So it might have been a mistake to have his cousin Heisuke babysit him. Heiskue is a self-centered high schooler who'd rather think about sweets and cooking than anything else. And his first time watching Aki, he decides to leave him alone at the house for an hour so he can go shopping for snacks.
As little Aki is drawing with crayons, he hands him a pack of colored pencils. "Do you want to use these?"
Aki takes the box, and stares at it intently.
"I'm going to the convenience store for a bit."
Aki looks at the table and bobs his head in a nod, clutching the pencils to his chest.
"It should be alright to leave him," Heisuke tells himself as he heads out the door.
After his friend and mother berate him for his poor decision, Heisuke begins to take his babysitting responsibilities more seriously. And he notices that Aki is actually a very lonely child, with no friends. And because of his selflessness, he often lets his feelings be ignored.
"He was watching a TV show this morning," says Aki's mom, "and his dad came in and changed the channel. Aki was shocked, but he held back and let dad have the TV."
Yes, it might have been a mistake to have Heisuke be Aki's official babysitter. But it turns out that each has something to teach the other. "It's OK to be selfish sometimes," Heisuke tells Aki. And Aki in turn teaches the always-selfish Heisuke to consider other people's feelings.
Anyone who remembers what it was like to be a kid of Aki's age, especially if you were bashful or very sensitive, will sympathize with him. He is a very "real" and dimensional child. Too many young children in manga are simplistic and precocious. It's like they were all cut out with the same cookie cutter. And I thought that Aki was going to be like that too at first. But soon I found that there was more to the little guy. Aki's guilt when he thinks he caused Heisuke's cold was almost heartbreaking. When dad asks him what he wants to be when he grows up, he promptly says "Heesuke."
The story's atmosphere is slice-of-life drama. I guess it would be a shoujo, but it wasn't really "girly." The art was fairly simple and clean. The general feel of the manga felt like something from Yuki Midorikawa (author of "Natsume's Book of Friends"). There was something very real and refreshing about it. There is also practically no romance. The friendship between Heisuke and Aki is the heart of the story, and there's not much else. There are few characters outside of Heisuke and Aki's families, and Heisuke's close friends from school.
Aki is the cutest child I have seen in manga. It's probably because he doesn't have the oversized round "bug eyes" that most children have in shoujo manga. He by far beats out little Teppei from "Faster than a Kiss." He is wonderfully expressive. Even from his back, you can tell what he's thinking. His stares, glances, bashful blushes; everything about him is done very well. Every time he smiles, I say "Eek!" to myself, he is just so cute.
I'll say that I dislike about half the high-school-life shoujo mangas out there. Their overused school stories, unrealistic characters, and sappy romance. The over-rounded art, and super-stylized "girliness." That's just not my cup of tea. "Flat" filled that niche I needed: a sensitive drama about a high schooler. One that examines a little-covered type of friendship. Simple, somewhat realistic art. Real-life emotions and feelings, especially of a young child. There's nothing extreme about it, but sometimes the most powerful and influential things in life are the simple things.
[[ *I actually don't know if the manga says how old Aki is, but he seems about 4 or 5. ]]
