Otouto no Otto
My Brother's Husband

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When Mike travels to Japan he does so to meet his deceased husband's family. We see his brother-in-law and niece reac to his presece and learn and grow from it. Mostly we see Yaichi go from being your typical homophobe to someone who is as a new person by the end of the 4th volume.

In My Brother's Husband we meet a special little family of 4. We have Yaichi, single stay-at-home-dad, landlord. Kana, Yaichi's daughter. Natsuki, Kana's mother. And Mike, Yaichi's brother-in-law.

We see each character (maybe with the exception of Natsuki) grow and learn about themselves and each other, in particular we see ... Yaichi learn to accept Mike as his family and learn to see the wrongs done to LGB+ people in Japan.

While reading this you can easily understand that this was written by a gay man who as experienced a lot of difficult things in his home country. We meet different characters with different understandings of their own sexuality and who are at diffeent points in their acceptance of it.


My personal experinece of this was very nice. I found the characters very relatable, particularly Mike, although more related to his experiences of Japan than him being gay. As to his approach to life I wish I could be more like him.
Yaichi makes me want to believe there are good people out there who want to understand and support people like me and Mike.



Trigger warnings include daily life homophobia and death. If you still want to read this but avoid the heaviest points of either just send me a message and I'll take a look and tell you what to avoid as well and a short summary of what happened at these points so you don't miss anything.

Sweet, endearing, and a wonderful read that I fully recommend.

Lovely story overall.
The main character is an accurate representation of "i'm not homophobic but"s, initially being at least uncomfortable to have his brother's husband in his home and near his daughter. It's truly so heartwarming to see him gradually change his views as the manga goes on, and to become a kinder and more accepting person.
Of course, his little daughter is this way right off the bat! She simply had no reason to be wary of her exciting new uncle! Her behaviour is very eye-opening both to her father and to the reader.
And finally, the brother's ... husband himself. Incredibly sweet and friendly, he brings light in their home and is never treated by the story as a caricature or anything of the sort.

The story of the brothers separating is so realistic it's tear-jerking. It shows you can be homophobic without realizing, and you can hurt someone without meaning harm.
And, of course, seeing how the husbands lived before one passed away was so sad and so beautiful and so real. They had a happy wedding, spent time doing their favourite activities together, and they were a family true as it can be. It's nice to see gay couples being portrayed in the same positive and realistic light as straight couples are, instead of their relationship being vague or all about sex and/or drama.

I recommend it if you're looking for a wholesome queer story, without (much) angst or fetishization.

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.