Mr Mini Mart

Short and sweet, this manga tops my list of favorites. Although riddled with romantic clichés that hopeless-romantic readers can't seem to get enough of, these clichés are approached in an original way that toys with your emotions and keeps you reading start to finish. It is rare that I find a story that makes me grin like an idiot, unable to control my outward emotions as I become absorbed in the lives of the characters, but this is surely one of those stories. Despite only a few chapters, the author creates well thought out characters and a page-turning plot with a satisfying storyline from start tofinish.

Well, this manga certainly had potential, until the finale came. We have a quite typical setting of “boy gets bullied because he’s gay”. With it we have bundled another quite typical “rough looking but actually caring” character archetype. We even get the cliché “delinquent-looking person picks up a kitten in rain” scene, but as the manga is self-aware about that and acknowledges that was corny, I’ll let that one pass. While the main themes here are nothing new, they are executed quite well, with the characters having some actual characters, and for having just few chapters the story actually develops quite nicely. That is, as mentioned, untilthe conclusion. Be warned that there are spoilers beyond this point. So, the main point this manga is trying to make is that it’s stupid to bully someone just because they’re gay and defend it by saying you were afraid that they could have the hots for you. Then it ends up with the supportive friend with no indication they were gay suddenly making out, going out and sexing with the previously bullied gay protagonist, ironically making the point the story is against actually true in a way. This manga would be much better if the supportive friend had stayed exactly as that. There’s plenty of BL about friend of gay protagonist turning gay (probably literally hundreds of those, maybe more), but not so much manga about gay protagonist that doesn’t immediately get canonically shipped with the secondary protagonist. Was it really that hard to not make such generic conclusion that everyone saw coming but doesn’t really make sense beyond the “it’s BL manga so everyone needs to be gay” concept? Was the whole chapter that’s just explicit, porn-like sex scene really necessary, despite the previous chapters being nicely wholesome? Did the author really have that little faith the story would sell without including something horny? The extra chapter that doesn’t have anything to do with the main story (“Youthful Love”) isn’t interesting at all, so that isn’t really helping. Overall, it’s a fine BL manga, but at most average manga in general.