Let’s review the premise. Tasuku, a victim of homophobic bullying by his high school classmates, comes across a homely little building called the “drop-in center.” The drop-in center is a safe space where anyone looking for belonging can come to do homework, drink coffee, or, most significantly, help renovate abandoned houses. The first person Tasuku encounters is the enigmatic owner of the drop-in center, a woman who is called “Someone-san”. She offers an ear to Tasuku’s problems, though she “won’t listen”. As Tasuku meets the other regulars of the drop-in center, he comes not only to accept his own sexuality, but to figure out his place and role in community, and to discover his form of happiness.
Despite Our Dreams at Dusk being serialized, each of the four manga volumes which make up the series focuses on different regulars of the drop-in center. As Tasuku gets to know their unique lives and struggles, he is compelled to help them, or at least try. Volume One follows Tasuku himself as he slowly learns to accept his sexuality, learning from the stories and perspective of Haruko, who is a lesbian. In Volume Two, we meet Misora, a rude middle school boy who likes crossdressing, but is not sure what that means about his identity. In Volume Three, we have two encounters: Natsuyoshi, a man whose transness is carelessly othered by his old high school classmate, and Tsubaki, Tasuku’s crush, whose behavior around Tasuku has become baffling, and not in a reassuring way. Volume Four fleshes out the stories of Tchaiko, an old man whose male partner is in the hospital for lung cancer, and Someone-san herself, whose distant otherworldliness may hide a small shard of humanity.
Thankfully, this formulaic story structure is hardly felt. One reason that each character arc is usually tied to Tasuku’s character growth. Not only are we in a different mental state when each arc begins, each lesson Tasuku learns depends on what his mind is ready to receive. Since this process feels organic, everything around this process also feels organic. The other way structural regularity is obscured is in the story’s dynamism and variety. In one arc, Tasuku hardly helps the person he gets to know, instead feeling educated and inspired by what he experiences with that person. In another, Tasuku utterly fails at helping, and must somehow pick up the pieces. But, when he does succeed at helping someone, you really feel the weight of all that he’s learned. This is again thanks to the sense of continuity given by the story’s focus on Tasuku.
To reiterate, Tasuku’s growth from a scared, closeted first-year to a confident, proactive, and empathetic second-year is the core engine of Our Dreams at Dusk. There are, of course, more characters than just Tasuku. It is impressive that despite the wide swath of representation included, everyone’s story is well-sketched and compellingly told. To be more specific, the following three goals of Our Dreams at Dusk (as I see it), though they are not all embodied in every character, deeply permeate the general story:
1. You feel the emotional process of how these drop-in regulars come to terms with their identity.
2. You understand the differing philosophies of living each person has cultivated in response to the environment around them.
3. You observe that even within a queer community, there are inevitable and consequential differences in mindset and understanding.
All of this makes a story rich in and firmly situated in queer introspection and action. The fact that Tasuku is new to LGBTQ issues and is learning experientially as the story progresses makes Our Dreams at Dusk accessible and meaningful even to non-queer readers, but especially for queer readers.
That all said, there are some things that keep Our Dreams at Dusk from being perfect. I’ll only touch on the biggest issues. Though all the active characters are great, some of them are really asking for more page-time, for some further resolution. Of course, if you’ve read the story, you know that “not knowing everything about the characters” (i.e., “minding our own business”) is kind of the point. But even just an extra scene or two with some of the characters would have left me feeling more satisfied.
However, the biggest problem with the story, to me, was the relatively weak ending. Part of it was that when Tasuku finished the major portion of his character journey, the “core engine” is thus gone, and we are left with a more passive experience. I’d say the other characters are more reactive than active in this stretch too. Couple that with the unfulfilled character exploration I mentioned before, and I finished the manga thinking that the ending was “ok, I guess.” Not to say the ending wasn’t an enjoyable or affecting experience, but it’s after I’m done reading the ending that I feel just a little unsatisfied.
In conclusion, if you like character dramas at all, I recommend checking out Our Dreams at Dusk. It is a great primer to queer identity and issues, the characters are fantastic and vibrant, the story makes some interesting choices, and the life lessons are something that anyone could benefit from hearing. It doesn’t scratch enough of a personal itch for me to score it higher, but the quality of Our Dreams at Dusk cannot be denied.
