Age rating: YA/Young Adult 16+
Genre: BL/Yaoi
Price: $12.95

"Do you... love me so much it drives you to tears?"

"Yes... so much that I can't think straight. I'm sorry for loving you. I'm sorry."

"...How about we try dating?"

This collection of short stories from the creator of You & Harujion is a mixed bag, as is almost always the case with short story collections, but there's a great deal of warmth and charm to be found here, and some unexpected pleasures.

The title story begins the collection, and a fine beginning it is. A story of love between college students, one shy and sensitive, the other warm-hearted but seemingly careless, it creates a very effective atmosphere of wistful yearning, exactly the kind of thing that I read BL manga for, but with a lightness of touch that prevents the yearning from becoming oppressive. The same goes for "Top Secret", a tale of two long-standing office colleagues who have been pining for each other for years; as with "Little Cry Baby", the characters' actions are entirely natural and understandable, and the resolution is warmly satisfying.

The two linked high school stories, "You Are Mine..." and "...And I Am Yours" are sweet and pleasant, if a little predictable; but the science fiction story "Raika" (which is not BL) is rather odd: the main character is given the legacy of a humanoid dog when his estranged father dies. He thinks this is creepy, and frankly I agree; the "dog" Raika (who may have been named after Laika, the first dog sent into space) looks like a small boy on all fours, and cute as he is, there's something unnerving about him. The arc of the story involves the protagonist coming to terms with Raika's presence in his life and letting go of his initial opinion, but Kinoshita didn't manage bring me along on that journey: I still think Raika is creepy.

The final story, "Flower Boys", again not a BL story, is more successful, and in part because it ends up in an unexpected place; for all that it's a very short piece, not much more than a vignette, it has room for two fairly well-developed characters with an interesting relationship, and a plot, slight as it is, that avoids the obvious conclusion you might expect from the setup.  All of the stories are told through Kinoshita's unique art, with its fine, delicate line. There's something terribly refreshing about the way Kinoshita draws; somehow the sketchiness of her human figures seems to echo and underline their hesitancy, their tentativeness, as if they were as reluctant to stake out a permanent place on the page as to make a definite declaration of love.

Little Cry Baby is more satisfying than You & Harujion, for all that the individual stories are all short and not all of them work as well as they might. The slightness of the plots doesn't matter nearly as much at shorter lengths, and there's a nice variety of tones and story styles. This is early work from Kinoshita, and it shows great potential for the future, as well as being worth reading in itself.

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