Confidential Confessions

A manga series by Reiko Momochi, each volume is either a stand-alone story itself, or contains several different stand-alone stories, each story focusing on a tough issue for the protagonist to either overcome... or succumb to. Said issues include but are not limited to abuse, prostitution, drugs, HIV and AIDS, bullying, and falling in love for the first time...with someone of the same gender.

A sequel series, the two-volume Confidential Confessions: Deai was released May 2006, featuring protagonists who enter (and try to get out of) the deai-kei industry.

It ran from 2000 to 2002 and was licenced by Tokyo Pop. As of April 2009, it is out of print.

Confidential Confessions contains examples of:


 * Abusive Parents/Domestic Abuse/Sadist Teacher
 * Adults Are Useless: sometimes
 * All Abusers Are Male: Unfortunately, the stories featuring abusive relationships all have a male abuser and female victim--kinda surprising, considering the other subject matters and how seriously they were handled. The only female abusers are all in stories on bullying, rather than domestic abuse.
 * All Just a Dream: Tragically so. . Maybe. It's not that clear.
 * All of the Other Reindeer: In Volume 4's story Tomorrow has a slight variation--Luka is only bullied by the Alpha Bitch and her Girl Posse, but everyone else in class (save for the protagonist) simply ignores her and watches the bullying from the sidelines, for fear that they'll be targeted next.
 * Bittersweet/Downer Ending: Sometimes the best ending the protagonist can have is bittersweet to some extent.
 * Blatant Lies: The Tokyopop ads for the series claimed that it contained "Real teens. Real problems." None of the teens are real, they're all fictional.
 * Choosing Death: The subject matter of the very first story.
 * Contemptible Cover: Sorta. The covers have words like "rape," "drugs" and "prostitution" super-imposed over terrified/sad girls...a good idea for what the stories contain, but you wouldn't want to be caught reading it in public.
 * Double Standard: In-universe, sometimes deconstructed or subverted.
 * Dropped A Bridge On Her:
 * Drugs Are Bad: Volume 3 in particular.
 * Driven to Suicide
 * Dysfunction Junction
 * Hooker With a Heart of Gold: Whenever the protagonist ends up prostituting her body.
 * Karma Houdini: This happens to an infuriating degree.
 * My God What Have I Done:
 * Only Known By Their Nickname: In the story The Door, the protagonist befriends a suicidal girl whom she knows as "Asparagus."
 * Rape As Drama/Rape As Backstory
 * Schoolgirl Lesbians: Part of Volume 4.
 * Stalker With a Crush: Not meant to be romantic in the slightest and the protagonist is genuinely terrified of the guy.
 * Teens Are Monsters: Are they ever.
 * Together in Death: Attempted by one girl's ex-boyfriend. He calls her for "one last happy memory." She goes to the house to see he's laid out a dinner for them...and then he locks her inside and threatens to kill the both of them so they can be together forever.
 * Truth In Manga: A lot of the situations can and do happen in real life, and some of them are genuine problems Japan is facing--a minor example would be, in the story about a sexually-abusive tennis coach, the protagonist getting groped on the train. She learns from her rescuer that he and a few others are petitioning for women-only cars to avoid this.
 * Well Done, Daughter Girl: Kyoko in Volume 3 desperately wants to earn her father's respect and love by getting into Tokyo University, but her grades just don't match up.
 * Yandere: Both male and female examples occur