Aug 22, 2023
tl;dr: A lighthearted manga about family that is pretty muddled at times but has two really strong core character arcs.
The basic premise of this manga is somewhat convoluted. The protagonist, Waihei, has a picture book author for a father that’s constantly going on journeys for inspiration. As such, when he was a kid his father was never around. This resulted in his mother getting a divorce, but rather than take Waihei with her, she leaves him behind to fend for himself in a rickety old home. Eventually, at 28 he lives alone in a brand new home and he’s perfectly content with his life style.
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However, this life is changed tremendously when a 16 year old girl named Hotaka and her 7 year old twin sisters arrive at his doorstep.
It turns out that unbeknownst to Waihei, at some point his father had had them with another woman and thus they were his half sisters. However, his father had split up with their mother as well, and while the three girls mother had originally taken them with her, she was now planning on getting remarried to a man who didn’t like kids and thus she essentially abandoned them and pushed them on to their father. But as previously mentioned, their father is never around, and thus they end up with Waihei. He’s incredibly reluctant to take them in at first, but seeing as they genuinely have no where else to go, he gives in.
The manga is primarily centered around two character arcs. The first is of course Waihei’s. Due to the lack of a family growing up, he grows up to be someone who has zero attachment to the concept of family and no real sense of sentimentality either. However, once he decides that he and his sisters are going to be a genuine family, he tackles that head on and with enthusiasm. But as he has no experience, he has to slowly work through the basics of what being in a family entails. This is pretty well written and comes with a lot of amusing and heartwarming moments. There’s some light drama at times, but nothing too extreme.
The other character arc is Hotoka’s. As should be clear, her mother was awful, so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that even before she abandoned them she wasn’t very motherly. The scenario of parental abandonment is similar to Waihei, but what makes Hotaka different is the presence of her little sisters and thus she didn’t just have to take care of herself but of her sisters as well. Due to this, instead of losing the concept of family, she becomes incredibly attached to the family she does have at the expense of being incredibly guarded with everything outside of that. Her character arc involves opening up more, first to Waihei and accepting him as a part of the family that’s so important to her and getting over the mother that abandoned her. But then just as importantly is her coming to be able to form relationships other than familial, such as in establishing friends. This too is well written, and though I didn’t feel the heartwarming moments were as strong as those related to Waihei, there were more dramatic and serious moments and they were better written.
This isn’t a very plot oriented manga, so the plot essentially stops moving pretty early on and it just begins focused on the characters living their daily lives. Still, I did feel like there were various elements that were brought up but then not used all that well. Waihei is essentially a renovation agent, in that he doesn’t physically work on renovations, but rather works with clients to set up how renovations should be made and such. Starting out, this is used pretty often to show him interacting with other houses and families and show his mental state and opinions regarding family and such and how he’s changing. However, this quickly stops mattering much and for all intents and purposes he’s just a generic salaryman.
There are also a bunch of minor plot tangents, such as a romantic subplot for Waihei, that never really go anywhere, and thus in the end they felt kind of pointless and like they were just dragging things on without any sort of payoff. Also, how the writing deals with their father is kind of bizarre in that he’s portrayed in a much better light than he really should be. It felt like it was glossing over too much when it came to him. The art is generally just okay both in terms of style and quality, though it can look pretty great in the chapter title pages.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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