March/April 2011 Manga Recommendations

Monthly manga recommendation list time!  For supposedly being the answer to my limited time problem, this sure takes a lot of time to make!  Going over and revisiting titles can be time-consuming, but fun.  I guess 10 was an aggressive number to do every month, so for now this will be March/April. At least summer is around the corner and I’ll have less work obligations.  I have another theme post or two that I want to do and would rather focus on that, but I need to wait for my next manga order to really get started on it.

Shiny New Releases: Koi Suru Savanna

The shiniest, most desired book of the day is Koi Suru Savanna by Yamazaki Dodo.  This series is recommended by Yamashita Tomoko (who also publishes in Feel Young).

Koi Suru Savanna is a love story about a good-looking young man who indiscriminately gets involved with many different women, earning him the title of “beast” from his female coworkers.  He claims he’s looking for a suitable partner he can become crazy about.  He then meets the poker-faced Houjou who casually responds to his advances.  What exactly is she thinking?! She sounds like an interesting character to tame the women-eating animal.

The tank also contains her work, Silica Gel.  Wait, what’s with that title?  The context likely refers to its use as a desiccant in those packets that tell you “do not eat contents!”  The chemist in me is curious.  :-p

This month is also great for new tanks from old favorites:

• Nakamura Asumiko released a new tank, Tetsudo Shoujo Manga, which contains short stories previously published in Melody and Rakuen Le Paradis (so shoujo and yuri content).
• Ono Natsume (bass0) has a new BL tank, Al to Neri to Sono Shuuhen, featuring characters from her previous work Kuma to Interi (more Faust please, brb dying).
• Morimoto Shuu releases the first tank of Moon Trick (2/20).
• Nishida Higashi finishes up the month with Suki ni Naru to Kowareru (2/26).

And I’m not even done browsing upcoming releases!  Fantastic!

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!