Oyaji Romance Manga Selections

I consider myself an advocate of the delicious oyaji.  At least advocate sounds better than raving fangirl madly attempting to brainwash others. *ahem* As a follow-up to my oyaji BL manga primer, here’s a selection of great romance manga featuring older men.  Romance for adults.  Not necessarily the naughty kind, but the grown-up kind.

You’ll notice this list is much smaller, especially since I went ahead and independently covered a number of the titles.  Unfortunately, romancing older men isn’t a terribly common theme, at least not as the main focus of a manga. I don’t use the label “romance” lightly.  A genuine, powerful draw between two characters must be the main focus to make this list.  So here’s a selection of my favorite titles featuring an oyaji in a romantic story within some selected shoujo, josei, seinen, and BL manga.

Dowth may be like 1000 years old, but he’s still got it.

& (and) by Okazaki Mari

&

“The moment we held hands for the first time, I understood–
I’m sorry, but I don’t love you.”

There are two manga that I absolutely adore, but are inexplicably absent from my blog:  Natsuyuki Rendezvous and &.  What do they have in common?  The strength of these manga is that the artwork itself conveys the story and emotion.  In & in particular, the most important exchanges between characters involve no words.  And it’s done so well that you get it and feel it.  Beautiful, but perhaps hard to explain using this medium.  So I’m settling for an image heavy glance at what & has to offer instead.

December 2010 Manga Recommendations

I just can’t keep up with writing an entry for every great thing I want to mention.  My career keeps me very busy and it’s only going to get worse.  It’s frustrating.  Instead of letting everything die, I need a more sustainable approach.  So in addition to the occasional previews, I’m trying a new format:  a monthly (?) recommendation list.

Ten manga of varying vintage and demographics/genres will be picked.  The titles will likely range from obscure to moderately known.  Expect both raw and translated works.  Basically whatever catches my fancy.  At least one pick will be a title I want to write a full entry for, but may never get a chance to do so.  Others will be works that recently left a very positive impression on me.  Others will be older titles that I enjoy and think others should as well.

To keep it workable, I’ll only list a small amount of general info.  Genres/demographic will be specified, along with my own “important to me” manga types, and a few brief points for each title.  As usual, I’m opinionated as it keeps things interesting, so deal or leave~  If a title catches your eye, it’s up to you to seek it out!  Buying it is the most likely answer–radical idea, I know.

December Manga Recommendations: