The most interesting thing about this manga is that one character’s love interest is a garbage man and you learn interesting tidbits about how dangerous of a job it is. I’m not sure what that says about the actual romances that that’s what I found most interesting, but hey, always wrap chopsticks in paper when you throw them away or else they could break and turn into little mini daggers and kill someone.
I’ve never heard of Lala Takemiya, turns out she didn’t do a whole lot of work so that’s probably why. She has a soft, wispy art style that feels peaceful and relaxing, but I didn’t find it especially appealing because it looks too much like Keiko Kinoshita and you guys may know how I feel about her. When it comes to effective storytelling with a soft minimalist art style, the stick I measure against is Fumi Yoshinaga, and so the bar is set very high.
Anyway…this is a shounen-ai one-shot compilation with about 4 or 5 stories with the theme of first crushes. I’ll mainly mention the two I liked the most, the others were pretty forgettable – such as this first one, which was about a guy who was “like pasta” because he took on the flavor of those around him and she liked this metaphor so much she made a whole short story out of it. Really, that’s the whole story.
The second story, “Dustbin Space,” is much more memorable though, if for no other reason than that the pairing develops when a kid who can never sort his garbage right (a big thing in Japan, much more than here) strikes up a friendship with his garbage guy. The not-tiny amount of conversation and info in this story about how to properly sort garbage and the dangers of not doing so suggests a knowledge or experience with this on the part of the mangaka (most likely she knew someone with who worked this job), but there *is* actual BL in here, and a cute relationship.
Have to give kudos to Takemiya for creativity on this one, and it’s probably the best one in the book too in terms of characters, story, and relationship.
My other favorite was “My Manga Sensei” even though it wasn’t as good. I just really liked the premise, which was that a kid finds out that his favorite manga artist who he’s been writing fan letters to and his IRL crush are one and the same. I like “manga about manga” and stories about manga artists, which was the only reason I liked it, the mangaka character was pretty wooden though and it didn’t really go anywhere – but I just loved the idea.
The last one is the title story and the one summarized on the back of the book, but it was pretty short and bland. They should have used “Dustbin Space” instead as the main one but maybe they didn’t think a story about a hot garbage man would sell books, who knows. Clearly they just didn’t know Stormin’ Norman. Who is that, you ask? He’s a guy my mom knew in college. He was a garbage man by day, and a stripper by night, with the stage name Stormin’ Norman and apparently he was super hot. And if you’re wondering how she knew him, it wasn’t because he was her garbage man, it’s because she and her friends used to go from their college dorm in Buffalo NY over the nearby Canadian border to male strip clubs “because they can take everything off there.” I’ve only been to normal strip clubs with tits and vag and not Canadian ones so I wouldn’t know, but I only want to see drawings of fictional dudes swinging their dicks around in a yaoi, not IRL meatspin.
I got sort of off topic there but here’s the last couple – they’re employees at a plant-rental shop, and one moves to the coast somewhere and the other yearns to join him, and that was pretty much the whole story. If you’re wondering what a plant rental shop is, I did too, I didn’t know you could…rent plants. Like rent flowers? That doesn’t make sense though, why would a shop want to rent something cheap that dies so quickly rather than just selling it? So then do they like…rent small trees? Like what for? Is this a Japanese thing? Like bonsai trees? I guess I could google it, or maybe the translation was just off, but this was pretty much the only thing I thought about while reading this story.
If you like shounen-ai slice of life, this isn’t a bad one, definitely average but not really unenjoyable so it’s worth checking out if that’s your thing. I do like the innocent first crush thing, but I wanted the stories to extend beyond that to the relationship phase, and most of the couples don’t even up kissing or dating. This is sort of a feature-not-a-bug with one-shot compilations though as there is only so much space, but it could definitely have used some more kissing at the very least.
TL;DR: Come for the shounen-ai, stay to learn about the dangers of being a garbage man… short shounen-ai slice-of-life one-shots with soft art that’s a little too vague in places but I guess this matches the stories, which focus on abstract musings and metaphors about what love is like over more pragmatic details. The story idea I liked the most was one was about a boy who finds out his IRL crush and his favorite manga artist are the same person, but the best story is one in which a romance develops between a garbage man and a kid who never sorts his trash right, so I guess BL has no shortage of pairing ideas. Cute overall and a relaxing read, but on the boring side and hardly any kissing.