BL Library - Heterosexual Manga

Manga Review | Perfect World by Rie Aruga

Title: Perfect World

Author(s): Rie Aruga

Artist(s): Rie Aruga

Tsugumi has been in love with Itsuki since high school. They were never in the same class, but they would often share moments in the library or the hallways, and in these innocent times between friends, Tsugumi's love for Itsuki blossomed. Itsuki was an active and popular kid, ready to take on the world. He dreamed of becoming an architect, and Tsugumi was prepared to support him. However, just as Tsugumi was working up the courage to confess to Itsuki, he gets a confession from someone else and begins dating her. Heartbroken, Tsugumi fades into the background of Itsuki's life, and the two naturally grow apart.

Now, Tsugumi is a grown woman working at a job she loves as an interior designer. Deep down, though, she can't shake the torch that still burns for Itsuki even after all these years. One evening, she is invited to a small reunion with her classmates, and Itsuki happens to be there. They hit it off immediately, which only fans the flames of Tsugumi's dormant crush. Feeling like this might be destiny, she begins working up the courage to pursue him again, but as everyone begins to leave, Itsuki asks for his chair. He has a spinal cord injury from a car accident and is now wheelchair-bound.

This shocks Tsugumi, and she's unsure if she can handle dating someone in a wheelchair, but as time goes on and she finds herself actively seeking out Itsuki, the fact that Itsuki is in a wheelchair begins to matter less and less. However, Tsugumi's acceptance of the new Itsuki isn't the only problem. Since his accident, Itsuki has sworn off love. Can Tsugumi break down the walls Itsuki has put up around himself? Or are they destined to forever orbit around each other?

Title: Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku

Author(s): Fujita

Artist(s): Fujita

Narumi and Hirotaka have been friends since childhood when they bonded over their love of nerdy hobbies. For Narumi, she loved manga and anime. For Hirotaka, his love of video games dominated everything else in his life. However, as their carefree childhood days flew by, Hirotaka soon realized that he cared for Narumi almost as much as his video games. Unfortunately, though, those idyllic days of childhood bliss faded away, and so did Narumi and Hirotaka's friendship.

As adults, Hirotaka and Narumi end up working at the same office. While they don't immediately kick off as friends again in adulthood, they find solace in each other's company once they reveal that their previous obsessions have only intensified. Able to be 100% herself with Hirotaka, Narumi spends a lot of her time complaining and confiding in him, whether it be about her fujoshi-related hobbies, work concerns, or even her failing love life. Hirotaka, still infatuated with Narumi, faithfully stands by as her shoulder to cry on. One day, though, listening to another tale of woe from Narumi due to her various love interests leaving her because of her otaku hobby, Hirotaka takes the plunge. He asks Narumi:

Why doesn't she just date him instead?

And so begins the struggle of love between a closeted fujoshi and a game-obsessed, antisocial otaku. What could go wrong?

Title: Aishiteruze Baby

Author(s): Yoko Maki

Artist(s): Yoko Maki

Kippei Katakura is a player. As one of the most attractive guys in his high school, he has no shortage of partners to play with every day. However, Kippei's days of playing bachelor are coming to an end when a major family event rocks the foundation of the Katakura family. Kippei's aunt Miyako lost her husband. Unable to handle the pressures of single motherhood, Miyako leaves her five-year-old daughter Yuzuyu in the care of Kippei's family until she can get on her feet.

As the only family member old enough to care for her and with enough free time to do it, Kippei is designated as Yuzuyu's primary guardian. Yuzuyu quickly takes to Kippei and begins relying on him heavily. Similarly, Kippei finds himself increasingly attached to Yuzuyu, and soon, those irresponsible player days feel like a distant memory. It isn't all sunshine and rainbows, though. Kippei and Yuzuyu constantly face prejudice, trauma, and the many struggles their unique relationship creates. As their bond grows stronger and stronger, the looming threat that one day they will have to part only grows along with it.

Title: Sweat and Soap

Author(s): Kintetsu Yamada

Artist(s): Kintetsu Yamada

Asako works at a toiletry manufacturing company in the finance department, which is convenient since she struggles with something that makes life pretty tricky: sweat. Asako sweats much more than average, so she has to be extra hygienic to avoid smelling out in public. Even with her above-average hygiene habits, though, Asako still finds herself stressing over her smell. As a child, she was relentlessly bullied for sweating, and that trauma has carried over into her adulthood. So, her days are spent in constant anxiety and fear over getting too close to those around her and becoming the laughingstock of her peers due to her hygiene.

Her fears come to a head when the lead product developer Kotaro Natori at work approaches her in the lobby because of her smell. He has an unnaturally strong sense of smell because he develops the soaps their company produces, and Asako's scent is particularly strong to him. However, he doesn't dislike her smell at all. Instead, he is inspired by it, and he desperately needs Asako's odor to inspire him for the upcoming Winter line of soaps he is preparing to present. Though Asako wants to do anything but let Kotaro smell her all day, for the company's sake, she agrees to let Kotaro smell her at the office daily. It's not long, though, before Kotaro is drawn to Asako for more than just her smell, and even Asako is beginning to enjoy these sniff sessions a bit more than she expected.

Title: Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts

Author(s): Yu Tomofuji

Artist(s): Yu Tomofuji

Beastkind and humans live entirely separate lives. Each is designated land with an agreement to never cross into the other's borders, except for the agreed-upon ritual. To uphold the peace between the human kingdoms and the beastkind, humanity must give a human sacrifice to the king of beasts. Unfortunately for Sariphi, it is her turn to be sacrificed. Oddly enough, though, she isn't afraid. She has known she was meant to be a sacrifice for a long time and has resigned herself to this fate, ultimately happy that her life and death could be meaningful.

During the ritual, she is faced with the king of beasts. However, instead of killing her, he turns into a man and tries to set her free. Since taking the throne, he has never once killed a sacrifice and instead helped them all to escape. Even so, Sariphi doesn't leave. She has nowhere to return to and now has no meaning for her life. The king is entranced by her lack of fear, something he must contend with every day because while he is the king of beasts, he is not entirely a beast. Drawn to her, the king decides to let her stay with him under the pretense that she will one day be his bride and help close the divide between human and beastkind.

Having lived her whole life under the assumption she would one day die as a sacrifice, Sariphi must now find a new motivation to continue. She battles against prejudice, political schemes to keep her from becoming queen, and efforts even to take down the king of beasts. Can a human girl survive in a world made for beasts?

Title: Rosario+Vampire

Author(s): Akihisa Ikeda

Artist(s): Akihisa Ikeda

Tsukune Aono is as average as they come. However, as average as he is, his poor grades make it, so he cannot attend any of the local high schools. Thankfully, though, he receives an acceptance from the mysterious school aptly named Yokai Academy. On the surface, it seems to be an oddly decorated school campus. However, Tsukune quickly realizes that he should have never come to this school because it is not for average humans like him. Instead, it is a school specifically for creatures like vampires, werewolves, succubi, and ghouls – all creatures that seem to have an ingrained hatred for humans.

Thankfully, though, as Tsukune comes to terms with his risky predicament, he meets vampire Moka. Not only is she cute, but she is sweet, too, and she finds herself inexplicably drawn to Tsukune's blood. However, much like Yokai Academy, not everything is as it seems. When Tsukune removes the rosary around Moka's neck, she transforms from her bubbly pink-haired, green-eyed self to a silver-hair, red eyes badass with the ability to kick ass as a full-blooded vampire. Tsukune should not like Moka, but even with her split personality and her want to suck him dry, he can't help but be drawn to her and resolves to stay at Yokai Academy to stay by Moka's side.

Of course, this scenario couldn't be that simple. Moka isn't the only one drawn to Tsukune, romantically or otherwise. All manner of things that go bump in the night ends up being drawn to Tsukune, and he must somehow survive each encounter with Moka at his side.

Title: Kiss Him, Not Me

Author(s): Junko

Artist(s): Junko

Kae Serinuma is a BL fanatic (can relate). She spends all day and all night consuming all manner of BL content, and when she isn't enjoying BL, she thinks about it, buys it, fantasizes about it, and even spends her time shipping the boys around her together. As a result, she isn't the most popular girl around. She's also a bit chubby, which doesn't earn her any points with the pretty boys in school, but that doesn't matter. She isn't interested in boys unless they want to be with boys themselves!

However, one fateful day, Serinuma's world is rocked when her favorite character, Shion, from her favorite anime, Mirage Saga, is unexpectedly killed. Unable to handle the loss, Serinuma holes herself up in her room for a week. She doesn't go to school, she doesn't eat, she doesn't sleep, and even her mother and brother don't see her for the entire week. Finally, her brother breaks her out of her stupor, but what emerges is not the lovable, chubby Serinuma. No, what comes out is a gorgeous lady that even Serinuma herself fails to recognize.

When she returns to school, everyone except history club president Asuma Mutsumi fails to recognize her, and once people realize who she is, they don't believe it! But there is no denying that Kae Serinuma is this gorgeous creature. As a result, she draws the attention of some of the hottest boys in her school, including history club president and third-year Asuma Mutsumi, classmate and soccer club member Yusuke Igarashi, bad boy Shion-lookalike Nozomu Nanashima, and first-year student Hayato Shinomiya. They are immediately attracted to her new look and make it clear that they all plan on winning her heart. Things get even more complicated, though, when she also draws the attention of Shima Nishina, an androgynous girl who is also a BL fanatic and as equally drawn to Serinuma as all the boys.

While Serinuma enjoys her time with all her new friends, the pressure of their love causes plenty of trouble for all involved. What is worse is that she would rather the boys fall in love with each other rather than her! She promises to consider all of them as possible love interests and promises to give them all an answer in time, but how could she possibly choose? Why can't they just love each other? Can a BL-fanatic actually fall in love with a boy (or girl)?

Title: Princess Jellyfish

Author(s): Akiko Higashimura

Artist(s): Akiko Higashimura

Tsukimi Kurashita is obsessed with jellyfish. Her obsession began when she was a child, and her mother took her to the aquarium. While there, her mother promised Tsukimi that she would make her a wedding dress that looked like a lace jellyfish. Not long after that promise, Tsukimi's mother passes away, leaving her with the memories of the lace jellyfish and her mother's unfulfilled promise.

Even as those childhood days grew further and further away, Tsukimi's love and obsession with jellyfish never faded. Instead, it fuels and drives her entire life as she resigns herself to single life at the Amamizukan – a retro building dubbed the “nunnery” where many other like-minded, home-bodied women have congregated to live out their single lives together, obsessing over their own passions (some of which include elderly men, trains, and kimonos, just to name a few). As a result of their obsessions, the women of Amamizukan are all very anti-men and those they dub “stylish” and find themselves unable to interact with the general population as a result.

However, one evening, Tsukimi notices two jellyfish being kept in an aquarium together, and these two species can't be housed together; otherwise, one of them will die. Tsukimi does her best to explain this to the store clerk, but because the clerk is a man and a stylish, Tsukimi struggles to communicate with him. A stylish woman comes by and helps Tsukimi rescue the jellyfish by chance. Though the woman is a stylish, she is allowed into the sacred nunnery because she isn't a man. Throughout the evening, Tsukimi realizes even though her new friend Kuranosuke Koibuchi is a stylish, she is still a good person and even finds herself drawn to her beauty because she looks like a princess – something Tsukimi herself feels she could never be.

The next day, though, it is revealed that Kuranosuke is actually a man who cross-dresses as a way to escape his family's political background. To protect her place in Amamizukan and maintain her new friendship, Tsukimi tells all of her fellow nuns that Kuranosuke is a woman. Even with her own position at Amamizukan protected, the entirety of the building and the neighborhood itself is under threat by large corporations seeking to buy out the land to build hotels and stores in its place. Having fallen in love with Amamizukan and the residents there, Kuranosuke enlists the help of all the women of Amamizukan to create a fashion line based on Tsukimi's jellyfish illustrations so they can make up the funds needed to buy up the building before it is sold.

Title: Devils' Line

Author(s): Ryo Hanada

Artist(s): Ryo Hanada

There is a hidden group of people called devils. They are humans born with an insatiable hunger for blood – similar to vampires, though they aren't weak to sunlight. Tsukasa Taira, our female lead, comes face-to-face with this group when her male companion is outed as a devil – a devil serial killer and rapist, in fact, and the person who calls him out? A devil police officer named Yuuki Anzai.

There is an immediate attraction between Yuuki and Tsukasa. But, as their attraction to each other grows, they quickly find that a relationship between a predator and prey isn't going to be as simple as they might hope. While dealing with the personal issues surrounding them are espionage, conspiracy, and worldwide efforts to either empower the devils or stomp them out for good.

Title: Fruits Basket

Author(s): Natsuki Takaya

Artist(s): Natsuki Takaya

This story revolves around our lovable, orphaned main character, Tohru Honda. Tohru's life is filled with hardship. Her father passed when she was a young girl, her mother died not long before the start of our story, she is forced to live in a tent in the woods due to her grandfather's home renovations and an unkind family living with him, and she works a cleaning job to pay her own way in the world while also attending school.

What Tohru doesn't know is that she has mistakenly started camping inside the land of the Sohma clan, a family of mysterious, attractive men and women who mostly keep to themselves. One of the main members is Yuki Sohma, who goes to school and is in the same class as Tohru, though they do not interact as Yuki is very distant at school. Tohru ends up accidentally stumbling across the house where Yuki is staying, thus encountering the second Sohma Shigure, an older and unreliable author who cares for Yuki as a guardian.

When Yuki and Shigure question how she found their house, they discover she is living in a tent. For her safety, they ask her to stay with them, at least until her grandfather's home renovations are complete. While Tohru is unwilling at first, as she fears being a burden on people, a landslide ends up crushing her tent, which forces her to accept the Sohma's offer.

During her first day with the Sohmas, she ends up meeting Kyo, another Sohma member who hates Yuki with a passion. He challenges Yuki to fight, which, of course, shocks Tohru, but Yuki and Shigure are not surprised in the least. While trying to stop him, Tohru ends up accidentally embracing him, and when she does, Kyo turns into a cat. It is then revealed that Kyo (the cat), Yuki (the rat), and Shigure (the dog) are all part of the Sohma curse, which causes 13 members of the family to turn into the 13 animals of the Chinese zodiac whenever a member of the opposite sex embraces them.

Heterosexual Manga

Manga Review | Perfect World by Rie Aruga

Manga Review | Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku by Fujita

Manga Review | Aishiteruze Baby by Yoko Maki

Manga Review | Sweat and Soap by Kintetsu Yamada

Manga Review | Rosario+Vampire by Akihisa Ikeda

Manga Review | Kiss Him, Not Me by Junko

Manga Review | Devils’ Line by Ryo Hanada

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