Baby & Me 1
Posted: December 13, 2009 Filed under: Baby & Me 1 Comment »Marimo Ragawa – Viz – 2006 – 18 volumes
I liked the random volume I read of this so much I decided to start from the beginning. It was one of the original Shoujo Beat series, but I have absolutely no recollection of reading it in the issues I have. Had I not sampled the series beforehand, I would have never picked it up. As my roommate pointed out, it lacks romance, a key ingredient in shoujo manga, and quite frankly, a plot about a little boy taking care of his baby brother doesn’t automatically appeal to me.
Baby & Me succeeds as a shoujo manga because of its sensitivity, though. There’s no romance, but it does tug at one’s heart to read about poor Takuya, ten years old, taking care of his baby brother after their mother’s recent death. It goes into surprising detail about how taking care of Minoru would affect every aspect of Takuya’s life, and it also does a good job of pulling Takuya out of his bouts of depression when he starts wondering about why he can’t have a normal family. Things like writing an essay on his family, playing with other kids, or learning how to respond to both Minoru’s mysterious mood swings and his father’s good intentions are all parts of the chapters in this first volume.
The last chapter was so bittersweet I nearly teared up at the end, something that’s hard to do with only a single volume of manga, but the author really does a good job of showing you how Takuya feels. She also points out that he’s just a regular kid. There’s nothing particularly extraordinary about him, he has no special talents, and he doesn’t seem to have any particular goals or aspirations. He just has to look after his brother. It gets bleak sometimes, but he always manages to find a good moment to pull himself up. The first and last chapters were the hardest to take for me, since both reflected rather strongly about Takuya’s lost mother and just how different his life is from that of his classmates.
Wonderful stuff, and this is only the first volume. I’ve got two more here, so let’s see how the plot develops.
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