I should have enjoyed The Troublesome Guest of Sotomura Detective Agency by Sakae Kusuma more than I did. There’s a grumpy detective with an “only one bed”-type pairing, but the book fell flat for me, as the various elements were underbaked.
Private detective Matsuda is unlucky in both life and career, perhaps because he’s too nice a guy, or maybe he’s just a pushover. We first see him waking up naked in a hotel, where his boyfriend has deserted him, leaving him to pay the bill. Back at the office, a woman wants him to convince the freeloader seeing her sister to leave her alone.
It turns out that the freeloader, Kamiko, went to high school with Matsuda. When he leaves the woman, he moves in with Matsuda at the office, and they start having sex (explicitly portrayed, thus the M rating). Kamiko simply doesn’t leave, starting to assist Matsuda on cases, and eventually (spoiler) rescuing him.
There’s a case about an adult stalker who’s still hung up on someone from high school, and an attempt to give Kamiko some back story about missing his childhood dog, and another stalking case (this is some weird neighborhood clientele)… but nothing really makes sense about all this, although each chapter gives the two men a reason to have sex. They’re less characters, more dolls made to make out.
I sometimes had trouble telling which man was speaking when it was the two of them, as there aren’t always pointers on the dialogue balloons, and the voices weren’t distinctive. I did like the art style, though. It’s a little sketchier and a bit harder-edged than the stereotypical manga look.
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