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ladybusinessThis was about the point where I had to accept the fact that I wasn't going to be able to read 24 books by the first of January, so I've had to drop my reading goal to a slightly more sensible level! Is this character growth? ... Yes if you want to picture this as the "Is this a pigeon" meme, that is absolutely appropriate.
1. FAKE Volumes 1-7 by Sanami Matoh [Top]
It’s so strange to come back to FAKE as an adult, because I read it when I was... Maybe fourteen? So I can trace at least some of my reading interests (and probably most of my tolerance for sexual harassment in manga) back to this one weird retro m/m police procedural manga from the nineties. The manga follows two New York detectives as they fight crime, raise a kid, and deal with their GALLOPING PERSONAL ISSUES.
Okay, let's start with the biggest thing: the characters are all kinda racist. The mixed-race protagonist introduces himself as Randy Maclean and is immediately asked "What's your Japanese name?" (His name is Ryo and that's all anyone calls him for the rest of the series, but also: rude.). There are racist and ablist slurs thrown around in pretty much every volume, mostly at the mixed-race kid that Ryo takes in, and microaggressions galore. The love interest/deuteragonist, Dee, sexually harrasses Ryo at every opportunity and is the source of a bunch of those insults and slurs. And this was still the most highly recommended m/m manga when I was a teenager. I want to believe that I noticed this shit at the time and didn't know how or where to talk about it, but also: yikes.
The mysteries are compelling, even if we're shown whodunnit at the start of each case. The intersection of the characters' personal issues with the cases is delicious melodrama on a grand scale, and sometimes comes with delicious emotional sincerity. The art is very nineties, but I still really like the way that she draws hands and shirts. The romance, is... The strangest part of this reread, actually, because turns out that half the emotional depth I remember FAKE having actually came from the fandom. Shout out to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fake_2nd_chance, I have no idea who any of you were but you're inextricably linked to the canon in my brain now! There are scenes where the emotions/tone whiplash really suddenly, which fandom smoothed out for me and made much less dubiously consensual, and I completely forgot it wasn't canon.
What I'm saying is this manga and its fandom are probably why I'm the queer detectives nerd that you all know today. I enjoyed this reread, but it was bizarre to see how much of the series wasn't what I remembered and I wouldn't recommend reading FAKE except as an artifact of what the canon m/m pickings were like in 2004. ... If anyone knows what the modern alternative is though, HOOK ME UP.
[Caution warning: racist and ablist insults/slurs, murder, off-screen torture and rape, sexual harrassment, microaggressions]
2. Elegant Yokai Apartment Life Volumes 1-6 by Hinowa Kouzuki, Waka Miyama [Top]
I've got a long review in the works on this, but I need to sit down and read more of the series because for the first six volumes I can't work out what the hell kind of series it thinks it is. Supernatural slice of life? Magical boy comedy? Magical mystery? It's a really uneven mix of all three, and it doesn't quite succeed at being any of them. The premise is that an orphaned teenager rents a cheap room in what turns out to be a guest house for yokai, and from there gets drawn into magical drama and problem-solving. I've mentioned before that magical drama is my weakness, which is why I started reading the series, but.
I have a serious issue with the way that the protagonist is written, which is that he's completely disconnected from anyone his age. He feels like he's written as a vehicle for the author to yell at the cloud, rather than an actual character. There's also similar points where he sympathises with the ghost of woman who committed infanticide, or a man who assaulted one of his friends while in a misogynistic rage, and it's honestly eroding my trust in the writer. But I got given more volumes of it, so I want to get all of my points together and see if the humour and supernatural shenaniganry outweighs all of this nonsense.
[Caution warning: child abuse, murder, orphaned children, misogyny]
3. The Water Dragon's Bride Volumes 1-5 by Rei Toma [Top]
I have a much longer review of The Water Dragon's Bride ready to go, but the tl;dr is that Asahi deserves better! As a small child, she accidentally falls from her world to a fantasy one where villagers make human sacrifices to an uncaring dragon they worship as a god. You can see where this is going. ... A lot of that longer review might be about how much I hate every character who isn't Asahi, I'm just saying. Especially the titular Water Dragon, who doesn't care about anything. Like, it's very good and more emotional than I was expecting, but Asahi deserves so much better.
[Caution warning: human sacrifice, child abuse and neglect, attempted murder, imagery of suicide, torture, floods]
4. Rocket Girl by Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder [Top]
I really wanted to like Rocket Girl. A teenage police officer comes back from her glossy high-tech dystopian 2013 to investigate a company for committing CRIMES AGAINST TIME, which somehow involves crashing a student project? And solving regular crime with her rocket pack?
I'll be honest, I read the entire thing and I have no idea what the hell was going on in Rocket Girl. I understood tiny snippets of the plot, but nothing that I could actually put together into a narrative. The art is cool, I love the colours, but I don't get it. Not even in a "This is too weird for me" way, literally in a "I think I missed a chapter somewhere that explained the plot" way. I'm going to find someone to explain it to me like I'm five, and then maybe I'll come back and be able to give it a more thorough review.
5. All Fired Up by Lori Foster [Top]
I have so many problems with All Fired Up. Some of them I tweeted about! Some of them I'm yelling about for Smart Bitches Trashy Books! The plot is that Our Hero, Mitch, gets out of prison and decides to finally meet his half-siblings to see if he can build a relationship with them... And immediately falls for the woman who keeps their business together, Charlotte.
Most of my problems might tie into "I am too ace-spectrum for this book," because every scene that the two leads are in together has them pro-occupied by each other even when other, more important things are happening. But some of them are things like "Page one is Mitch standing in the shadows, fantasising about Charlotte while she's having car trouble and doesn't know he's there, with no indication that he's not the villain and that this isn't the set-up for a horror movie." And clearly the author KNOWS this shit is creepy, because the villain does the exact same thing later. ... Don't even get me started on the villain, okay, he is cartoonishly evil to the point where it's impossible to take him seriously. He does many horrible things off-screen (drug-dealing, animal abuse, child abuse, beating people for information so that he can stalk Mitch, stalking Charlotte...), but on-screen he's ridiculous. I appreciate that he's there to force tension and closeness, but I don't think he's even good for that.
The good things about All Fired Up is that there are a lot of dogs, strong family bonds, and the secondary romances are pretty good. But the amount of nonsense it takes to get to that means it isn't for me.
[Caution warning: Violence, virgin-shaming, stalking; discussions of animal abuse, attempted rape, car accidents, child neglect and abuse, drug use and dealing, infidelity, imprisonment] [This review is based on an ARC from Netgalley]
6. Small Hours by Valérie Minelli [Top]
Small Hours collects Valérie Minneli's autobiographical webcomic Mrs Frollein. It's very #relatable, but in the way where I didn't want to retweet every comic Sarah Andersen style, I just wanted to send them to my spousal unit and go "Look! It's us!" Not all of the comics landed true for me, just because different styles of humour, but the ones that did were sweet and funny, and it's... Weirdly validating to see other people with the same style of dorky adoration that I feel for my human?
[This review is based on an ARC from Netgalley.]
7. The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo and Yuko Uramoto [Top]
As you may have noticed if you see me on any other form of social media, I spent November in what I'm calling The Grand Unfuckening. I'm slowly digging myself (and by extension everyone who has to live with me) out of the never-ending layers of STUFF that accumulates during years of undiagnosed/treated anxiety, depression, and ADHD. It's a difficult process! It comes with a heavy helping of shame and stress! And The Life-Changing Manga Of Tidying Up is incredibly kind and understanding ofall of that. I've not read Marie Kondo's other books or seen the Netflix series, but the manga breaks down decluttering and tidying in a really accessible way, with a protagonist going through the process to demonstrate it better. The advice is mostly straightforward, and it's easy to see how and if you can apply it. (I promise, there is no cruel advice about books; literally her advice is that you want to end up with shelves full of books that you love, and I don't see a problem there!) It goes through step-by-step, and the basics of it feel intuitive enough that I could remember them.
The art is very simplistic, but it's cute and it works, especially the repeated image of the protagonist's living room slowly being excavated. It just feels very kind and respectful; the book acknowledges that tidying up and decluttering is hard and can involve a lot of emotions, and that's okay! There is space for the protagonist (and by extension the reader) to have those feelings! ... So yes, what I'm saying is that I did get very emotional about the book that teaches you how to clean your house, and I'm not ashamed.
[This review is based on an ARC from Netgalley]
8. Hanger Volume 3 by Hirotaka Kisaragi [Top]
It turned out that I didn't actually remember as much of the first two volumes of Hanger as I thought I did, so I was quite lost for the first chapter or so. I remembered the broad strokes – our heroes are a team of super-powered drug-addicted criminals who're being put to work capturing other super-powered drug-addicted criminals – and very few specifics. Which is unfortunate, because this volume has all of the repercussions from volume two – characters trying to sacrifice themselves to save each other, or determined to prove themselves worthy of each other, or falling into obvious traps that means the whole thing ends on a cliffhanger...
Basically, it was all very melodramatic, but not actually memorable, so I came away without much in the way of strong opinions. I enjoyed the portions where the protagonist trained with his grandfather, and I enjoyed seeing what life is like for the Hangers who aren't protagonists and therefore full of drama, but apart from that... It's still a library book read, I still wouldn't buy it.
[Caution warning: ill character trying to sacrifice themself, attempted rape, drug dealing, cannibalism] [This review is based on an ARC from Edelweiss.]
9. Capture Creatures by Frank Gibson and Becky Dreistadt [Top]
Capture Creatures follows Tamzen, an adventurous young girl, who discovers that the artificial island her dad's been working on has some unexpected wildlife. Cue investigations, shenanigans, everyone accidentally acquiring a Capture Creature of their very own, and investigations into Where Did They Com From...!
In the nicest possible way: Capture Creatures feels like a Pokémon spin-off about the people who first discovered Pokémon and went "I know it breathes fire, but it's SO CUTE." I appreciate that the original point of the project was to make designs based off Pokémon (They're compiled in an encyclopaedia but I've not read that yet!), but I hadn't expected how much it would show! It pays off, because the art for the creatures is GREAT. They're cute and distinctive and I love them! And the actual comics pages are dynamic and bright, which I appreciate. There are some scenes that I straight up can't follow, such as the one where everyone's yelling about something in the woods and I'm left going "Wait, what? Where?" because I can't see it, but it mostly works! The story itself is light and funny, and I enjoyed the way it riffs on the tropes of children running into adventure.
It doesn't feel like a complete story to me because of where it stops, but I enjoyed it for being a silly adventure with cute monsters and you might too!
10. Yotsuba&! Volume 14 by Kiyohiko Azuma [Top]
I've mentioned before how much I love Yotsuba&! and volume fourteen is no exception. In this volume: Yotsuba discovers princesses, beads, train stations, and buffets! It was incredibly cute and heart-warming to see her having fun and discovering new parts of the world, and it was honestly a comfort to immerse myself in her joy and excitement over tiny things. If you need something pure and wholesome to take the taste of 2019 out of your brain, Yotsuba is the best thing I can suggest to you.
11. Help Us! Great Warrior by Madeleine Flores [Top]
Help Us! Great Warrior is the epitome of "Mood." Our heroine is a tiny green blob who wants to eat cake, sleep, and not have to save the world, Leo is her best friend and partner in defeating evil, and Hadiyah is the hijabi overseer of the world who would really like Great Warrior to please stop all of these demons sneaking into the world and destroying it. It's funny and cute; all of the character designs are lovely and expressive, especially Great Warrior! Her expressions are fantastic, and her willingness to nope out of difficult jobs and conversations is #relatable. ... I'm sure I saw a post talking about Great Warrior not getting any obvious gender-markers except for the bow, but can I find it? Nope!
If you want a quick fantasy story that doesn't take itself too seriously, I'd definitely start with Help Us! Great Warrior. And I believe it started life as a webcomic, so excuse me while I go and hunt that down...
12. I Want to Spoil Ikuro-san (43 y.o) by Uka Kasai [Top]
As a fair warning, in case you make the same mistake I did and don't check the page counts: Comixology is selling this in ten-page installments, and the first two pages of chapter one are in the wrong order. But I Want To Spoil Ikuro-san is cheesy fun: a man who admires all things butch works in a pastry shop specialising in adorable sweets! His hero is the epitome of Gangster Cool, but turns out to have an overwhelming weakness for cute things! Together, they... Confuse the expectations of toxic masculinity? Work together to find the best way for Ikuro to enjoy cute things without destroying his own image? It's sweet and light; the art is decent and if you're okay with the humour being from "Man who looks like a gangster is actual timid and gentle," then it's not bad.
Reading goal: 158/180 (27 new this post) Prose: 40/100 (1 new this post)
Nonfiction: 11/12 (2 new this post; Small Hours, and The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up on a technicality)
#ReadMyOwnDamnBooks: 58/100 (10 read this post)
#unofficialqueerafbookclub: 65/75 (9 new this post; FAKE, Hanger, I Want To Spoil Ikuro-san)
- FAKE Volumes 1-7 by Sanami Matoh [Jump]
- Elegant Yokai Apartment Life Volumes 1-6 by Hinowa Kouzuki, Waka Miyama [Jump]
- The Water Dragon's Bride Volumes 1-5 by Rei Toma [Jump]
- Rocket Girl by Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder [Jump]
- All Fired Up by Lori Foster [Jump]
- Small Hours by Valérie Minelli [Jump]
- The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo and Yuko Uramoto [Jump]
- Hanger Volume 3 by Hirotaka Kisaragi [Jump]
- Capture Creatures by Frank Gibson and Becky Dreistadt [Jump]
- Yotsuba&! Volume 14 by Kiyohiko Azuma [Jump]
- Help Us! Great Warrior by Madeleine Flores [Jump]
- I Want to Spoil Ikuro-san (43 y.o) by Uka Kasai [Jump]
1. FAKE Volumes 1-7 by Sanami Matoh [Top]
It’s so strange to come back to FAKE as an adult, because I read it when I was... Maybe fourteen? So I can trace at least some of my reading interests (and probably most of my tolerance for sexual harassment in manga) back to this one weird retro m/m police procedural manga from the nineties. The manga follows two New York detectives as they fight crime, raise a kid, and deal with their GALLOPING PERSONAL ISSUES.
Okay, let's start with the biggest thing: the characters are all kinda racist. The mixed-race protagonist introduces himself as Randy Maclean and is immediately asked "What's your Japanese name?" (His name is Ryo and that's all anyone calls him for the rest of the series, but also: rude.). There are racist and ablist slurs thrown around in pretty much every volume, mostly at the mixed-race kid that Ryo takes in, and microaggressions galore. The love interest/deuteragonist, Dee, sexually harrasses Ryo at every opportunity and is the source of a bunch of those insults and slurs. And this was still the most highly recommended m/m manga when I was a teenager. I want to believe that I noticed this shit at the time and didn't know how or where to talk about it, but also: yikes.
The mysteries are compelling, even if we're shown whodunnit at the start of each case. The intersection of the characters' personal issues with the cases is delicious melodrama on a grand scale, and sometimes comes with delicious emotional sincerity. The art is very nineties, but I still really like the way that she draws hands and shirts. The romance, is... The strangest part of this reread, actually, because turns out that half the emotional depth I remember FAKE having actually came from the fandom. Shout out to
fake_2nd_chance, I have no idea who any of you were but you're inextricably linked to the canon in my brain now! There are scenes where the emotions/tone whiplash really suddenly, which fandom smoothed out for me and made much less dubiously consensual, and I completely forgot it wasn't canon. What I'm saying is this manga and its fandom are probably why I'm the queer detectives nerd that you all know today. I enjoyed this reread, but it was bizarre to see how much of the series wasn't what I remembered and I wouldn't recommend reading FAKE except as an artifact of what the canon m/m pickings were like in 2004. ... If anyone knows what the modern alternative is though, HOOK ME UP.
[Caution warning: racist and ablist insults/slurs, murder, off-screen torture and rape, sexual harrassment, microaggressions]
2. Elegant Yokai Apartment Life Volumes 1-6 by Hinowa Kouzuki, Waka Miyama [Top]
I've got a long review in the works on this, but I need to sit down and read more of the series because for the first six volumes I can't work out what the hell kind of series it thinks it is. Supernatural slice of life? Magical boy comedy? Magical mystery? It's a really uneven mix of all three, and it doesn't quite succeed at being any of them. The premise is that an orphaned teenager rents a cheap room in what turns out to be a guest house for yokai, and from there gets drawn into magical drama and problem-solving. I've mentioned before that magical drama is my weakness, which is why I started reading the series, but.
I have a serious issue with the way that the protagonist is written, which is that he's completely disconnected from anyone his age. He feels like he's written as a vehicle for the author to yell at the cloud, rather than an actual character. There's also similar points where he sympathises with the ghost of woman who committed infanticide, or a man who assaulted one of his friends while in a misogynistic rage, and it's honestly eroding my trust in the writer. But I got given more volumes of it, so I want to get all of my points together and see if the humour and supernatural shenaniganry outweighs all of this nonsense.
[Caution warning: child abuse, murder, orphaned children, misogyny]
3. The Water Dragon's Bride Volumes 1-5 by Rei Toma [Top]
I have a much longer review of The Water Dragon's Bride ready to go, but the tl;dr is that Asahi deserves better! As a small child, she accidentally falls from her world to a fantasy one where villagers make human sacrifices to an uncaring dragon they worship as a god. You can see where this is going. ... A lot of that longer review might be about how much I hate every character who isn't Asahi, I'm just saying. Especially the titular Water Dragon, who doesn't care about anything. Like, it's very good and more emotional than I was expecting, but Asahi deserves so much better.
[Caution warning: human sacrifice, child abuse and neglect, attempted murder, imagery of suicide, torture, floods]
4. Rocket Girl by Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder [Top]
I really wanted to like Rocket Girl. A teenage police officer comes back from her glossy high-tech dystopian 2013 to investigate a company for committing CRIMES AGAINST TIME, which somehow involves crashing a student project? And solving regular crime with her rocket pack?
I'll be honest, I read the entire thing and I have no idea what the hell was going on in Rocket Girl. I understood tiny snippets of the plot, but nothing that I could actually put together into a narrative. The art is cool, I love the colours, but I don't get it. Not even in a "This is too weird for me" way, literally in a "I think I missed a chapter somewhere that explained the plot" way. I'm going to find someone to explain it to me like I'm five, and then maybe I'll come back and be able to give it a more thorough review.
5. All Fired Up by Lori Foster [Top]
I have so many problems with All Fired Up. Some of them I tweeted about! Some of them I'm yelling about for Smart Bitches Trashy Books! The plot is that Our Hero, Mitch, gets out of prison and decides to finally meet his half-siblings to see if he can build a relationship with them... And immediately falls for the woman who keeps their business together, Charlotte.
Most of my problems might tie into "I am too ace-spectrum for this book," because every scene that the two leads are in together has them pro-occupied by each other even when other, more important things are happening. But some of them are things like "Page one is Mitch standing in the shadows, fantasising about Charlotte while she's having car trouble and doesn't know he's there, with no indication that he's not the villain and that this isn't the set-up for a horror movie." And clearly the author KNOWS this shit is creepy, because the villain does the exact same thing later. ... Don't even get me started on the villain, okay, he is cartoonishly evil to the point where it's impossible to take him seriously. He does many horrible things off-screen (drug-dealing, animal abuse, child abuse, beating people for information so that he can stalk Mitch, stalking Charlotte...), but on-screen he's ridiculous. I appreciate that he's there to force tension and closeness, but I don't think he's even good for that.
The good things about All Fired Up is that there are a lot of dogs, strong family bonds, and the secondary romances are pretty good. But the amount of nonsense it takes to get to that means it isn't for me.
[Caution warning: Violence, virgin-shaming, stalking; discussions of animal abuse, attempted rape, car accidents, child neglect and abuse, drug use and dealing, infidelity, imprisonment] [This review is based on an ARC from Netgalley]
6. Small Hours by Valérie Minelli [Top]
Small Hours collects Valérie Minneli's autobiographical webcomic Mrs Frollein. It's very #relatable, but in the way where I didn't want to retweet every comic Sarah Andersen style, I just wanted to send them to my spousal unit and go "Look! It's us!" Not all of the comics landed true for me, just because different styles of humour, but the ones that did were sweet and funny, and it's... Weirdly validating to see other people with the same style of dorky adoration that I feel for my human?
[This review is based on an ARC from Netgalley.]
7. The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo and Yuko Uramoto [Top]
As you may have noticed if you see me on any other form of social media, I spent November in what I'm calling The Grand Unfuckening. I'm slowly digging myself (and by extension everyone who has to live with me) out of the never-ending layers of STUFF that accumulates during years of undiagnosed/treated anxiety, depression, and ADHD. It's a difficult process! It comes with a heavy helping of shame and stress! And The Life-Changing Manga Of Tidying Up is incredibly kind and understanding of
The art is very simplistic, but it's cute and it works, especially the repeated image of the protagonist's living room slowly being excavated. It just feels very kind and respectful; the book acknowledges that tidying up and decluttering is hard and can involve a lot of emotions, and that's okay! There is space for the protagonist (and by extension the reader) to have those feelings! ... So yes, what I'm saying is that I did get very emotional about the book that teaches you how to clean your house, and I'm not ashamed.
[This review is based on an ARC from Netgalley]
8. Hanger Volume 3 by Hirotaka Kisaragi [Top]
It turned out that I didn't actually remember as much of the first two volumes of Hanger as I thought I did, so I was quite lost for the first chapter or so. I remembered the broad strokes – our heroes are a team of super-powered drug-addicted criminals who're being put to work capturing other super-powered drug-addicted criminals – and very few specifics. Which is unfortunate, because this volume has all of the repercussions from volume two – characters trying to sacrifice themselves to save each other, or determined to prove themselves worthy of each other, or falling into obvious traps that means the whole thing ends on a cliffhanger...
Basically, it was all very melodramatic, but not actually memorable, so I came away without much in the way of strong opinions. I enjoyed the portions where the protagonist trained with his grandfather, and I enjoyed seeing what life is like for the Hangers who aren't protagonists and therefore full of drama, but apart from that... It's still a library book read, I still wouldn't buy it.
[Caution warning: ill character trying to sacrifice themself, attempted rape, drug dealing, cannibalism] [This review is based on an ARC from Edelweiss.]
9. Capture Creatures by Frank Gibson and Becky Dreistadt [Top]
Capture Creatures follows Tamzen, an adventurous young girl, who discovers that the artificial island her dad's been working on has some unexpected wildlife. Cue investigations, shenanigans, everyone accidentally acquiring a Capture Creature of their very own, and investigations into Where Did They Com From...!
In the nicest possible way: Capture Creatures feels like a Pokémon spin-off about the people who first discovered Pokémon and went "I know it breathes fire, but it's SO CUTE." I appreciate that the original point of the project was to make designs based off Pokémon (They're compiled in an encyclopaedia but I've not read that yet!), but I hadn't expected how much it would show! It pays off, because the art for the creatures is GREAT. They're cute and distinctive and I love them! And the actual comics pages are dynamic and bright, which I appreciate. There are some scenes that I straight up can't follow, such as the one where everyone's yelling about something in the woods and I'm left going "Wait, what? Where?" because I can't see it, but it mostly works! The story itself is light and funny, and I enjoyed the way it riffs on the tropes of children running into adventure.
It doesn't feel like a complete story to me because of where it stops, but I enjoyed it for being a silly adventure with cute monsters and you might too!
10. Yotsuba&! Volume 14 by Kiyohiko Azuma [Top]
I've mentioned before how much I love Yotsuba&! and volume fourteen is no exception. In this volume: Yotsuba discovers princesses, beads, train stations, and buffets! It was incredibly cute and heart-warming to see her having fun and discovering new parts of the world, and it was honestly a comfort to immerse myself in her joy and excitement over tiny things. If you need something pure and wholesome to take the taste of 2019 out of your brain, Yotsuba is the best thing I can suggest to you.
11. Help Us! Great Warrior by Madeleine Flores [Top]
Help Us! Great Warrior is the epitome of "Mood." Our heroine is a tiny green blob who wants to eat cake, sleep, and not have to save the world, Leo is her best friend and partner in defeating evil, and Hadiyah is the hijabi overseer of the world who would really like Great Warrior to please stop all of these demons sneaking into the world and destroying it. It's funny and cute; all of the character designs are lovely and expressive, especially Great Warrior! Her expressions are fantastic, and her willingness to nope out of difficult jobs and conversations is #relatable. ... I'm sure I saw a post talking about Great Warrior not getting any obvious gender-markers except for the bow, but can I find it? Nope!
If you want a quick fantasy story that doesn't take itself too seriously, I'd definitely start with Help Us! Great Warrior. And I believe it started life as a webcomic, so excuse me while I go and hunt that down...
12. I Want to Spoil Ikuro-san (43 y.o) by Uka Kasai [Top]
As a fair warning, in case you make the same mistake I did and don't check the page counts: Comixology is selling this in ten-page installments, and the first two pages of chapter one are in the wrong order. But I Want To Spoil Ikuro-san is cheesy fun: a man who admires all things butch works in a pastry shop specialising in adorable sweets! His hero is the epitome of Gangster Cool, but turns out to have an overwhelming weakness for cute things! Together, they... Confuse the expectations of toxic masculinity? Work together to find the best way for Ikuro to enjoy cute things without destroying his own image? It's sweet and light; the art is decent and if you're okay with the humour being from "Man who looks like a gangster is actual timid and gentle," then it's not bad.
Currently Reading
- Wasted Talent: We Are The Engineers by Angela Melick — I'm having a fantastic amount of cognitive dissonance here, because I too remember being an overworked and underslept student (... and adult, let's be fair, I've not improved), but as someone who works at a university I'm like NO PLEASE GET SOME SLEEP AND OVERTHROW YOUR DEPARTMENT HEAD.
- The Way of the House Husband Volume 1 by Kousuke Oono — Everything I've seen of this makes it look like a menacing gangster retiring so he can cook delicious food for his fearsome wife, and I'm really excited about finally reading it!
Reading Goals
Reading goal: 158/180 (27 new this post) Prose: 40/100 (1 new this post)
Nonfiction: 11/12 (2 new this post; Small Hours, and The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up on a technicality)
#ReadMyOwnDamnBooks: 58/100 (10 read this post)
#unofficialqueerafbookclub: 65/75 (9 new this post; FAKE, Hanger, I Want To Spoil Ikuro-san)
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Date: 2020-01-06 01:00 am (UTC)Also: