Reviews in Brief: Shiuko Kano's Maybe I'm Your Steppin' Stone: Loveliness

Shiuko Kano's Maybe I'm Your Steppin' Stone is a pendant to I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone, centering on Kousei Mogi, Ippachi's friend, and apparently taking place before the events in the the latter story.

Kousei Mogi is an independent contractor, a scaffold maker who stops by the convenience store were Kenji Hirosue works every day to pick up dinner, usually in the company of his small son, Subaru. Kenji tends to space out when Kousei comes in -- Kousei is a big, hunky, laid-back, very sexy guy who happens to be divorced, and Kenji is smitten. Kenji's neice is in the same preschool as Subaru, and Kousei persuades Kenji to bring her to the school athletic tournament, where he enrolls himself and Kenji in the three-legged race. Things are going well until Kenji trips head-first into a piece of playground equipment. He awakes at Kousei's place, practidally in Kousei's arms, and can't restrain himself any longer: he tackles the bigger man, who proves to be willing.

Sandwiched between the two parts of the Kousei-Kenji story is that of Yasushi Mejiro and Shunji Nakano, who work for Kousei. They don't get along, until one night Yasu discovers Shunji's feelings for Kousei and tries a little blackmail -- but the payoff isn't in cash.

There's a side story, about Hotta and Kosaka: Kosaka is being forced into some hanky-panky by a teacher, which Hotta discovers. He decides to turn that knowledge to his own advantage, but then realizes that his interest in Kosaka is more than just sex.

There's a little thread of guilt running through all these stories, ranging from Kousei's realization of his emotional clumsiness with Kenji through Yasu's chagrin at realizing how he's been treating someone who cares for him, to Hotta's own epiphany -- on the same order as Yasu's, but in much greater degree. The characterizations are very full -- all these men are fully realized, both in dialogue and drawing. These are edgy guys, all of them, and Shunji in particular has a hair-raising history.

Lest I give the impression that it's all high drama, rest easy -- these stories all have their moments of humor, especially the Kousei-Kenji segments, all character-driven.

The drawing is up to the high standard of the previous volume in this series, and sex scenes, as might be imagined, are pretty explicit. And a heads up: the cover art on this one is a little too prettied up and doesn't really do justice to the interior graphics, which seems to be a tendency with Kano's color work -- it seems to lose that edge that makes the black-and-white art so appealing.

Another from 801, and Kano says there's a third volume in the works.