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Unita Yumi - Bunny Drop, vol. 01-02 (Eng. trans.)
(original title: うさぎドロップ)
Daikichi's grandfather has just died, and at the funeral, his entire family discovers that the strange child in the garden is his grandfather's illegitimate daughter, and no one knows where her mother is. No one wants to take care of Rin (the child), so Daikichi steps up to the plate, despite many misgivings.
The first two volumes are about Daikichi adjusting to having a young child in his life, and I love the manga for how it looks at parenting. Daikichi finds that he has to make quite a few sacrifices, such as going with a lower-paying job with less chances of promotion so he can make it home on time to pick Rin up from day care. I also like him reflecting back on his mother and the difficult choices she had to make, as well as how his father never had to make those same choices. It's not necessarily a feminist work, but I think it takes a real look at the inequities in parenting and how society in Japan (and I think in the US too) is not set up to help single parents and is set up so that parenting is solely the mother's responsibility.
Rin is a cute six-year-old, but she also comes with her fair share of problems, which I didn't feel as though the mangaka trivialized. Daikichi gets frustrated with her, but you always get the sense that he cares for her, and my favorite part of the manga is watching the two of them bond and watching Rin slowly learn to depend on Daikichi for the support she never really got.
So far, the art is charming but a little rough around the edges; I especially felt as though the mangaka was still figuring out how to use screentones. Sometimes the stark black-and-white art works, but more often, it feels empty and unfinished to me.
Cute, and I will keep reading it. I wish there were more stories about single fathers out there. I also like how the series hasn't been demonizing single mothers, from Rin's missing mother to other mothers Daikichi meets along the way.
Daikichi's grandfather has just died, and at the funeral, his entire family discovers that the strange child in the garden is his grandfather's illegitimate daughter, and no one knows where her mother is. No one wants to take care of Rin (the child), so Daikichi steps up to the plate, despite many misgivings.
The first two volumes are about Daikichi adjusting to having a young child in his life, and I love the manga for how it looks at parenting. Daikichi finds that he has to make quite a few sacrifices, such as going with a lower-paying job with less chances of promotion so he can make it home on time to pick Rin up from day care. I also like him reflecting back on his mother and the difficult choices she had to make, as well as how his father never had to make those same choices. It's not necessarily a feminist work, but I think it takes a real look at the inequities in parenting and how society in Japan (and I think in the US too) is not set up to help single parents and is set up so that parenting is solely the mother's responsibility.
Rin is a cute six-year-old, but she also comes with her fair share of problems, which I didn't feel as though the mangaka trivialized. Daikichi gets frustrated with her, but you always get the sense that he cares for her, and my favorite part of the manga is watching the two of them bond and watching Rin slowly learn to depend on Daikichi for the support she never really got.
So far, the art is charming but a little rough around the edges; I especially felt as though the mangaka was still figuring out how to use screentones. Sometimes the stark black-and-white art works, but more often, it feels empty and unfinished to me.
Cute, and I will keep reading it. I wish there were more stories about single fathers out there. I also like how the series hasn't been demonizing single mothers, from Rin's missing mother to other mothers Daikichi meets along the way.
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I like it a lot, and while sometimes I'm startled by a decision to not include a background, I find generally the presence or absence serves the mode at the moment. As a whole, I think of it as Yotsuba&! flipped to focus on the parenting than the experience of childhood.
Rin is 'dorable.
---L.
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---L.
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I also meant to say that this and Yotsuba makes the genre distinctions so arbitrary, since I'd classify Bunny Drop as much closer to Yotsuba than, say, Suppli.
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The audience is likely to make stories with similar premises have very different focuses: compare Yotsuba&! (shounen), Gakuen Babysitter (shoujo), My Girl (seinen), Bunny Drop (josei). (Okay, My Girl is weak on the comedy so not the best comparison, but I'm blanking on a seinen actively comedy example of single young man thrust into childcare.)
---L.
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---L.
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a seinen actively comedy example of single young man thrust into childcare
This is very hard to weed out because these are exact genre overlaps with lolicon, which is a genre of AGH AGH AGH when you hit it by accident. The faint vibe of it skeeved me right off the otherwise charming Blood Alone.
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Lolicon is indeed a shoal of jagged rocks lurking in those waters. I'd forgotten about Blood Alone -- I didn't bounce (largely because a) the guy is clearly Not Interested and b) I was able to squint enough to read the old child vampire's acts as symbols of her desire to Grow Up in a way she never can) but it's not exactly my favorite. Many of the others are indeed even more skeevy, leaving one to either age down to Yotsuba or slant drama as Bunny Drop or My Girl.
---L.
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---L.