There's a TL;DR at the bottom for those of you who dislike reading essays.
Having been on a sci-fi Korean webcomic grind, it was in my attempts to find some more completed sci-fi adventure manga that I ended up stumbling upon Back to the Kaasan, or Back to the Mother. It was the first manga to pop up that had decent looking art and wasn’t called Sword Art Online and the description ignited my interest for stupidly hilarious premises, thus beginning my one night marathon to finish the 30 chapters or so of what I believed to be a comedy version of Erased or something.
Instead, I almost tried dropping it after the first initial three chapters or so. While the unexpected ecchi pops every time jump and the surreal comedy plot doesn’t bother me too much, what almost made me give up was how unbearable the main character, Yuu, is with his mother complex literally off the charts, and that’s pretty much all he has going for him. Like for example, he literally throws his own father into Truck-kun just so he could get the chance to save his mother. While entertaining for a bit, it soon grew tedious and over-saturated and lost it’s comedic appeal for me.
Not even bothering to spoiler tag this because it literally happens in the first chapter.From Yuu's clear lack of regards for his own existence had his father actually died, it’s very apparent that nothing serious is ever intended to happen in the manga. There are cameos of various Harry Potter characters like Mad Eye Moody or Hagrid, and his mom in the present is literally a sushi roll. There’s even a blatant shout out to Back to the Future, with a frog themed DeLorean car cleverly nicknamed as the Kerolean. The math checks out too: 140 kmh for the Kerolean to work is approximately 88 mph, the same speed needed for Doc Brown’s car to time travel. But silly humor and parody aside, I’m definitely not looking for any sort of incest plot going on.
But despite all that, I kept reading, mostly because it was only 30 chapters anyways and I might as well grind it out regardless how unbearable the main character might be. And I’m glad I did, because what Back to the Kaasan ended up with was something well-sequenced and wholesome one would have never expected from an ecchi-filled, borderline incest beginning. The last volume of the series takes on sudden unexpected development and a more thoughtful story telling, and tugged on heartstrings I didn’t even know could have been tugged. And while 30 chapters is certainly short for build up and 10 chapters is even shorter for the depth the final volume attempts to achieve, it somehow manages perfectly fine for a bittersweet ending that leaves me touched and satisfied.
Not in pervy way. Despite what the ecchi may imply.
#The Cast
For such a quirky premise, there’s actually not much to elaborate more on since the series is short, and as a result much of the driving force in the early chapters are the characters.
Yuu Minayoshi is our protagonist, and the only son of the once most popular idol of the 20th century, Touka. As previously mentioned, Yuu has a serious mother complex; he’s quite brutally honest when talking about or with other people (Young Hanada), but is shamelessly biased in favor of his mother, coming across as overprotective and obsessive. He’s not the classic “kind” protagonist present in most other stories, but he does have his moments of compassion and sympathy, albeit most of them with ulterior motives to make his mother happy.
Touka Minayoshi can be summed up with the simple tag of the “nice” girl. With some notable traits in love for corn, horrible fashion sense, and as Yuu puts it, a smile that can dazzle the world, Touka remains a relatively simple and straightforward character, no matter what the time period is. Through an unknown reason, she turns into a sushi roll at some point before the events of the story, and you can’t really say much about sushi roll Touka’s characterization because there is none.
Kasumi Hanada is our tsundere of the series, and also somewhat of a kamidere (possessing a god-like complex) as well. She was part of the same idol group as Touka, the “Back to Sisters”, and in the present is now a famous actress. Honestly, I’ve never felt any more sadder for a tsundere than ever. She’s pretty much the butt of all jokes and ecchi scenes everytime, not to mention she’s not that good of an idol, that I can’t help but feel bad for best girl of the series.
The other characters are all fairly minor, from Sano-sensei, a tough chemistry teacher with a love for Kerorin the frog and her past self, referred to as Yanno-sensei for the most part since she’s a yankee girl. There’s also two classmates of Yuu, who are part of the Science Fiction club with him. Yuu’s father literally has a bar over his eyes indicating his lack of importance, and that’s about it for any character that has at least some significance to the plot.
#General Plot
Overall the general story involves some sort of interaction between Yuu and his mother Touko, as Yuu basically forces himself into any major event Touko participates in, from idol tryouts to meeting his father for the first time. This often also involves meddling with Sano-sensei and Hanada more often than not, from forcing the Science Fiction club to be founded two years earlier or making Hanada's dreams of becoming an idol actually happen. As the story progresses, the plot gradually expands to also include interactions between the members of the “Back to Sisters” themselves without Yuu being in the picture, which is a refreshing change of pace from the mother complex.
All in all, the first 18 chapters are generally slice-of-life shenanigans involving Yuu’s time travel and meddling with Touko, Hanada, and Sano-senpais life in youth, giving some insight into their high school life (not like we have anything to compare it to). I found the lighthearted storytelling to be entertaining, but if you’re looking for some more emotion-provoking kind of story or some detailed explanation on why Touko became a sushi roll in the first place, Back to the Kaasan will skip all the messy details and just give you the wacky adventures of a mothercon traveling back in time to hang out with his mother and friends.
At least, for the first two volumes.
The transition in mood and theme is subtle and hardly noticeable when you cross into the third and final volume of Back to the Kaasan. For the first 18 chapters, most of the plot elements introduced in a particular chapter are resolved by the end of it, with the one exception being the Sano-sensei arc from chapter 4 to 6.
Spoiler, click to view
These chapters are where Yuu establishes the beginning of Touko, Sano, and Hanada’s friendship along with founding the Science Fiction club 2 years earlier in order to give his mother the “participating in a club” experience she never had.But now, we’re reaching the endgame, and each chapter begins flowing into the next with shounen level cliffhangers to keep the chapters connected. The plot for the final volume isn’t something that’s brushed aside trivially. What seemed to be minor changes in the present as the result of 18 chapters worth of meddling leads to some major consequences as a result of messing with the past, and becoming the primary driving forces behind the plot of the final volume. It’s here where we get some serious character development with some characters, namely Yuu and Hanada, and in my efforts to keep the majority of this review spoiler free, we reach an unexpectedly stunning conclusion to the wacky premise first introduced.
Most loose ends being wrapped up, such as why Touko became a sushi roll, along with whatever happens from all these alternate timelines being created. While we’re not going to know exactly how Yuu’s time traveling works, and neither how the Kerolean works either, the final volume and epilogue leaves a satisfying ending to the crazy adventures of Yuu’s time traveling.
Perhaps it’s the sudden growth of our main character and another main character we weren’t even aware of was a main character that made these final chapters truly interesting for me. Or perhaps it was just the sudden tension of plot that wasn’t there before that pushed me to the edge of my seat. Or perhaps it was the sudden development of emotional moments that moved me. Whatever it is, this final volume is what seals the deal for me, turning this manga from something that I’ll probably chalk up as okay to something that I can truly say I enjoyed.
One thing I just want to quickly mention is there are two epilogues to the story. There’s the canon one and the April Fools one, and for most translation sites, they use the April Fools one for good reason. It’s way better and leaves things off on a more pleasant note. It took me quite a while to find the original version of the epilogue, so unless you really want to know what happens it’s probably for the best just to keep the April Fools translation as canon.
Conclusion
TL;DR: Slice of life adventures involving a ridiculous premise that develops into something more meaningful and satisfying to conclude with.
I tried my best to keep this review spoiler free, because it’s quite short anyway, like watching a movie. And if you came down here just to check my rating, my 9.5/10 is an arbitrary summary of my experience, and is by no means indicative of your personal enjoyment of the manga. All I can say is, Back to the Kaasan surprised me in a good way, not with depth or life lessons from it’s silly sounding premise, but from it’s heart. It ends off pleasant and touching with nothing much left to think about, except what ever happy future lies ahead. Sometimes, that’s all what we need.
"Roads? Wherever we’re going, we don’t need roads." - Doc Brown