My Brother's Husband, Volume 1 (Pantheon Graphic Library)

And today we are doing my initial thoughts on volume one of My Brother's Husband by Gengoroh Tagame. Forgive me if I'm even more scattered then usual, I'm going to try and give a bit of context for this manga that also inspired a lot of feeling and thinking in me personally so let's get started.

To give a brief synopsis of the premise, since I've found myself confused more than once between the inside flap and people talking about it. This book is written from the perspective of a (probably) middle-aged Japanese man named Yaichi, who is heterosexual, a father and primary caregiver to a young girl, an amicable ex-husband, someone who can live off of real estate income and an identical twin to the gay brother mentioned in the title. This gay twin brother, Ryoji, long before the start of this comic moved to Canada and eventually got married to a man named Mike Flanagan and then died. I either missed how or why or it wasn't mentioned, but now Mike has made his way to Japan to learn more about his husband's life and family.

And this is why I don't give the synopsis to things! And while I am a fairly enthusiastic reader of manga, I am by no means an expert in any way, and so take my own experiences with a decent amount of salt and seek out some more authoritative views on anything you find interesting. That's certainly what I will be doing!

Looking at what I had gathered before reading this manga with a bit more that I have learned through and since reading this manga. First of all, it is important to keep in mind that despite the fact that yaoi/boy love is a fairly popular genre, it is one of the few places I have ever seen where male bodies and relationships are served up to the female gaze in any way comparable to how women (straight and lesbian) are too often treated in my own culture.

Manga about gay men by gay men is actually a much smaller market that is actually pretty niche and doesn't seem to have been represented at all in translated work until very recently, and a lot of it seems to be very adult and (I'm told) sadistic. At least from the perspective of someone who has yet to really search out anything in this market. If you have any recommendations I would certainly appreciate it. As someone very interested in diverse own voice representation this is something I need to put some real work into.

Gengoroh Tagame is, in fact, a mangaka who has worked in this genre for some time and is himself an openly gay man living in a society that does not think very highly of his sexuality. My Brother's Husband is a very diplomatic mainstream manga aimed at not only telling a nice story but also showing how gay men are just like anyone else, because (even if Yaoi seems to point in the opposite direction) gay men still face a tough uphill battle in Japan socially.

Despite its rather straightforward and perhaps simple premise, I was really moved by this comic. I certainly hope most of the people watching this video realize that lgbtq+ people are just like everyone else! But my own transition from conservative upbringing to acceptance and even celebration of lgbtq+ +people (including myself) wasn't too long ago and this book just ripped those scabs right off. In a good way.

Otherwise, this is a very every day slice of life sort of manga, although it is following a pretty tight, easy to follow, timeline so far. Looking through other reviews one's appreciation for the particularly decompressed style of day-to-day manga seems highly related to how much one will enjoy this.

While flipping through this book it should be fairly easy to tell that Tagame is a pretty skilled mangaka. That said, his depiction of well-muscled naked men was the biggest thing I had to get over in agreeing with the back flap that calls this an all-ages manga. And while I do feel like it does push a bit at the standards of all-agedness here in North America, it also provided me a good opportunity to take a sledgehammer to my inner prude. There is no man junk, unlike in Dragonball, this should be perfectly fine >.<