Feliday Melody posted:

A promise is a promise.

Snooze Cruise posted:

The modern masterpiece, Maitsuki Niwatsuki, Ooyatsuki has updated, or as the fans (me) like to call it "My Landord Can't Be This Cute!"

God bless, I will cherish my life more from now on.

thetoughestbean posted:

Hey folks! I work at a Barnes and Noble and I’ve been kind of put in charge of doing endcaps for our manga section. I want to do an lgbt endcap for Pride but I realize my knowledge of gay manga isn’t super deep, so I thought I’d ask for suggestions for stuff to order.

The works need to be physically available in English and something that you’d be comfortable showing the cover of. For example I love My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness, but it’s got a naked lady on the cover so I’d rather not face it out.

So far my list of things to display in manga is:
Boys Run the Riot
Given
Bloom Into You
The Bride Was A Boy
My Brother’s Husband
Catch These Hands
Even Though We’re Adults
School Zone Girls

And for light novels I’m thinking
Heaven’s Official Blessing
I’m In Love With the Villainess
Adachi and Shimamura

I looked into Banana Fish and Otherside Picnic but they aren’t available to order at the moment.

Any suggestions? Am I missing anything big? What would you like to see at the store? Thanks!

Kaiser Mazoku posted:

Man they really couldn't have picked a worse point to end the Bloom Into You anime adaption huh. Anyway I binged the manga from where the anime leaves off and I hope there's a sequel in the future, though I would be just as satisfied if there wasn't. What a great series.

Ibblebibble posted:

TFW I can't buy any more volumes of Bloom Into You in my country because it got banned for being too gay.

Kaiser Mazoku posted:

Time to grab a bottle of rum and hoist the jolly roger.

Snooze Cruise posted:

Snooze Cruise posted:

Oh totally missed that Moon on a Rainy Night was getting new scans on mangadex just not dynasty.

i really enjoy kuzushiro's offbeat intensity, i prefer living with my brother's wife between the two but its nice to see that quality in a work that is being a bit more upfront with its game.

SexyBlindfold posted:

Nagata Kabi's work is very good, and she's one of the few autobio authors I've read, but it's kind of a bummer to check the summaries for the rest of her works and notice that drat, things haven't gotten any better for her, huh

Snooze Cruise posted:

i miss school zone

StupidNameNobody posted:

I've been reading Adachi and Shimamura lately since a friend recommended it. (the novel)

I have to say it moved me to the core. So beautiful. I've never read anything like this before and I absolutely loved it... My heart was warmed so much it almost hurt. Especially because the story extends far into the future with the two of them still so happily together. Living together 5 years later, 10 years later, even decades later their love and affection only grows deeper. So utterly wonderful that is.

Another striking thing is... this was my life several years ago. It's nuts how similar it really is. I have the same kind of personality as Shimamura, the same problems. It was kinda freaky at times reading practically my own thoughts from a first person perspective knowing them all too well. Never seen anything like that. That everything turns out so beautifully brought me a familiar kind of joy I've never experienced before when reading a story.

Years ago, I also had an 'Adachi' that sat with me and told me lovely things while I remained completely oblivious to her extremely obvious feelings. As the kids say, I guess you could call me painfully "useless". It seems insane but you really can have someone sit in your lap telling you how nice you smell, with them staring into your eyes, holding your hand almost every day, and think... what a nice friend, even if she's a little weird, how cool, and just leave it at that. She also had an eventual meltdown - except she wrote me her thoughts in a letter - and eventually told me things that led to a certain awakening in me which I imagine you can guess the nature of. I said yes to that, and one day on a trip to the beach a couple of years later I said yes to her once again. And here we are now.

One thing that absolutely killed me reading this series was the 4th extra story that comes with the blurays where it's 70 years later and Shimamura has outlived everyone else... including Adachi. Oh god. It broke my heart to see her imagining Adachi with her there, talking to her even though she knows she's gone forever. I've sometimes thought of the same thing, hoping I'd be the first to go, because I know I could never take it the other way around. To be honest I cried. I full on sobbed. When I reached the end I ran to my wife and told her how much I love her in so many ways, and stayed there hugging her for for quite a while. It hit me really hard.

Long story short, I guess I'm a serious sucker for romance stories and I had no idea lmao

RuBisCO posted:

I got a delivery!

So, in the spirit of Tabletops, I would like to do some small write-ups on the works of a GL/Yuri Managaka I really adore: Tokuwotsumu.


Ise-san to Shina-san
(Ise-san and Shima-san)
Their first work I happened upon and I think my favourite. Our two main characters are coworkers/roommates in their mid-20s and the story involves their daily lives as they challenge themselves to new experiences, self-improvement, and living together as two people of fairly opposite personalities and interests. The story is a fairly normal slice-of-life/comedy that's super charming and funny, with cute and stylized art and it genuinely brightens my mood in my reads and subsequent rereads (they're just so cute together). The yuri is mostly just capital S Subtext. Late spoilers: the cute, fluffy presentation makes the sudden gut punch in the middle of volume 2 all the more surprising and never fails to get me emotional. Not that it ever gets outright tragic or anything, but it's so tonally disparate compared to everything else before it that it catches you so completely off guard. I love it. More than anything else, this is the work I recommend.


Shuuden de Kaesanai, Tatta Hitotsu Houhou
(Only One Way to Keep Her From Taking the Last Train Home)
Involves an older office lady who, after announcing her resignation from work, is suddenly confessed to by her cute kouhai. Despite, having never dating women before, she decides to give it a shot and the chapters mostly involve their awkward new relationship together. I'm not sure what went on with the publication of this series, as it seems it was intended to be a loosely connected anthology with multiple pairings, but then mostly drops the others in favour of the main two. In any case, it's a pretty light series with the two main characters just being impossibly sweet together. There are some slight themes of what it means for two women to date each other and how to present/hide to general society, but it doesn't necessarily dig into it that deeply and never really loses itself from its overly sweet presentation.


Tsuki to Koi wa Michireba Kakeru
(The Moon and Love Wax and Wane)
A story about a group of four friends and the relationship between two of them as it changes and evolves over ten years. The presentation of this one is interesting as each chapter alternates between their lives in high school and then their lives as mid-20s working adults (with some occasional chapters as 20 year old college students). A bit more angsty than the previous two works, the high school timeline focuses on coming to terms with being in love with someone (particularly someone of the same gender) and the adult timeline deals with themes of hiding a relationship between your coworkers and society as a whole. Noticeably, across the ten years, the two main characters sort of do a 180 in personality and you're left wondering just exactly what happened in the years you don't get to witness. Last chapter impression spoilers: the last chapter abruptly answers this question in a somewhat predictably heart-breaking manner, but the execution and resolution is done well enough that it has continued to stay with me.


Haru Tsuzuru, Sakura Saku Kono Heya de
(Composing Spring in This Room Where Cherry Blossoms Bloom)
The author's most recent work and only just finished getting fantranslations. Our main character is a woman in her 30s, Haru, whose partner Sakura abruptly passed away in an accident 5 years ago. After Haru suddenly finds her partner's diary, Sakura reappears as if she never died. Haru, unsure if she's dreaming or seeing a ghost, decides to relive her partner's diary day by day with Sakura once again by her side.
It's just heart-breaking. It is genuinely just so awful to read (in a good way). What presents itself as a somewhat supernatural story about lovers reuniting very quickly turns into an ugly, naked story about processing grief and revisiting someone long lost to you. You definitely have to be in the right headspace to read this, but if that headspace is "tragic yuri" then by all means give this a shot.
Appropriately, Tokuwotsumu's artstyle has noticeably changed between this work and Ise-san and Shima-san. Characters are no longer super stylized, small and cute, but now have long, tall, flowing silhouettes. There's a fair amount of focus on Haru's hands, with her skinny, visibly boney and almost gangly fingers. It's another knife twist to the gut when you read that she has spent the last 5 years drifting in a semi-fugue and every year around the time of Sakura's death, she shuts down for an entire month. Her hands show just how much weight she's lost over the years.

Sadly, I don't think any of their works will get an official English release, but at least they have enough of a following online for there to be fantranslations for the works I've posted about. I encourage you to read whatever catches your interest!

thetoughestbean posted:

Is this the creator of Young Ladies Don’t Play Fighting Games? Because I was just about to recommend that series here

Snooze Cruise posted:

thetoughestbean posted:

Has anyone here read The Summer Hikaru Died?

thetoughestbean posted:

Just wondering if I should start recommending it to customers. The premise seems creepy but I haven’t had the chance to read it yet

Snooze Cruise posted:

Yeahhh, and its probably going to be ahead for a while. Volume 2 is only listed to come out like June next year.

thetoughestbean posted:

Edit

thetoughestbean posted:

Ah geeze, sorry about that, I edited the original post if you want to, uh, update the quote.

I just got so excited

I check what each publisher puts out every month on their respective websites, which is maybe a bit obsessive but hey I don’t miss updates.