Review:
Yuta Yagi and Kyota are a gay couple in Japan. Because gay marriage isn't legal nationwide in Japan, in order to get legal protections similar to a married couple, the two of them utilized a loophole by having Kyota adopt Yuta. In addition, this allowed them a way to not actually come out to most family - Yagi came out to his mom, but otherwise both men just presented this adoption as a convenient way to protect themselves in the future while technically still leaving them both with the option to marry women. (I had to wonder how dense some of their family members were if they all really believed the "we're just close friends" explanation, but I guess willful blindness is a thing.)
As I was reading this, I felt a sense of deja vu. I realized that it was because this felt very similar in tone and content to The Bride Was a Boy - fluffy, happy, and not trying to be argumentative but just present the couple's life and decisions.
Readers got an overview of how Yuta and Kyota met, how they ended up living together, how their daily lives work, etc. They wear wedding rings and allow others to assume they're married to women. I wonder if they had any concerns that this manga might out them? Yagi said that this manga was a way of paying forward what a different manga series did for him.
There's some surprisingly detailed information here about how to fill out Japanese adoption forms. Hopefully that's reassuring to Japanese readers who want to take the same route as Yuta and Kyota.
Despite the overall light tone, it was depressing how much Kyota and Yuta essentially had to bend themselves into pretzels in order to live happily as a family. I winced when the afterword began with "This book was not made with the intention to endorse or promote same-sex marriage" - Yuta's bar is so low that he just wants people to recognize that gay people exist. Maybe he and Kyota are genuinely ok with the way things are, but, as one of their readers, I'm going to say you guys deserve better.
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