When first starting this manga way back in 2020 I had chosen to start it at random from boredom but only read a few chapters before I never thought about it for a long time till recently, the start of the story is okay and nothing too special, but reading more into it, mostly the first volume and things developed in a way I didn't quite expected and I got hooked on the story quite fast. It had me thinking, crying and more, this manga is great and i hope the adaptation does well and fully adapts it
The story mostly centers on valuing the people you love and the time you have with them while you have them, to cherish and not take what we have for granted, the values of hard work, how rough life can be and how easily it can feel to give up or take it out on others. Its bad but things happen and it is very hard to be strong at times, but for the sake of our own health and for others that we love or love us we shouldn't stay in a pit of despair standing still in life. The 2nd half of the story had a lot of very deep and thought provoking moments, a lot of moments that had made me tear up or even bawl out a little, or simply making me think about how life can be quite complex, how lucky moments we have are but we don't think about it, or how something that seems like a blessing might actually be bad and more.
As someone who deeply values romance and loving your partner with everything you have and more, I connected quite fast to the main premise of the story of a wife of a husband and mom of a daughter who died in a car accident but then 'reincarnating' as a elementary school student and getting to find her family and reconnect with them, and their family getting to see her again after 10 years. It's a really nice moment of Keisuke (Husband/father) having a moment in where it clicks in his head that his wife really did come back and he breaks down having finally been able to see her again, the whole situation is really gripping and great for a once broken family to have such a rare chance to be able to come back together.
However we learn that Takae's (mom/wife) mom of the girl she was now in the body of (Marika) is a horrible parent and ignores/abuses her daughter, but Takae does her best to treat her new mom kindly and think about how everyone has different lives and situations, much later on we slowly find out that Chika (the mom) had a horrible life, her mom was horrible, people she was with/dated were horrible, and despite how much she vowed to never be like her mother and at first she was a great and loving mother who tried but after her husband cheating on her it all spiraled down and she lost it, constant stress from work, people, her mom and lovers. She gets a wake up call and starts to look at herself again and realizes she became what she hated, and hated herself for it, and it was really great to watch her develop to bettering herself and never forgetting her bad actions, making sure to remember what she did to stay away from it and do her best to be a good single mother for her child.
The biggest thing much later in the story is when Takae feels good about how her family's life is now, from them having been extremely depressed and doing nothing with their lives to now being happy again, moving forward in life, or so it seems. Having felt better Takae drifted off to sleep only to have Marika wake up suddenly and Takae is gone, the story then goes in a deep direction about how things aren't actually better, Takae's family hasn't moved on and they depend on her too much, which comes this great dilemma of Takae taking over a girls body basically stealing/taking away someone else's life to live on yourself when you aren't suppose to be alive anymore, and Takae's family regressing back when she is gone once again. This is great for it shows a deep thought about how once people die, they are gone and we can't hope for a miracle or that something will happen for us, we have to move on, to live the best lives we can so that our loved ones can be happy knowing we can still live our life's and not be stuck in a void being unhappy and depressed, to be able to move on as hard as it can be, to try to be strong for our sake and others.
End point, the last couple of volumes had me deeply hooked, I could barely stop reading, moments that made me tear up happened over and over, at the start of the manga I had mostly guessed what would happen, but it happened in a way I didn't initially expected but it was amazing and I loved it. I rooted for Moriya and the love interest she had, kept wanting her to push forward for what she wanted, either way it goes she can't dwindle and do nothing, and while I wanted the romance for her to happen in a different way, I accept fully what happened and understand it and I love the ending a lot
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