Watashi no Shounen

Thirty-year-old Satoko Tawada lives a rather monotonous life: she is single, her office job is dull, her boss is her ex-boyfriend who constantly bothers her, and she has nothing to look forward to in her off-hours. Fed up with another lousy day at work, Satoko stops by a park at night to have a drink and unwind when a stray soccer ball lands by her feet.

Chasing after the ball is a 12-year-old boy named Mashuu Hayami, whom Satoko scolds for being out so late. But soon enough, she learns that evenings are the only time Mashuu is allowed to practice and refine his soccer skills. Due to her past tenure on her university's futsal team and a general concern for his safety at night, Satoko begins to teach Mashuu the basics of soccer.

However, the more time Satoko spends with Mashuu, the more she finds herself becoming a maternal figure for the neglected boy. Mashuu himself begins to find solace in their outings, but not everyone may be able to support or understand their odd relationship.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Watashi no Shounen was nominated for the 10th Manga Taisho Award in 2017. In the same year, the manga ranked sixth on the Nationwide Bookstore Employees' Recommended Comics of 2017 list, third in the Best Printed Manga category at the third Tsugi ni Kuru Manga Awards, and second in the Kono Manga ga Sugoi! for the Male Readers division.

The series was published in English as My Boy by Vertical Inc. from April 10, 2018, to May 10, 2022.

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Characters

Tawada, Satoko

Main

Hayami, Mashuu

Main

Tawada, Mayu

Supporting

Ogata, Nao

Supporting

Shiikawa, Fumitaka

Supporting

Reviews

Aug 2, 2023

H_Erifu

Recommended

Not a couple, not friends, not mother and son, not siblings… We have Satoko, a 30 year-old office lady who suffers from loneliness and doesn’t feel satisfied with her life in any way. On the other hand we have Mashuu, a 12 year-old boy who feels ostracized in school and determined to practice and improve his soccer skills which is the only thing to hold onto in his life.

What makes this manga so unique is the way balances are created and maintained in the relationship between the main characters throughout the story. How many manga do you think exist out there that either doesn’t define ...

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Sep 21, 2022

Nutella-oreos

Recommended

This story was (surprisingly) very heartwarming and wholesome. It breaks down the typical age gap relationship manga and shows the reader how a relationship like this can be parasocial. Unlike most oneshota manga, it tells a more realistic and well developed story with fantastic characters that are constantly changing.

Highly recommend reading it, not for shota enjoyers but for anyone that wants a story about real characters that become better people and break out of the past pains in their life/childhood. I was shocked with how realistic the characters acted and how their troubles were portrayed I initially started reading the manga because I ...

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May 27, 2024

acloudwithfeet

Not Recommended

Spoiler

This is my completely honest and subjective feelings on the matter: the type of love that this manga is trying to describe, one that ignores all boundaries, deeper than platonic friendship, less than romantic, but not familial nor based on some kind of mentorship, is not possible to have between the two characters in their specific type of relationship. Perhaps if you met someone as a kid and then met them again when you were say, 60 and they were 24. That *pure love* is then possible because A: you haven't seen this kid grow up for a majority of their life, B: that person's ... initial impression of you isn't in the form of a guardian/mentor figure, and C: that younger person is a fully mature adult and should be capable of making mature decisions. Of course, relationships change throughout the years, a famous example being Hellen Keller and her friend Anne Sullivan, who continued to be Keller's companion long after she became an adult. But there are two key differences between these relationships. First, Sullivan immediately established herself as Keller's teacher, cementing the dynamic of the relationship between them and allowing for its natural evolution. Second, that deeper kind of love fomented itself when Keller was an adult, and this manga ends with the male character Mashuu still in high school.

In Watashi no Shonen, the mentor relationship is not confirmed, which not only seems incredibly unrealistic to me but there is absolutely no reason for the main character Satoko to feel this way. In one of the last chapters she describes how she is "scared of love" which is why she doesn't want to establish boundaries around her relationship by categorizing it and instead leaves it vague, but then I remembered she was feeling this apprehension for most of the story towards a 14 to 16 YEAR OLD BOY. This entire relationship started because he had no supportive parental figure! Almost every interaction she had with him where he made her happy was when she was mentoring and caring for him! It was not vague what she was feeling! The relationship dynamics were clearly established! Even when she feels happy when Mashuu was showing concern for her can be explained by this dynamic, because guardians/mentors (doesn't have to be a parent) feel happy when children show empathy and concern for them!

The only reason this vagueness has to happen is so there can be a possibility of Staoko being in love with Mashuu romantically, which obviously is a big controversial move. As long as the possibility is only teased, the whole time the reader can be going "oooooo is she trying to become his mother? oooooo is this a *forbidden love?!* (adult grooming a child)." It's a good way of keeping your reader engaged, after all, how would the conflict arise if things could be cleaned up so easily? The story ends by the characters saying "Where we are is currently fine, but who knows what happen in the future? *wink wink*" This is so the author can please all of her fans: the age gap romance fans will say "They totally got together!" people not into age gap will say "Things totally stayed platonic." I can only see this as a coward's move, appeasing everybody while ultimately trying to say something about love that just doesn't fit the story.

I don't know what kind of life the author has had, but they try to ignore a very basic fact, which is that adults are adults, and children are children. I'm not a trad guy or a believer in some strict hierarchy of who you should associate with, but you can not have that kind of equal relationship with a child as a person over 30 years old. They are not mature enough, they have not lived enough, and adults acting immature and childish sometimes does not equalize this fact no matter how you try to look at it, because when an adult acts childish it is despite all that they have learned, not because they haven't gotten to learn it yet.

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Poll: Do you prefer Satoko and Mashuu to end up together romantically? foxhunt99 - May 4, 2022	1 replies	by Desireless »» Oct 31, 2023 8:23 PM
Poll: Watashi no Shounen Chapter 43 Discussion LastLuminescence - Nov 21, 2020	19 replies	by Desireless »» Oct 31, 2023 8:17 PM
What do people think of this JSeanaY - Oct 22, 2022	0 replies	by JSeanaY »» Oct 22, 2022 4:46 PM
I believe Satoko and Mashuu did end up together romantically foxhunt99 - May 4, 2022	0 replies	by foxhunt99 »» May 4, 2022 1:37 PM
Poll: Watashi no Shounen Chapter 15 Discussion Stark700 - May 18, 2018	4 replies	by izlah »» Apr 14, 2022 10:41 PM

Watashi no Shounen
My Boy
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