Watashi no Shounen
My Boy

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

Boi did this one hit close to home.
Ok so I'll start this review by saying that it will include what I consider minor spoilers but may be considered relatively important by others. It's kinda hard to tell more without spoiling you know. Anyways before spoiling anything, let's just say that : it's a cute story about two people having truckloads of affection for each other but everybody else is kinda frowning when looking in their direction. Go read it.

Now onto the real review.
You know, this type of story with an adult and a child getting together by chance and forming a sort of parent-child relationship ... between two somewhat broken people is a type of story that I really like. What I like is the fact that this is about pure love and care. Not romantic love or anything, just love. Two sentient beings manifesting high levels of empathy for no other reason than "my heart fills up with butterflies when I see their smile".
But even though I love these stories, I never can shake the feeling that the author may take the relationship into the nono-zone of the romantic relationship between a thirty+ years old adult and a goddamn kid. I mean, drawings don't have feelings, I don't care, but I personally don't like it.
Watashi no Shounen had me scared at first, but it's not that. Quite the opposite. It plays right in this apprehension, even. I was expecting a parent to child relationship developing over time and how they would support each other through the hardships of society, and I got a story about two aromantic people struggling to come to terms with their feelings and society's expectations while deeply caring for each other.
And this was great. This was awesome. I loved every single page of it.
Oh and of course it's backed up by a wonderful artstyle, I just can't begin to describe how beautiful it looks. It's just... warm. Go read it.

Not a couple, not friends, not mother and son, not siblings… We have Satoko, a 30 year-old office lady who suffers from loneliness and doesn’t feel satisfied with her life in any way. On the other hand we have Mashuu, a 12 year-old boy who feels ostracized in school and determined to practice and improve his soccer skills which is the only thing to hold onto in his life.

What makes this manga so unique is the way balances are created and maintained in the relationship between the main characters throughout the story. How many manga do you think exist out there that either doesn’t define ... or couldn’t define the relation between two people? It just sounds impossible, but it's in fact happens in this manga. When they become gradually involved with each other, I bet you’ll find yourself immersed in this odd and warm relationship, and feel like supporting their future. Even if the ending might kind of leave you disappointed since it doesn’t have a proper conclusion, the mangaka’s success about keeping the balances in the relationships must be greatly appreciated.

Individual thoughts, feelings, behaviors and so many details about human psychology are expressed astonishingly beautiful on just two-dimensional papers, and that’s the reason I’ve decided to write this review actually. Many psychological elements are amazingly presented in this manga, like portrayal of mental pain of past traumas and confrontation with them, development of high empathy, true forgiveness towards yourself and others, etc.

If you seek psychological depth in the manga you read, then you should really give it a try.

This is my completely honest and subjective feelings on the matter: the type of love that this manga is trying to describe, one that ignores all boundaries, deeper than platonic friendship, less than romantic, but not familial nor based on some kind of mentorship, is not possible to have between the two characters in their specific type of relationship. Perhaps if you met someone as a kid and then met them again when you were say, 60 and they were 24. That *pure love* is then possible because A: you haven't seen this kid grow up for a majority of their life, B: that person's ... initial impression of you isn't in the form of a guardian/mentor figure, and C: that younger person is a fully mature adult and should be capable of making mature decisions. Of course, relationships change throughout the years, a famous example being Hellen Keller and her friend Anne Sullivan, who continued to be Keller's companion long after she became an adult. But there are two key differences between these relationships. First, Sullivan immediately established herself as Keller's teacher, cementing the dynamic of the relationship between them and allowing for its natural evolution. Second, that deeper kind of love fomented itself when Keller was an adult, and this manga ends with the male character Mashuu still in high school.

In Watashi no Shonen, the mentor relationship is not confirmed, which not only seems incredibly unrealistic to me but there is absolutely no reason for the main character Satoko to feel this way. In one of the last chapters she describes how she is "scared of love" which is why she doesn't want to establish boundaries around her relationship by categorizing it and instead leaves it vague, but then I remembered she was feeling this apprehension for most of the story towards a 14 to 16 YEAR OLD BOY. This entire relationship started because he had no supportive parental figure! Almost every interaction she had with him where he made her happy was when she was mentoring and caring for him! It was not vague what she was feeling! The relationship dynamics were clearly established! Even when she feels happy when Mashuu was showing concern for her can be explained by this dynamic, because guardians/mentors (doesn't have to be a parent) feel happy when children show empathy and concern for them!

The only reason this vagueness has to happen is so there can be a possibility of Staoko being in love with Mashuu romantically, which obviously is a big controversial move. As long as the possibility is only teased, the whole time the reader can be going "oooooo is she trying to become his mother? oooooo is this a *forbidden love?!* (adult grooming a child)." It's a good way of keeping your reader engaged, after all, how would the conflict arise if things could be cleaned up so easily? The story ends by the characters saying "Where we are is currently fine, but who knows what happen in the future? *wink wink*" This is so the author can please all of her fans: the age gap romance fans will say "They totally got together!" people not into age gap will say "Things totally stayed platonic." I can only see this as a coward's move, appeasing everybody while ultimately trying to say something about love that just doesn't fit the story.

I don't know what kind of life the author has had, but they try to ignore a very basic fact, which is that adults are adults, and children are children. I'm not a trad guy or a believer in some strict hierarchy of who you should associate with, but you can not have that kind of equal relationship with a child as a person over 30 years old. They are not mature enough, they have not lived enough, and adults acting immature and childish sometimes does not equalize this fact no matter how you try to look at it, because when an adult acts childish it is despite all that they have learned, not because they haven't gotten to learn it yet.