I really LOVED these stories. Every one of them were so well built, and the happenings can very easily be mirrored to real life.

I think one of the main themes is to be stranded in life by one or many events in life. How unrequited love can bug you for life, and destroy you and how depressing it is to feel lonely. How decisions one made years ago can come back haunting you. Actually it's rather soothing to watch these different people go about their problems and issues. The characters don't necessarily deal with their problems in a constructive way, but just watching them actually calmed me, and made me wonder about how one should handle ones problems in life.

Ah, damn. I just keep going, huh?

Well, this is an awesome read! When you're a bit tired of lewd meaningless yaoi, read this one and be enlightened.

Only downside: Chapter six left me VERY confused. Anyways, might just be because I'm tired and can't remember names in mangas that well.

... Last updated on January 11th, 2010, 3:45pm

It's unbelievable how good these stories are! Without sinking into crass sentimentality or oversimplifying the conflicting emotions, the mangaka reveals slice-of-life and realistic stories that defy convention. I think it's almost quite brave of the mangaka to have such stories unfold in a way that do not follow a set happily-ever-after ending. Bittersweet isn't quite the word I'm looking for, as it's more than that: life and love isn't necessarily what we expect it to be, and can be hopelessly complicated.

I highly recommend the story; whether you like yaoi or not, these are still engaging works from a masterful storyteller.

PS I loved that she included the songs that inspired each story in the postscript. I'm looking them up in Youtube as we speak!

Okay. I can kinda see where the mangaka was attempting to go with this, but, for some reason she falls short. I mean, the stories are very thought-provoking and unique, however, the characters are too emotional. The stories were all carried by the emotions, and it just didn't work for me. In fact, by the end of the last one, I was sick of it. It became pretty annoying. The flow was just off; in fact, there was no flow. But it's still worth reading, it really is.

This one is good, eventhough it's a little bit hard to understand if you only read it one time. But if you've read it twice or more, I think it'll become extremely good, with a calm and gentle feeling.

The third story, simple but best It spread a bright feeling.

Usually, I tend to stay away from yaoi. My first experience with yaoi is that it's pretty graphic. But then this popped up on the Storm In Heaven site, so I gave it a chance.

And to my surprise, it really isn't bad at all. I like how realistically things are portrayed. I think this manga should be put under 'slice-of-life', since all the stories in this volume are somewhere under this genre.

Actually, when I was reading the manga, I felt more like I was reading a japanese novel, rather than reading a manga. The thoughts and sentiments that the author expresses in her work are deep(esp. in the first story w/three chapters).

But the last work was the one that caught my eye the most. It's simple but very memorable. Of all of them, I like that one best, even though there's really not that much of a plot.

People who like slice-of-life/josei should give this a try. It's a good introduction to yaoi, although I've heard much of the rest of the genre is much more graphic.

I was immediately attracted to this once I read the summary. While it's labeled "yaoi" it's rather "smut" because there are hardly any sex scenes, and they aren't that extreme anyway (except for one scene). There's actually a story in here that is kind of like a shoujo with a girl protagonist. The art was appealing and the stories were bittersweet. I recommend this for the plot. The first arc was left open-ended though, which annoyed me, but it was overall, good. I liked how the mangaka went through several points of views with that first arc; it allowed me to sympathize them.