Mimi's manga / #LGBTQA+ parents(18)

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 lgbtqa+ 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!

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.

Honestly, the main story was pretty cute as a whole. But the way the relationship started was kind of weird, the part in the bathroom was basically harassment... So that was a sour spot in otherwise a 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 tried to drag out it's 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 to make me care about either of them.

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.

Update: So I completely forgot that I read this and now I'm planning on reading the official English version. The 2nd story I might still feel the same way, but let's see if the official translation makes this a better read for me. The first story is really cute, honestly. Kinda reminded me of Our Dining Table a bit in a way. I actually really liked the small little rivalry Mori had with Takamura. Personally, I wish the story expanded on them as a family more, but since there's another story here, it feels a little short. As for the second story, I don't know. It gives me second-hand awkwardness and I'm not too keen on Kuma's character. I'm also not liking how close he got the college student, close enough to go all the way with him, since he's a highschooler who's around 17-16... No. Last story, it was alright. I feel like the 1st and 3rd one had interesting stories but not interesting characters to back it up enough for me to care. Maybe if the 2nd one wasn't here one of these stories would've gotten more character development but they both just seem a little too short for me to feel anything for these characters.