The Snake Who Loved a Sparrow by Nna Natsuo

 

This is one of the strangest manga I have ever read. Komazu is a little sparrow who is afraid of snakes, but one day a snake saves him from a stampede. The snake is named Shirato. The two of them have a very strange relationship which ends up causing them to fall in love with each other, but because they are predator and prey, the fear that Shirato might eat Komazu looms over them. Also the author went kind of weird with the animal anatomy so, like, Komazu only has a cloaca and Shirato has a spiky snake-dick?

***WARNING: SPOILERS***

I had to read this because I just wrote a book that metaphorically involved sparrows, so it felt like fate. And I thought it was cute. A lot of the yaoi/shounen-ai books that were circulating when I was young were kind of rapey, and even though Komazu is maybe a little too aggressively curious about touching, this book didn't feel rapey, and I appreciated that. Fun one-shot if you like shape-shifter vibes that sort of but not really goes into monsterfucking/furry territory, although I will say that it is so damn weird that the HEA involves the snake guy creating a magical peen for the sparrow guy.

3.5 out of 5 stars