Backlog Attack Part II: Day 20

Kiss and Ride #2 by Kaoruhara Yoshie

Summary:

As Chiyo continues to cheer for Tasuku from the sidelines, she wonders if there’s anything more she can do to help him towards his goals. However, her efforts are in vein when she learns the truth behind Tasuku’s reasons for racing. Faced with a Tasuku she never knew until now, the two start to drift apart. As Tasuku prepares himself for the big race, will Chiyo be by his side? Or will he stay anchored down by his past?

Thoughts:

Basically the first half of the second tank has Tasuku acting like a big baby. He says he’s going to quit racing once he beats his rival but you can tell he wants to keep racing. However, rather than be honest with himself, Tasuku instead runs away crying. This ends up hurting a lot of people around him, especially Chiyo.

So yeah, apparently the “real” Tasuku is just a whiny baby lol…

Thanks to his childhood friend, Chiyo ends up going to the big race between Tasuku and rival-kun (when she was initially throwing the bird up due to Tasuku’s hissy fits). She gets the opportunity to get close to him thanks to other friend-kun, via dressing up as one of the show girls (not sure their official term). She tells him to be honest, to stop being a little bitch, and that she loves him. He ends up losing the match to rival-kun but realizes he doesn’t want to give up the race. We time jump to him still racing and Chiyo standing at his side, supporting him as his wife and show girl whatever ~

The epilogue is sweet. We time jump again. Rival-kun and other friend-kun (not childhood friend) have babies. Childhood friend is just existing lol. Tasuku contemplates if it’s time for him and Chiyo to start making them babies ~

I think Rival-kun and other friend-kun are characters from her other manga, Otokonoko ni wa Himitsu ga Aru (Men with Secrets). In the afterword, the manga-ka mentions how happy she was at being able to give these two a happy ending with babies. I’ve got that series on order so I’ll let you all know if they’re connected or not (despite Tasuku’s pity party, I really enjoyed the series :J Thus I want to check out more of this manga-ka’s stuff ~).

I really enjoyed Kiss and Ride. The characters were cute and despite Tasuku wallowing in self-pity for half of the second tank, overall I had a fun ride with this crew :) I look forward to trying out more of the manga-ka’s work :)