うちの息子はたぶんゲイ

UCHI NO MUSUKO WA TABUN GAY

Slice of Life

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
5
RELEASE
December 19, 2022
CHAPTERS
104

DESCRIPTION

Despite belonging to a family of four, the Aoyama residence is typically home to three due to father Akiyoshi's job. While he's away at work, mom Tomoko and her two beloved sons Hiroki and Yuri go about their everyday lives--going to school, making dinner, doing homework, etc. But now that Hiroki's in his first year of high school, his thoughts are turning ever so slightly to sex and romance...and his mom can't help but notice his slips of the tongue when he's talking about who he likes. Supportive Tomoko has an inkling Hiroki might be gay, but she's going to let him figure it out for himself. Unfortunately, Hiroki has little talent for keeping his "secret," so he might die of embarassment before all is said and done!

(Source: Square Enix)

Note: Originally published on Twitter and collated by Square Enix for print release.

CAST

Tomoko Aoyama
Hiroki Aoyama
Yuuri Aoyama
Touno
Akiyoshi Aoyama
Daigo Shirashi
Asumi Ogawa
Higuchi

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

HidamariSeashore
83/100
The kind of manga that can make straight people more open-minded about the LGBTQ+ community.
From my understanding, good parents just want their kids to be happy. I may not be a parent myself as of the time of writing this review, but I do see this in my mother, who supported me and my younger brothers in whatever we wanted to accomplish as we grew up. Although she could be a little probing about it, she has also been at least somewhat supportive of our love lives, whoever we happened to like at that time. I do wonder sometimes about one thing, though; neither my brothers nor I have ever been attracted to anyone who's the same sex as us, but if any of us were, would our mother love us the same, in the same way the protagonist in the manga I'm reviewing today loves her own son? No matter what the answer to that question may be, she definitely raised me to be the kind of person happily willing to read a manga about a boy who might be gay.

Ladies, gents, and nons, here is my review of Okura's "I Think Our Son Is Gay", known in Japanese as "Uchi no Musuko wa Tabun Gay" (literally "Our Son is Probably Gay").

I Think Our Son Is Gay is mainly told from the perspective of Tomoko Aoyama, a married mother of two. Her younger son, Yuuri, is a bit of a cool kid who isn't interested in romance, and her older son, Hiroki, wears his heart on his sleeve and is very bad at hiding things. Case in point, one night, he lets it slip that he'd like a boyfriend who could cook, only to frantically backtrack and say he wants a girlfriend instead. This, along with several hints from before and after this particular moment, leads Tomoko to believe that Hiroki might be gay, but she would prefer to wait until he's ready to come out to talk to him about it. In the meanwhile, Tomoko watches over Hiroki as he goes through high school, and in the process, her worldview expands a little more each day.

At the time of this manga's creation, Japan still wasn't too open about same-sex relationships - with same-sex marriages still not being legal in Japan - and that is reflected here. While there are no LGBTQ+ characters being shown physically harassed, there are heterosexual characters who make not-always-accurate assumptions about the community; while people making such assumptions actually happening in real life makes this manga realistic, and while it's made clear that they're not necessarily true, those kinds of moments might not be a fun read for some. With that being said, though, while there isn't a whole lot of LGBTQ+ representation outside of homosexuality (and a little bit of asexuality), the representation that is there is solid. No gay character is shown to be overly campy or stereotypical, and although being gay is an important part of their identity, that's not all there is to them.

To start off talking about this manga's characters, I'd like to talk about the most obvious example of what I just mentioned, Hiroki. Although he's not the manga's viewpoint character, we do get to know about as much about him as we probably would if he was. Although he joins a school club later in the story for the sake of spending time with his crush, he gives club activities his all nonetheless. He also displays feelings of inadequacy and low self-confidence at times, which is painfully relatable. Above all, he's a good kid who cares a lot about his family and friends. He is canonically gay, but instead of a caricature, he's a fully-fleshed character whose mangaka wrote him well.

One could also say that Hiroki's mama raised him well in-universe, and with how good of a person Tomoko is, that'd be easy to believe. She just wants to support her boys and let them live happy lives, and while she does have her own feelings of inadequacy about her parenting abilities at one point, anyone could see how good of a job she's doing with both Hiroki and Yuuri. Speaking of Yuuri, while he isn't the type to show his emotions often, he goes through his own struggles, and chapters focusing on him tend to be interesting. Plus, it's revealed that he also knows of his older brother's sexual orientation, and the little ways he shows support for him are quite sweet. Rounding out the Aoyama family is Akiyoshi, Tomoko's husband and Hiroki and Yuuri's father. While he's not a bad father by any means, he is a little behind on his sons' lives due to his job taking him away from home for lengthy periods of time, and early on in the manga, he expresses some close-minded views toward the LGBTQ+ community, unintentionally hurting Hiroki with his comments. Fortunately, especially with Tomoko's help, he is able to gain a more open mind by the end and also build a good relationship with his son, which is nice.

The members of Aoyama family aren't the only characters in the manga, however. We also get to know about some of the people in each of their lives, such as Daigo (Hiroki's crush), Asumi (Hiroki's childhood friend who has a crush on him), and some of Tomoko's mom friends. One particular character who stands out to me is Touno, Tomoko's co-worker at a bento shop who happens to be gay and living with his partner. Through Touno, Tomoko is able to learn about the experiences of a gay guy who's not her son, which further expands her worldview. I may have lamented the lack of LGBTQ+ representation outside of homosexuality, but it's still nice to have him and a few background characters mentioned throughout the manga around so that it doesn't seem like Hiroki's not the only gay person in its universe!

I spent too much time talking about the characters, so let's move onto the artwork. There isn't really much I can really say about it, though. It's cute, it's simple, and it's a good fit for a slice-of-life story like this one. The character designs are also solid, without a single outlandish design in sight. Yeah, I think that sums up how I feel about the artwork.

Do you know what I think? I Think Our Son Is Gay is a pretty good manga. Those who are in the LGBTQ+ community may enjoy its solid representation (and even relate to Hiroki's awkwardness), and those who aren't may come out of it with a more open mind; either way, it's worth the read. Hopefully, if/when I get married and have kids of my own, I'll be able to follow Tomoko's example, no matter what sexual orientation or gender identity they turn out to have.
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Magenta
68/100
Very enjoyable, very concise, very simple, and very resonant. Even with one major flaw. (Pride Month 2024 Review #1)
This review is spoiler-free.
_This review is also part of a series of reviews where I review an LGBTQ+ manga/anime once a day._ _This is Review 1, released on June 1st, 2024._

I Think Our Son Is Gay is quite simple by nature. Well, mostly it is. Its primary goal is to provide lessons for everybody regarding how to accept gay people into your life. Although the framing of many of these lessons is through the parentage of a gay son, most of these lessons are versatile enough to apply to queer people of any denomination.

In its early volumes, there isn’t much of a greater story aside from the self-contained vignettes of chapters that are never over 10 pages, but that’s fine. The manga never pretends to be anything more than this at these early stages. It can read as boring to those uninitiated, but it quickly primes its readers for this type of content in the very early chapters. This leads the first three volumes to be very consistent in terms of quality. Its formula does lead it to become stagnant in quality at times, but that is completely expected for this type of manga. These flaws are irrelevant to those who have already had their expectations calibrated by Chapter 1.

The final two volumes start to shake up this formula by introducing greater story arcs into the plot. While the first three volumes had mildly overarching story threads behind many of their lessons, Volumes 4 and 5 start using multiple chapters of space to convey these lessons. Even if it is a betrayal of the initial formula set up earlier on, it justifies itself due to the story delving into more sophisticated lessons that require more than a chapter to explain. On its face and on a first read-through of the narrative, it seems like a completely positive change. The story starts to tap into more enriching emotions by taking more time to commit to its lessons and gives itself more staying power in the minds of its readers.

However, the manga dipping into more complex queer themes ends up making retrospective looks at the series more frustrating than they have to be. On the story spectrum of simplicity and complexity, if a story starts to creep from the simple side to the complex side, it inadvertently promises even more complexity in the future. In its first chapter, I Think Our Son Is Gay starts near the very end of the simple side. By Volume 4, it starts to noticeably budge towards the complexity, which is a trend continued by Volume 5. But Volume 5 is the final volume. Whatever trajectory towards sophistication that was started cannot possibly be finished. It is a story that starts to build itself more and more in its messaging, but it can’t let itself reach a climax without rushing it. This leads to a somewhat disappointing conclusion.

When the manga was ending, it didn’t feel like it was truly over. My first thought when reading the final chapter was, “It can’t be over just like that, right?” Even when looking at the very final Thank You note from the mangaka, I still did not believe that it was over. The narrative started to promise more, and more, and more, but that promise wasn’t fulfilled. There is so much more that could have possibly been done, but the final lasting feeling is denial and disappointment. And that sucks for a story that was increasingly revealing its greater potential.

But that is more of a pessimistic way of viewing the ending. While I can’t deny any disappointing feelings I have about it, it can’t paper over the enjoyability of the rest of the story.

I Think Our Son Is Gay in its simplest form to its progressively more sophisticated ones, is always consistent in its quality. The earlier parts of the story's ability to temper expectations leads to the best possible quality from bite-sized chapters like it, with its lessons being concise, yet persistent. And as much as I can go on about the “broken promises” of the ending, the parts of Volumes 4 and 5 that did end up delivering on that promise were great. Maybe they were even the best parts of the whole manga. While yes, this quality does aid in the lingering disappointment of the ending, that isn’t to say what has been done wasn’t good already.

This is very consistently enjoyable to read through if you don’t mind shorter episodic chapters. And that enjoyability never goes away aside from the lingering emptiness of the ending. This is something very easy to recommend to everybody and probably should be recommended to people with narrower life viewpoints.

Thank you for reading to the end of the review if you did. If you have any criticisms of how this review was made, you are free to message me to critique what I had to say.

Also, please don’t like or dislike the review without reading it.
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