Shiny New Releases: Mobile Sweet Honey and Himitsu ga Hanazono by Akiba Tohko

I haven’t read anything by Akiba Tohko in a while and apparently she has two new releases.

There’s Mobile Sweet Honey:

Looks like it’s about a technical, PC-loving otaku who starts to crush on an email friend. But the friend is a member of the guy’s hated liberal arts bunch.. ha. Science people don’t hate liberal arts as much as people like to think, but I’m amused nonetheless as a science geek. So I’m guessing different worlds, rivalry, comedy themes. I like that.

That is Himitsu ga Hanazono. The story is about seven male students who transfer into a previously all girls school.  Instead of getting his glorious harem of women, it looks like somehow Irie is going to be drawn to another of the guys.

They both look like cute, fluffy reads.  And then there’s backlog! Like Ore wo Aishitemo Iindaze?

Orange Days has an ore-sama tag on chil-chil.net. I’m weak to that when done well and I think she can pull it off.

Hito wa Sore wo Koi to Yobu has a cute guy turning down advances from other classmates in the all male school, but seems interested in a particular one.. I like the impish look.

Honjitsu mo Jougai Rantou looks energetic.

Choices, choices. What to get?  All of them. It matters how much room I have left in this order. This is what I get for falling behind. On ONE author.. she’s damn prolific.

Oyaji BL Manga Primer

At some point, you get tired of reading manga about 16 year old kids.  You crave something different.  The further you get away from age 16, the more prominent this feeling can become.  Thankfully, there’s a trend within BL that gives us some grown, adult men and it’s been growing in popularity:  the oyaji!

“Oyaji” literally means father, but is also casually used to refer to middle-aged men. The lower age limit to qualify as an oyaji is typically early 30’s.  Common oyaji “cues” include visible signs of age like wrinkles around the eyes and mouth, an established family, and, of course, crotchety old man behavior (my favorite).   Within manga, there’s certain character types associated with this term.  The majority of oyaji seem to fall within the 30-45 year old range, particularly for BL.

Yamada Yugi teaches us oyaji moe points

First, if you’re completely new to this subgenre, here are some of the most highly regarded mangaka that reliably produce fantastic older men.  Their works are a great place to start and are relatively well-known, so I’ll only briefly mention a few of their relevant works.

• Ono Natsume (basso)- noticeably older, professional men
• est em – all types, very versatile
• Yamashita Tomoko – natural characters
• Suzuki Tsuta – one of the best at the gentle,  sweet type
• Nishida Higashi – mostly salarymen (this is a good thing).  Kudos for having real oyaji, including some in their 50s (and still hot!)
• Naono Bohra – her oyaji feel more fetishy, but there’s many and a wide range of them

This would be best titled “shin’s Oyaji BL Primer” because it isn’t all inclusive (too much!) and I’m blatantly playing favorites.  Hey, what can I say–it’s my blog and I think I have decent taste in oyaji. ♥ I’m not including everything, as I’d actually like to finish this list at some point (yet I know I’ll add to it later).  So this will be an overly large manga snippets post describing my favorite oyaji within those works.  And boy do I love my oyaji.

So here’s some hand-picked BL works that I’ve enjoyed which feature an older man, whether top, bottom, in the middle, on the side… I don’t discriminate!