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.
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