Mimi's manga / #family dynamic(36)

I had very small high hopes for this manga. It has to be because of the weird translation but at the same time I'm sure some of the writing in Japanese would have been questionable still. All the stories, other than the one about the two who work in the game industry, were boring or weird (ch 2) and while I was able to understand the homophobic nature in chapter 4 having a queer character call himself the f slur, everything in chapter 5 was just as uncomfortable. Going back to ch 4, I want more stories that touch on the harassment queer people face and then overcoming that. I can do without the slurs, thanks, but I did feel for that couple and the struggling relationship that was getting abusive to a point that they were in. I wish they had their own book.

… Bruh. I’m so happy about this getting a physical release really soon because this just became one of my favorite manga. I’m gonna start with the only problem I had about this story and that’s the amount of affection Yutaka had towards Tane. You can kind of understand why Yutaka was at peace around Tane because of his backstory but the author didn’t give Tane much of a similar connection to kid!Yutaka to justify why he’s happy to see Tane happy and it comes off as a little creepy. I know the author wasn’t trying to write him that way, but without Yutaka talking about how he wished he was as happy as Tane as a kid and/or showing that Yutaka is really good with kids in general to make a good father figure is a missed opportunity to me. Yutaka’s childhood was a lot for him, so much that even eating in front of people was uncomfortable. But after meeting Tane and Minoru and having that “found family” moment was he really able to be happy and feel like he was part of a family. In that sense, I can also see why he cared for Tane like a son/little brother. It just wasn’t written well enough to 100% convey that affection. Other than that, I loved this story. I love the characters and how it focused on their development. I also love Tane’s crush on Yutaka as it’s very clear from the start to see it and made me laugh. The time skip was very adorable and I thank them for writing that bit in.

Before I get to talking about the first book, I said below that I didn’t like how Hagiwara’s friend was written to start drama. I didn’t read the other book he was in until now so now I know that Yura does like Hagiwara. However, that is not shown in the first manga, so for him to be acting like an ass and for Maki to be jealous before you find out from reading the next book just makes them both look really petty and frustrating to read. Either way, I still hate that "trope" so much. It really dose not matter to me why he was an asshole. Overall, I thought this was cute. There were some sweet moments and I loved the family dynamic of it all. But there were a couple of things that pissed me off. Firstly, I never liked how people can’t have friends in BL manga without the lover being jealous of the friend. Hagiwara’s friend never acted like he was coming on to him or anything, they were just friends and Maki was jealous because he was hanging out with his friend. There’s also a point later where the friend got villainized for no reason other than to start “pointless drama”. The way he was later written and how Maki acted didn’t sit well with me either. I think the author was trying to go for something emotional and sad to make you go “awww I feel for them” when it just had me like “uhhh everyone’s being a bit problematic”. There are better, more emotional ways to have the mother be a point of conversation to touch on without the need to start pointless drama. Another minor thing that is just a pet peeve really, is the thought that Hagiwara had about not having a family because they’re both men. I would love for adoption or “found family” to be a big part of bl/gl manga so we can stop seeing this dumb thought be something to worry about. Lastly, the extra story. It was kind of dumb and not needed. It felt shallow like the only reason to write this short story was for the sex alone. Which, that ending sex scene I was not ok with at all. I do want to buy this as I need more family-oriented queer manga but I did wish I didn’t have to give it 3 stars. In the end, the only people that matter in this book are Ritsu and Kana. God bless these sweet baby boys!

I feel like there wasn't really anything that big/interesting to this book. It stayed on a "very adorable but kinda boring" line that I didn't completely hate. I did wish we got a more serious talk with Chiaki's mother, a wedding even. Just some things felt sped up to where it felt like these story points could've been expanded upon but now It feels like there should be a vol 2.

In general, it's a cute story with characters that are fine but no one I cared to get too invested into except for Riku. I do like that this book only talked about 1 story instead of 3+ like most bl manga, it gives you more room to flesh out the characters and story... Room the author clearly didn't take, I feel. While I liked it to the point of wanting to buy it and seeing this be turned into a two-part OVA, I feel we moved too fast to let Iori and Goura characters develop. They just felt flat as people with the only thing moving them being Riku. Maybe I just didn't really care for Iori and the way he thought about Beast Folk. A thought he clearly got from his grandmother that I don't completely agree with. There were some nice moments especially at the end I would've love to see more of through out the story. However, can I just yell about a part of the story I didn't understand and I'm not even sure if this was the author's or translator's fault? There's a part where Iori begins to think about adopting Riku for a second but then says something like "I'm gay, I can't do that". The story up until now has not talked about queer people adopting nor did it ever come back up. What came up instead, some 3 or 4 pages later, was Iori talking to Goura about how humans can't adopt Beast Folk because they were abused or treated as pets by some humans in the past so they don't allow that anymore. While that's a good bit of backstory that would be interesting to know more about, WHY was that not his first thought as to why he couldn't adopt Riku instead of him being gay? It should've been "I'm human, I can't" and not "I'm gay, I can't" if you're never going to bring up why queer people can't adopt in your modern fantasy/slice of life story. That moment was just left there hanging and because it never came back up again it felt even more out of place and weird. Maybe there's something in Japan that makes is difficult or impossible for queer people to adopt at the time of writing the story but we wouldn't that and there's no in-book segment explaining it..... ????? I'm realizing now that this story has a problem with explaining things. It can't even hide behind having more sex scenes over plot since there were only 2½ total sex scenes. It just felt like they went in circles talking about the same thing that they could've moved on from or worked off of by explaining some other things, but they never did. They would just bring up the same topics as if they're bringing it up first the first time while also stopping at the same pots, never explaining it further. Again, while I like this story, my main problem with it was the lack of story explanation and that adoption dilemma really got to me.

The main story was pretty cute as a whole. Wasn't on board with how the relationship started, however, the part in the bathroom was basically harassment. That was kinda weird soured the plot in an otherwise cute story with a cute couple and cute child living a cute family life together. As for the short story, I'm not too sure how I feel about that. Despite it being a short story, it ended up dragging out its plot as if it was gearing up for another chapter or sequel spin-off... that never happened. The characters were fine, but it ended too abruptly for that ending they were trying to do on top of how I really didn't care about either of them by the end.

I know this is still ongoing but, what's been translated so far, I really love it. I hope it gets picked up because, OHMYGOD, the translation is horrible. Vol 1 more so. I can tell that this has a really cute story, I like the characters and them as a family so much that I want to buy this, and there wasn't a lot of bullshit stuff you normally see in a BL manga. So having vol 1 translated the way it was really ruined the feeling of the emotional parts. Vol 2 had typos and small things that didn't bother me as much (they do need to slow down on the word impossible, holy shit), but it was a lot better to read through. I hope vol 3 onwards has a better translation team because I want to be even more invested in these characters than I already am, but with this level of writing from the translator(s) it feels like a 2006 fanfiction.net story.