Taeko gets a chance at working as an actress, something she loves and does well. But her father immediately rejects her dreams. Taeko gets happy for being praised at school for the stories she writes. But her mother says it'd be better to have a kid who isn't so picky with food instead of a kid who is good at writing. Taeko gets happy imagining the frog styled purse she's gonna get as a gift. But she loses the interest when her sister calls the purse childish.

This is Omohide Poroporo: a series of stories about this young girl who keeps being cheerful even though she always meets frustration. She's very much still a child, but she is at that age when kids don't want to be seen as kids, and when they're desperate about finding out more about the world of adults. Her cheerfulness seems sincere and realistic, not the stereotypical over the top cheerfulness that you often see in other manga characters. The reason is that, for Taeko, cheerfulness seems to come both from her nature and from a place of resignation. The art is simple, but it accomplishes well the task of showing that along with her happiness there's often a bittersweet feeling. It's almost as if every chapter ended with a "sigh".

What frames this story is Japan in the 1960s. And the manga isn't shy about establishing its setting: each chapter shows its year and month, and it often makes clear references to Japanese society and culture of the time, be it some manga that was popular at the time, some product that was sold at stores, the Vietnam war, or even some high profile murder case that was being talked about on TV. The language is also very local and familiar, using regionalisms and colloquial language. This is a nice way to travel, even if just for a moment, to this setting, and understand a bit more of how things worked in that place at that time.

Japan in the 60s is also the time when the manga author herself was a child. I can only guess that there are (at least some) autobiographical elements in Taeko's journey, and maybe that's why her story feels so authentic. You can feel like it's someone you know telling you this real life story that happened to her. It's a very mundane story, in a good way.

The story reminds me a bit of Roald Dahl's story Matilda. Like Matilda, Taeko seems lost in this world of school and family and fiction (like Matilda, Taeko also loves fiction), full of adults who don't get her and don't seem to care about it either. Not that the adults actively want to mistreat her, but sometimes understanding somebody is really hard. But unlike Matilda, there aren't psychic powers or a kind teacher to make everything better in the ending. The only sympathy Taeko gets is from the reader: and it's easy to relate to her. Even for those born decades after Taeko, in countries miles away from her, it's easy to recall childhood memories while reading about Taeko's own childhood. There's something really universal about this frustration that Taeko feels, after all.