Nov 30, 2022
At the core of Wandering Son lies a deep tragedy - Shuuichi Nitori wants to be a girl, and Yoshino Tatatsuki wants to be a boy, but the older they get, the farther their bodies drift from how they wish to present themselves. The march of time becomes a source of intense suffering for our protagonists, an omnipresent thread of depression constantly following the two as they slowly but surely transition from childhood to adulthood.
If the story was able to hold a focus on that, it could have easily been a 9/10 or even a 10/10. Unfortunately, it rapidly becomes bogged down by the introduction
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of over a dozen side characters, most of which have their own subplots that are often tangentially connected to the main characters at best. The initial love triangle soon morphs into more of a love dodecahedron, and the pacing of the story slows to a crawl as it seems to devote fewer and fewer pages to its initial concept.
Yoshino's story is hit particularly hard by this. Despite being presumably the deuteragonist of the manga, the character's struggles end up buried amongst all the side stories, and the related chapters begin to feel more like a distant and fragmented part of Shuu's life than a full examination of Yoshino's. It's a real shame, because the most touching moments in the story involve the duo playing off each other, the shared aspects of their sorrow throwing a spotlight on the differing ways that it has affected their lives.
In some ways, this missed opportunity is more saddening than what the story shows us of the main plot's central conflict. The beginning of the story shows a lot of promise, very quickly establishing the pain Shuuichi and Yoshino are experiencing in a way that even someone who has not struggled with their gender identity can empathize with. Watching Shuuichi stare longingly at a pretty dress hanging just out of reach, or seeing Yoshino react with elation after being hit on by a woman in public are where the manga really is at its best, but scenes like those grow farther and farther apart as each new character is introduced to the plot. The art, while mostly serviceable, begins to struggle to differentiate many of these characters, and as the story progresses it sometimes becomes a challenge to remember whether a character in the panel is a newly introduced background character or an established one who just happened to be the focus of an earlier subplot that wasn't particularly memorable.
In the end, Wandering Son ends up as a story that is much better in concept than execution. It brings a forward both a unique and interesting perspective on the experience of growing up, but struggles to express that perspective in a clear and concise way. I did enjoy many of the lighthearted slice-of-life moments, and appreciated the attempt to create a balanced perspective on the ups and downs of getting older rather than being a non-stop barrage of pain. Still, I feel like the story would have benefited immensely from keeping a tighter focus on the two main characters, and slimming down the cast to a relatively small amount of supporting characters for the pair to play off of.
It's really hard to say if I would recommend the manga. At its best, it is an intensely touching story about characters who do their best to seek happiness despite that search often requiring them to struggle against forces completely out of their control. At its worst, it is a confused attempt to tell many stories at once without giving any of them the necessary attention required to do so effectively. If the concept interests you, go ahead and read it - it's not like there are many other options for this type of story in the manga sphere (at least with regards to the ones that have been translated into English). However, if you do decide to give it a read, don't build up your expectations to be too high. Just understand the experience that you're in for, and try not to let the bloat of the story take away from the good moments, because they are really something special.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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