PRIDE MONTH 2024! If it’s Pride Month at Broken Frontier then it must be time for another review of Okura’s manga series I Think Our Son is Gay. We covered the first two volumes in June 2022, the third and fourth entries in June 2023, and here we are again with the fifth and final number for Pride 2024. Beginning as an endearing but formulaic collection of short strips, I Think Our Son is Gay has evolved in its five volumes as overarching story arcs and character development moved ever further to the frontline in place of its original, semi-punchline led set-up.
That original premise played with the idea that Tomoko, the mother of the book’s focus character Hiroki Aoyama, had come to suspect her schoolboy son was gay but not yet confident to come out. Early strips used a gentle observational humour in an “is he or isn’t he?” series of shorts. Other cast members include Hiroki’s little brother Yuri, his well-intentioned but tactless father Akiyoshi, his female pal Asumi who has her own crush on Hiroki, and his best friend Daigo who we are led to believe is almost certainly his object of affection.
And after four volumes of finding ourselves ever more invested in Hiroki and family here we are at the final book where the characters’ storylines come to their ends. But perhaps not quite in the way the audience may have been expecting. Volume 5 shifts the focus more towards Tomoko and Akiyoshi with a large number of strips becoming a character study of their approaches to parenting. The central question at the heart of the book for the first four volumes seems suddenly totally unimportant as the narrative redirects itself to exploring how Tomoko supports her children and how Akiyoshi makes an effort to expand his horizons and break out of his previous narrow patterns of thinking.
Okura asks the readers to fill in what happens between panels (or more accurately between chapters) here with an increased frequency. The storyline about Asumi’s feelings for Hiroki comes to a head, for example, but its resolution is implied rather than shown. This is a far more contemplative collection than the previous I Think Our Son is Gay books with pages often opening up into more expressive page structures to reflect that. Is that one major plot point resolved? Well, yes and no, and that’s absolutely the point and the charm of this ever touching and important series.
Okura (W/A), Leighann Harvey (Translation), Lor Prescott (L) • Square Enix, $12.99
Review by Andy Oliver
Read our Pride 2024 articles all in one place here
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