Cuteness Overload: “A Lonesome Wolf As Sweet As Honey”

Read on Renta!:
A Lonesome Wolf As Sweet As Honey by Dozaki

Japanese:
はちみつとオオカミ
Hachimitsu to Ookami

Links:
Dozaki Twitter
Tulle Twitter (Publishing line)

One day in the Renta! office, my colleague was excited to share that they were working on a very sweet and fluffy BL. Because it had been a while since I read a wholesome BL manga, my curiosity was piqued, and I just HAD to find some pockets of time between tasks to find out what all the BUZZ🐝 (bees… honey… get it?) was all about. And, as you might’ve expected, it didn’t take long for me to fall in love with this beautiful story.

This BL is the epitome of cuteness overload. I felt a light tugging at my heart with every chapter. Not only are the characters’ emotions depicted with subtlety, the story also struck a chord for me as someone who found himself quite lonely in high school due to his sexuality. So, if you’re looking for a series that features the themes of loneliness, friendship, and romance, read on.

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Do You Ever Yearn?: Yamayade’s “You Should Be The One To Come Kiss Me”

Read on Renta!:
You Should Be The One To Come Kiss Me by Yamayade

Japanese:
お前のほうからキスしてくれよ
Omae no Hou kara Kiss Shitekure yo

Links:
Yamayade Twitter
moment Twitter
moment Homepage

Have you ever wanted something you can’t have? Have you loved someone so much you were afraid to be honest about your feelings? Have you ever loved someone so much you were afraid to accept theirs?

At the office, Eito Kanda and Kou Ueno have a cat-and-mouse relationship. Their coworkers are convinced that they have some kind of unspoken beef with each other and that Eito messes up on purpose just to mess with Kou. And, who can blame them? The two couldn’t possibly be more different: Kou is aloof, quiet, and detail-oriented—which resulted in him being removed from the sales department and swapped into accounting—while Eito is the company’s star salesman. Intensely outgoing and hardworking, with strong communication skills, Eito’s loved by most everyone in the office while Kou mostly keeps to himself.

In reality, though, the two are incredibly close. Having gotten to know each other during their time together in sales, Eito and Kou know each other better than almost anyone. Kou knows all about Eito’s issues with his father, and Eito knows all about Kou’s sexuality. The two hide their relationship at the office because Kou is skittish about their coworkers getting any ideas about just how friendly the two are. They’re just friends, and Kou is intent on keeping it that way. Having been traumatized by a previous relationship, Kou isn’t keen on dating a friend, and he’s particularly uninterested in dating a straight friend.

Continue reading “Do You Ever Yearn?: Yamayade’s “You Should Be The One To Come Kiss Me””

Muscle Supremacy: Mojio Ikejiri’s “See You Again Tomorrow, Mr. Policeman”

Read on Renta!:
See You Tomorrow, Mr. Policeman by Mojio Ikejiri

Japanese title:
Omawari-san, Mata Ashita
お巡りさん、また明日

Links:
Mojio Ikejiri Twitter
B.Pilz Twitter
B.Pilz Website

Haruto’s an incredibly kind and hard-working neighborhood policeman with ten years on the force. He’s well-known among the locals for being incredibly selfless, and he’s always there to help. This self-effacing attitude of his, however, is starting to negatively impact his personal life. His most recent girlfriend grew cold since he was always working, and he tries his best to never rely on others, which keeps people feeling distant.

When he’s assigned to work the local town festival, he’s more than happy to serve his community. One moment of letting his guard down is all it takes for his life to be at risk, but security guard Sakura—assigned to protect the idol who’s there to perform—steps in and saves him in the nick of time. Haruto wants to thank Sakura, but Sakura’s gruff and distant. Having dealt with plenty of this kind of attitude during his time on the force, however, Haruto isn’t deterred. After Sakura goes on to save the idol from a stalker fan, Haruto approaches him again and is able to break down his walls a bit.

Continue reading “Muscle Supremacy: Mojio Ikejiri’s “See You Again Tomorrow, Mr. Policeman””

J.GARDEN 57: Return to Paradise

Spring is here! To many people that means the scent of melting snow, the blooming of flowers surrounded by freshly green leaves, beautiful warm weather, cute spring clothes, the excitement as summer approaches, etc. etc. but for me…

It means J.GARDEN is back again, baybeeeeee!!

I unfortunately had to miss J.GARDEN 56 due to going back to the States for the first time in two years, which was devastating (though, nice to see my family and enjoy Minnesota’s fall weather), but thankfully Sou was there to step in and pick up all the books I wanted. (Including all of Jiro Kawaii’s!) Either way, I’m stoked for J.GARDEN 57.

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#OldManYaoi Never Gets Old

Earlier this year, I was overjoyed to come across this post on X from the mangaka account アライグマ社 (@AraigumaSha) regarding one of the finest phrases known to humans: old man yaoi. The thread of posts features a moment of discovery by the artist, accompanied by wholesome interactions between them and English-speaking BL fans chiming in to explain how the term is used to refer to works of BL featuring older characters. Several users also added to the conversation—whether to reassure アライグマ社 that the term has a positive, endearing nuance, or to let them know how, in Western fandoms, works featuring anyone older than 30 or so could be categorized as old man yaoi. Personally, I absolutely love seeing moments like this, where fandoms from across the world connect over a shared interest, teaching and learning from each other. It truly demonstrates the ways in which communities grow and evolve through curiosity and genuine interactions ☺️

At the same time, as an old man yaoi lover myself, I could not simply sit still in the office. I had been meaning to work on doing an oyaji (term described below) blog post, so I took it as a sign from the universe that now is the time to work on it…! I know many of you are already well-versed in this sub-genre (if I can call it that), but I will start off with an overview of different ways in which old man yaoi may be referred to in Japan, followed by some recommendations.

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Cat Day 2025: Ames’ Top 5 Bottoms

It’s that time of the year again where we’re barraged by cat goods and nekomimi artwork and photos of people’s cats! Cat Day (2/22 aka にゃにゃにゃの日) was this last Saturday, so happy Cat Day from the resident uke specialist and cat lover on the BLog staff. Last year, I wrote a BLog post about the various different kinds of uke characters (and why uke are associated with cats), but this year we’re going to go for a more casual BLog post about my current top five bottoms as of February 2025, why I love them, and also a couple bonuses for those who read until the end!

So let’s get right into it! Which uke characters have been catching my attention this year?

Continue reading “Cat Day 2025: Ames’ Top 5 Bottoms”

Renta! Staff BL Awards 2024

It’s already that time of year again, and boy howdy was 2024 a wild ride here at Renta! We changed our logo! We opened a Bluesky! There was much emotional (and physical) edging to be had! We participated in our first ever actual panel! The dongs were unleashed! We collected some samples! We saw beastmen in heat, many a delinquent on the brink, and men impregnated chivalrously! We released our very first cakeverse! We fostered brotherly love! We saw some knot-y boys and some nice ones! And many a popular series saw its end!

As we get ready to make 2025 an even more successful and exciting year filled with tons of great manga, we still wanted to look back on our favorite BL of 2024! That’s right, it’s once again time for our BL Staff Awards!

This time we have the usual Ames (hello), Sou, and Yomogi from the localization team, and then the wonderful Pochi, Snow, and Ann from our sales and marketing teams! So if you want to see what we enjoyed having the opportunity to work alongside this year, please read on!

Same as last year, we have the following categories:

Favorite New Series
Favorite Continuing Series
Favorite Seme
Favorite Uke
Favorite Up-And-Coming Author
Amazing Art
Favorite Renta! Title
Favorite Cover
Favorite Couple

Feel free to click on each category to go directly to that section, or you can meander through from start to finish to get that full 2024 BL experience! We also decided everyone only had to fill out the sections they have an actual response for, so just know you’re getting our true recommendations!

Continue reading “Renta! Staff BL Awards 2024”

Naughty and Nice: BL Recs for the Christmas Season

The Renta! BL team wanted to do a Christmas special again this year, and we were racking our brains on what we could possibly post. Last year’s Christmas BL rec post was actually shockingly time-intensive (two whole 10+ hour work days on top of my regular workload…), so I didn’t have it in me to do it this year. And a manga like A Gift From Santa Claus only comes once a lifetime, and I obviously wasn’t going to review it twice. We spent about an hour in the BL meeting just going in circles—BL recs based on Christmas songs? How about based on popular holiday foods?

But then the glorious Sou was like “well… how about which BL characters will get coal in their stocking?” And thus the “Naughty x Nice” Christmas BL Special was born! For this, the Renta! BL team got together and thought of three recommendations for the following four categories:

・Nice Seme x Nice Uke
・Nice Seme x Naughty Uke
・Naughty Seme x Nice Uke
・Naughty Seme x Naughty Uke

Some boys will be getting a lump of coal and a spanking (😘) this Christmas season, so to see who’s on Santa’s shit-list and who’ll be getting exactly what they asked for, read on!

Continue reading “Naughty and Nice: BL Recs for the Christmas Season”

Defying Fate in the Omegaverse: “The Top-Ranked Omega Doesn’t Believe In Destiny”

Read on Renta!:
The Top-Ranked Omega Doesn’t Believe In Destiny by Sakae Matsubara

Japanese:
No.1オメガ様は運命を信じない
No.1 Omega-sama wa Unmei wo Shinjinai

Links:
Sakae Matsubara’s Homepage
Sakae Matsubara’s Twitter
Hanaoto Twitter (publisher)
Hanaoto Homepage

Sometimes you see a cover and you’re just like “yeah, I’m gonna like that series.” Just one look, and you add it to the cart. You don’t read the description, you don’t read the tags, you don’t look at the reviews—you don’t need them. You just know this specific book was made for you. And that’s how I felt the second I saw The Top-Ranked Omega Doesn’t Believe In Destiny.

First of all, the redhead bottom—Aka—is just so extremely My Type. The art is beautiful and the linework is so soft and clean. The coloring is stunning. The contrast between the two character is also extremely eye-catching and instantly speaks to their personalities: Aka and Soei’s colors contrast brilliantly, Aka in intense fiery red with Soei in soft, calm blue—as does their level of undress with Soei fully clothed in a suit while Aka only has open shirt and collar, not to mention the difference between Aka’s look of sensual arrogance, while Soei looks serious and concerned. I knew without even reading a single page I was going to love both of these characters as well as their dynamic.

And, sure enough…! So if you, too, are interested in seeing what’s so intriguing about this top-rated omega and his elite suitor, read on!

Continue reading “Defying Fate in the Omegaverse: “The Top-Ranked Omega Doesn’t Believe In Destiny””

Publisher Showcase: Brite (Tulle & B.Pilz)

As you may have gleaned from our previous publisher showcase on KiR as well as our Citrus Con panel about the ins and outs of BL localization, when it comes to manga, paying attention to the publisher (and the publishing lines within) matters not just in terms of the type of content on offer, but also how easily a license request can be fulfilled. Different companies have ties with different publishers, either through long-standing relationships and trust building, or simply because they may be the subsidiary of a larger company. So it’s useful to pay attention to what publishers a localization company already has in their roster, because if they’ve licensed from them once, chances are the process of doing it again will be much smoother.

As I mentioned in the KiR showcase, we’ve had a long relationship with them as a publishing line, and frequently release their content. But another publisher we have a good relationship with is Brite Publishing, the larger company behind the two BL lines Tulle and B.Pilz . Our long-standing relationship with Brite Publishing is a major reason we’re able to bring you guys so many of their wonderful titles.

As you can maybe tell, we at the RentaBLog love Brite Publishing and the mangaka who release stories under them. I’ve discovered many of my more recent favorite mangaka through getting to work on Brite Publishing stuff through Renta!, and it’s made me really want to help push their BL out to a wider audience.

One of the things I love about Brite is that, as a medium-size publisher, they work with a great mix of established and newer, lesser-known mangaka. This not only means getting to experience lots of new art and writing styles, but since the artists are newer to the scene, they bring a fresh new take on established tropes and stories. Because of this, you might see a lot of youth culture references (which also makes them fun to translate—we live for the challenge!) or themes that previously didn’t show up in BL much. It makes it so there’s always something new and exciting releasing under Brite!

For that reason, we (me, and our newest BL Team member Yomogi) decided we’d showcase a handful of our Brite Publishing favs! (Aside from, you know, the many, many, many we’ve reviewed on the BLog already… hehe★)

Continue reading “Publisher Showcase: Brite (Tulle & B.Pilz)”