<b>Review of Wandering Son #6 by Sarah</b>
“Poor Shu. One day you’ll be all hairy and your voice will change.” Maho Nitori to her younger brother Shuichi.
Summer Vacation
It’s Summer Vacation for Shuichi ‘Nitorin’ Nitori, the boy who wishes he had been born a girl, and his school friends. But the cross-dressing version of Romeo and Juliet for the school’s cultural festival play is weighing heavily on Shuichi’s mind. He’s writing it with Saori Chiba, a strong-minded and independent (read<em> a bit of a loner</em>) classmate who has strong feelings for him – and who resents his friendship with Yoshino Takatsuki. She desperately wants to play Romeo to his Juliet, while Shuichi has always imagined Yoshino in that role. Nevertheless, Saori and Shuichi persevere with their version of the classic love story in which neither of the two main protagonists will die.
Forced by his parents to go along with his big sister and her boyfriend to the beach, Shuichi, feeling very much the gooseberry, wanders off on his own, lapsing into his own dream world, imagining what it would be like to be a girl – and causing problems for his sister when she thinks he’s gone missing.
Now he can’t help looking at the other men around him, asking his father how hairy he is, agonising over the changes that puberty will inevitably bring.
Underwear
Meanwhile, Yoshino, still wishing she could be a boy, discovers that it’s possible to disguise her breasts by binding them with a special undergarment; far more suitable, she thinks, than the bra she’s been forced to wear. But when she and Shuichi go shopping (Shuichi dressing as a girl) poor Yoshino is too shy to allow the shop assistant to measure her up for one. Shuichi is undergoing agonies of his own in the underwear area and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for both siblings that he has to share a room with his older sister Maho and see the clothes that she wears – and that he longs to wear too. “If she finds me...this time she’ll really kill me.” Eventually his urges are too strong and he tries them on – with the inevitable results when he is found out. Maho is not the most tolerant or easy-going of older sisters, but as the two are obliged to live so close together, it’s not so hard to relate to her point of view.
The Cultural Festival
Choosing the actors for the class school play by drawing lots may seem to the class teacher like a fair way to cast the roles – but it ends up with the two writers bitterly disappointed and an embarrassed Makoto playing Juliet. How will it all turn out?
So here’s the next welcome instalment in this accurately observed slice-of-life manga, brought to us in another handsome hardback edition from Fantagraphics with its excellent, colloquial translation by Matt Thorn. And it’s all good, except, pleasing as Shimura Takako’s drawings are, it can be difficult identifying the various protagonists. Romanized names don’t help, either (Chiba-san and Chii-chan, for example, both girls with long, dark hair). Takako also is more than a little random with her story-telling, frequently switching in mid-scene and chopping up the narrative order without adding the usual black framing to indicate a flashback, adding to some confusion (for me, at any rate) as to what’s happening when. But these are small quibbles as what she succeeds at doing so well is depicting the everyday agonies and pleasures of growing up, how little things can loom so large.
(The anime TV series version is still available to watch on Crunchyroll).
<b>Final score: 8 out of 10</b>
“Poor Shu. One day you’ll be all hairy and your voice will change.” Maho Nitori to her younger brother Shuichi.
Summer Vacation
It’s Summer Vacation for Shuichi ‘Nitorin’ Nitori, the boy who wishes he had been born a girl, and his school friends. But the cross-dressing version of Romeo and Juliet for the school’s cultural festival play is weighing heavily on Shuichi’s mind. He’s writing it with Saori Chiba, a strong-minded and independent (read<em> a bit of a loner</em>) classmate who has strong feelings for him – and who resents his friendship with Yoshino Takatsuki. She desperately wants to play Romeo to his Juliet, while Shuichi has always imagined Yoshino in that role. Nevertheless, Saori and Shuichi persevere with their version of the classic love story in which neither of the two main protagonists will die.
Forced by his parents to go along with his big sister and her boyfriend to the beach, Shuichi, feeling very much the gooseberry, wanders off on his own, lapsing into his own dream world, imagining what it would be like to be a girl – and causing problems for his sister when she thinks he’s gone missing.
Now he can’t help looking at the other men around him, asking his father how hairy he is, agonising over the changes that puberty will inevitably bring.
Underwear
Meanwhile, Yoshino, still wishing she could be a boy, discovers that it’s possible to disguise her breasts by binding them with a special undergarment; far more suitable, she thinks, than the bra she’s been forced to wear. But when she and Shuichi go shopping (Shuichi dressing as a girl) poor Yoshino is too shy to allow the shop assistant to measure her up for one. Shuichi is undergoing agonies of his own in the underwear area and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for both siblings that he has to share a room with his older sister Maho and see the clothes that she wears – and that he longs to wear too. “If she finds me...this time she’ll really kill me.” Eventually his urges are too strong and he tries them on – with the inevitable results when he is found out. Maho is not the most tolerant or easy-going of older sisters, but as the two are obliged to live so close together, it’s not so hard to relate to her point of view.
The Cultural Festival
Choosing the actors for the class school play by drawing lots may seem to the class teacher like a fair way to cast the roles – but it ends up with the two writers bitterly disappointed and an embarrassed Makoto playing Juliet. How will it all turn out?
So here’s the next welcome instalment in this accurately observed slice-of-life manga, brought to us in another handsome hardback edition from Fantagraphics with its excellent, colloquial translation by Matt Thorn. And it’s all good, except, pleasing as Shimura Takako’s drawings are, it can be difficult identifying the various protagonists. Romanized names don’t help, either (Chiba-san and Chii-chan, for example, both girls with long, dark hair). Takako also is more than a little random with her story-telling, frequently switching in mid-scene and chopping up the narrative order without adding the usual black framing to indicate a flashback, adding to some confusion (for me, at any rate) as to what’s happening when. But these are small quibbles as what she succeeds at doing so well is depicting the everyday agonies and pleasures of growing up, how little things can loom so large.
(The anime TV series version is still available to watch on Crunchyroll).
<b>Final score: 8 out of 10</b>