Reviews

Story and Characters 10: Otouto no Otto is the perfect homophoic introspection story, there is no annoying sense of being overdramatic, it handles all of its subject matters carefully and it does it in a very concise manner. Firstly, this story's situation setting is goddamn a work of genius, it allows for a perfectly melancholic tone which the author makes sure to never drive too far from. It never becomes overly dramatic, overly happy, nothing because the whole manga is about acceptance and regret. The main MC that is the dad goes through honestly one of the most smooth, well paced character arcs of all time, being slow to realize his shortcomings of how he thinks of other people. He is constantly reflecting throughout the book about all the situations past and future that he might have to deal with when it comes to gays and I think that's fantastic.

Art 8: The art in this manga is good, if not maybe off putting to some people. Tagame, Gengorou’s style of drawing men is… something and by that I mean that he draws them buff as hell. We are talking like SS3 goku styles of buff but after reading through a few chapters it gets endearing to see these huge dudes going through lots of complicated emotions. The background arts of Japan are all very pleasant and all the food they draw look delicious as always. I will say that there are a few too many scenes of the father and the canadian being naked and having a full body portrait of these huge buff guys was probably a little unnecessary but what can you do and it doesn’t distract too much from the story.

Enjoyment and Overall 9: Overall I really enjoyed this manga, after reading the trashfire ending that was Ao no Flag’s story this was a nice needed refreshment of the subject matter. It handles the topic of Japan's tendency towards negative stereotyping very well and makes sure to always treat it very delicately. It's not annoyingly dramatized and all the problems that pop up in the manga come very naturally, and still there are even twists in the manga which come as a nice surprise. I highly recommend this to anybody who is looking for a good yaoi read, its short, sweet and beautifully melancholic. It has a great bittersweet ending and more than deserves its praise so give it a read if you haven’t.