot of these kinds of confessional autobiographical manga. I think I noted that when I read Until I Love Myself and X-Gender, there appears to be a strong tendency to lean into the “ooooo, trainwreck!” parts of these stories because it’s worked so well, commercially, for Nagata-sensei.

She’s a commercial success, sure, but is profit going to kill her?

I honestly wonder.

I am so torn about these books. After I read the previous one, I swore off giving Nagata-sensei more money due to this exact fear. Now, I feel almost the opposite, like maybe I need to keep buying these manga so that Nagata can see that she is, in fact, a treasure.

Once again, I don’t know what to say about whether or not you should buy this book or even read it. It’s a difficult book, but not in the ways it should be. Instead, this series has become very much like watching a dear friend slip further and further away.

I honestly feel like I’m watching Nagata-sensei die.

At this point, I’m just holding her hand waiting for the inevitable.

And I hate that.

Aoi Uroko to Suna no Machi / Mermaid Scales and the Town of Sand by Komori Yoko

The other day, at the library, I picked up this poignant manga, Aoi Uroko to Suna no Machi/Mermaid Scale and the Town of Sand from the award-winning author Komori Yoko.

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I want to begin this review with a little aside that is mostly apropos of nothing, except that I am frustrated at people who jump to conclusions about anime and manga.

Just the other day, on The Internet, someone on my Feed posted this cartoon:

Which, yeah.

Not going to defend the pedophile. No f*cking way.

However, what bummed me out, was the extent to which all of the people reading this immediately jumped into the comments to say, “THIS is why I can never get into anime and manga.” I forced myself to hold my fingers from the keyboard as I scrolled past these comments because no good comes from attempting to defend the undefendable. There is no way to wade into the comment thread and say, “Bah, stuff like that doesn’t exist in manga!” because, of course, it does exist (and I’ve reviewed some of it here!). There are entire genres of ecchi and yaoi and yuri with very underaged-looking people and, of course, all that fan service sh*t.

Thanks to that, there’s nothing a person can say.

Even so, it still frustrates me because this is why, as an adult, I get side-eyed when I’m in the teen room at the library checking out manga. And, believe me, I HAVE gotten dark looks–even when the manga I’m checking out is Mermaid Scales and the Town of Sand, which is a story of a middle school-aged girl working through her complicated feelings around her parent’s divorce and the subsequent upheaval of moving from Tokyo to a small, seaside town in Japan.

The art in this manga is just stunning… despite it’s unusual, simplistic style.

And the story is sophisticated.

Tokiko remembers a mermaid rescuing her from drowning when she was four years old. She and her family were visiting her mothers’ hometown by the sea, and her mother had fallen asleep on the shore. Tokiko had wandered off too far slipped off what looks like the continental shelf, into a fathomless drop. Her memories are so vivid she can recall the color of the mermaid’s brilliant blue scales. (Which is the aoi [blue] of Aoi Uroko [Blue Scales] of the Japanese title, if you were wondering.)

Now, Tokiko’s parents are separated and her father has brought Tokiko back to this seaside town in order to live with her mother’s mother, while he searches for a new job. This town seems to have some strange connections to mermaids and a sea god known as Wadatsumi. On top of all these mysteries, there is a boy in her new school who looks hauntingly like the merman she remembers. All of it, Tokiko believes is, somehow, is connected to her mother.

And it is… though the fantasy elements never fully materialize, except as metaphors.

What I ended up loving about the story is how much of it is a quiet, contemplative look at what is essentially the grief of that moment (or moments) when you first discover that your parents are human beings with flaws, who make sometimes quite terrible mistakes. Although in this case, the biggest mistake Tokiko’s mom seems to make is being a bit of an airhead who falls for a man who isn’t Tokiko’s father. Even so, from Tokiko’s point of view this is something so complicated to contemplate that she has to learn to put in a box and drop into the deepest ocean of her subconscious until she’s ready to deal with it.

I enjoyed, too, watching this small town embrace Tokiko. She immediately makes friends and has the kinds of adventures I remember having at that age–where the group dares itself to enter the long, dark tunnel that’s been closed off. Is it dangerous because its structurally unsound… or is there a MONSTER lurking in there??

So, yeah, I just read a book about middle schoolers. I don’t know what that makes me. Never mind that Mermaid Scales and Town of Sand was marketed as josei in Japan to an adult, female audience.

Sigh.

At any rate, I’d recommend it, if you can withstand the dark looks.

Kyuujitsu no Warumono-san / Mr. Villain’s Day Off by Morikawa Yuu

If you’ve ever asked yourself “I wonder what Dr. Doom [fill-in other favorite villain] does on his day off? Does he go shopping in his full armor and cape or what? What’s he like when he relaxes?” then Kyuujitsu no Warumono-san / Mr. Villain’s Day Off is for you.

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If you’re looking for something fun and light, with a tiny bit of a heart, this manga is nearly perfect. There are a couple of weird subplots that I skim when I hit them (namely a very out of place story of a friendship between an oak tree spirit and a cherry tree spirit, but also some of the origin stories of the Good Guys–oh, and, of course, the weird Santa stuff), but, otherwise, I’m fully sold on this concept.

I tend to like really like fictional villains, however.

Over Easter weekend, I was on a panel at MiniCON that was meant to plumb the depth of this question, “Why do we like to ship dark with light?” but it got derailed by a fellow panelist insistent on shaming us for enjoying immoral and “cruel” characters. I’ve since spent a lot of time pondering the questions we were never allowed to fully consider. One of the conclusions I’ve come to is that it is inherently sexy to consider, “What is this person like when they’re at home, relaxed?” It unveils them, right? Being shown this intimate moment makes the person automatically more vulnerable, exposed, and authentic.

Thus, with villains, the stakes are higher. Vulnerable is something they are never meant to be.

The villain is also someone who is often larger-than-life. Thus, the instant we start to imagine them as “real” people who need to do their laundry or decide which ice cream to buy at a 7/11, they just become ridiculous. It’s just funny to think about. Cute. This is the same reason why Way of the House Husband doesn’t have to work that hard to be funny. The situation is already hilarious. Gangsters doing battle with the dishes (or, famously, a roomba), is just… it’s absurd and ridiculous and fun.

As soon as you take the villain off the battlefield, strip him of the costume of his office, he becomes… something else. More human, certainly, but possibly even, this guy:

I also love that he’s gracing the convenience store with his presence. That’s some prime villainy, right there.

One of the things I ended up liking about this manga is that we aren’t expected to believe that The General is anyone all that terribly different when he’s “on,” as opposed to when he is “off.” In fact, we get a very early scene in one first chapters in which we see the The General entirely from the point of view of a new recruit. The General is terrible to behold (and if you watch the anime in Japanese, the voice actor is great at sounding completely evil and threatening when just saying “hello,”) but he sees this overworked subordinate and says, “Listen, this war won’t be won overnight. Leave some of this work for tomorrow. Go home, relax.” And… this scene does a couple of things. First, as I noted, it establishes that The General is really just a guy who values time off, not only for himself, but for everyone, including his lowliest subordinate. Second, when we later see The General being kind to strangers and animals, it feels believable. Like, maybe The General is a good guy, deep down, being Evil is just his job.

But he is good at his job.

And I really appreciate that. Half way through what’s out on the scanlations so far, I found myself craving more and more of the “on” persona. This guy–

The one with the tail and the claws.

I was glad to see more of The General “at work,” because I think this story works best where there’s a bit of a balance. There are times both in the manga and the anime where, if I’m not reminded that this guy is the Big Bad, it could stray into boring.

Except that I’m also a fan of manga where the entire plot is, “and we go camping.” I think it helps that The General is not from Earth. You can see the ears, but we also see that the headquarters is on some dark shadow moon and the characters often speak of a far away, Mother Star. As an aside: This may be a direct reference to The Power Rangers, but I never watched because I am a fake fan. The Rangers clearly ARE the Power Rangers, they all go by color names and the one adult female character is, in fact, the Pink Ranger. My point is, slice-of-life stuff often works better for me when the characters are doing something uniquely Japanese-feeling, such as finding wonder in nature.

Like, there’s an entire chapter where The General just goes to the beach.

I can’t believe I got this far without noting that The General is also weirdly obsessed with pandas. This is actually a huge part of the humor.

Anyway, I love the art, particularly whenever we get a glimpse of The General’s darker persona beneath the hair.

As the anime is how I found this manga, I would recommend, weird Santa Claus stuff included

Hikaru ga Shinda Natsu / The Summer Hikaru Died by Mokumoku Rei

Hikaru ga Shinda Natsu / The Summer Hikaru Died is a poignant, deeply sublimated, barely acknowledged (but definitely queer) love story between a boy and… the monster that returned in the body of his dead friend. A new genre, perhaps? Horror Romance or Romance Horror?

SPOILERS

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Yoshiki has a problem. His best friend (and unrequited love) Hikaru went missing in the mountains. In desperation, Yoshiki went looking for him and found a body, but before he could tell anyone, he collapsed with a fever. When Yoshiki woke up, who should have miraculously returned but Hikaru?

Yoshiki knows that what came back isn’t Hikaru.

But he can’t decide if that matters. The thing that is wearing his friend’s body has many of Hikaru’s memories and Hikaru was such a precious friend that it’s important to know that in Japanese, the title of this manga can be read two ways. It can be as published with Hikaru’s name, or it can be read: The Summer the Light Died.

There’s no question that Yoshiki is gay. Mokumoku-sensei teases around the edges saying it explicitly, out loud, but all the signs say “yes.” In their first scene together, Hikaru teases Yoshiki that he’s so awkward and serious about the question he’s about to ask that it seems like the build-up to a love confession. At another point, Yoshiki says he’ll never have a girlfriend. When he has a feeling of being suffocated by their small, rural town, several of the pressures seem to be in expectation of marriage. Moreover like many of us who grew up in a small town, Yoshiki is looking for others like him–in the scene above, knows that the fight that one of the village’s families is having isn’t about the fact that their heir is sick, but that he’s gay.

The Hikaru of the past–whom we see a lot in flashback–is completely clueless–or at least plays that way, because the Hikaru who is inhabited by something else, however, seems to be aware that Yoshiki was important to the Real HIkaru.

I feel safe calling it gay.

Especially since everything else Mokumoku-sensei has drawn is yaoi. Nandemo Shite kureru Doukyuusei / A Classmate Who Will Do Anything For You is straight-up smut, whereas Period is a bit more subtle in the romance department. You only get the “gay” in the final panel. (Note: Period is a well-written, if disturbing one-shot about the kind of love that has you helping bury the body… literally.)

Plus, as someone who also spent my high school years closeted this reads very real. Yoshiki will say something like “he’s not sick, he’s gay,” but when Hikaru asks if that’s some GLBT thing, possibly opening up an opportunity for Yoshiki to say more about it, Yoshiki will just shrug it off and go gloomy. <–High school me feels seen. When you’re deeply closeted sometimes you just try out saying the thing, but then back the hell off. These two do that dance constantly throughout.

The Summer Hikaru Died was published as seinen according to Wikipedia, though Baka-Updates has it as both seinen and Boys’ Love. I will say that I tend to trust Baka-Updates, as they seemed to be more aware of the kinds of things the original publisher tend to publish. But, this sort of thing is very seinen, especially with all the horror elements and the deep, deep sadness of the whole thing.

I found this whole thing INTENSELY compelling. I’m always interested in supernatural stories that ask the question “What does it mean to be human? To have a Soul?” Especially, when the mangaka doesn’t pull any punches and let’s Hikaru be scary, strange, and… murderous. There are a lot of scary monsters throughout, don’t go in expecting something strange and wonderful. It’s strange and wonderful, but also SCARY and horrible.

And I love it.

Plus, the art is fantastic.

I even love the art of Mokumoku-sensei’s smut!

So, if you think you can stand a heavy dose of tragedy and horror, I highly recommend this one. (If not, the smut is cute.)

Aku no Himitsu Soushiki Neko / The Evil Secret Society of Cats by Pandania

Aku no Himitsu Soushiki Neko/ The Evil Secret Society of Cats has worked its wicked spell on me, because this series is as addictive as it is adorable (literally their superpowers.)

SPOILERS

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You know, I’ve reviewed a number of manga like this from Chi’s Sweet Home to Wonder Cat Kyuu-chan and there’s not a lot I can really say about the cuteness of cats that is groundbreaking. As a cat owner–or am I a member of the human arm of the Evil Secret Society???–I have to say that this one had some real laugh out loud moments for me. I was particularly charmed by the evil society’s ability to make tough guys melt.

If you’re in the mood for something simple, funny, and wholesome, I fully recommend this series. My only caveat being that if you have never read a 4-koma manga before, they do take a little getting used to. Not much? But, like that first time you picked up a manga, you just have to orient yourself to the direction of the story. It becomes natural after only a few pages.

The whole series is just this, on repeat, with wonderful puns like, “There’s a Mew Villain in Town,” and “The Pawful Truth!”

Why would you not love this?

I think that that only thing that American audiences have to contend with is that, unlike our Japanese counterparts, we have to go into the children’s section of the library (or bookstore) to read this. In Japan, The Evil Society of Cats was published as josei. Josei was traditionally marketed to MATURE WOMEN, though the category has become slippery over time. Still, The Evil Society of Cats, at worst would be in the pile with any number of manga for women and girls. In Japan, I wouldn’t have to feel like some kind of creeper sneaking into the juvenile area without a kid in tow.

…And, once again proving that I’m certain librarians (or English language publishers) never read the manga they buy:

Because, you know, my kindergartener was always thinking about the sweet release of death.

Anyway. Please enjoy responsibly.