TNQ 28 | Manga (Our Dining Table & I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents up)

The Novel Queers

Guess who's back!
We're back! Yay!
We realized that manga counts as a novel, and we crammed two of them into this episode to make up for the long absence.
Please also look forward to our next episode coming soon based on an advance copy of Keely Shinners' How to Build a Home at the End of the World. Which is amazing and we hope you'll buy up every copy of it.
I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents Up by Kodama Naoko
Morimoto Machi wants her parents to stop trying to marry her off to eligible bachelors, her best friend, Hana, has a plan that involves a domestic partnership and the culmination of years of longing.
Sweetness: Mochi, lightly sweet and quite a bit to chew on
Citrus: Lime
Gore: None
TW: alcohol, food, homophobia, parental estrangement, sexism, Japanese specific sexism, almost but not quite predatory lesbian trope, fake marriage, shoujo manga typical confusion and argument, and brief suspicion of infidelity
Our Dining Table by Mita Ori
Yutaka finds it difficult to eat around people until he meets brothers Minoru and Tane, who is four. They grow into a family as Yutaka teaches Minoru to cook, and Minoru teaches Yutaka how to eat again.
Sweetness: Candy, almost too sweet
Citrus: Orange
Gore: None
TW: food, alcohol, death parents and grandparents, past childhood sibling abuse, familial estrangement, eating disorder, unsanitary food, minor illness, fear of death, and coping with bereavement
M: food, alcohol, poop, hypothetical questions about eating poop, bombs, and old gay movies from blockbuster about people dying in shootouts