New Manga Impression: Sakazuki-san Chi no Gikyoudai

Synopsis

Two young boys have become step-brothers and suddenly find themselves living under the same roof yet are as different as can be. Youichi, despite his short stature is a top fighter and a student of a school filled with delinquents. Chikage in the other hand is the sweet younger brother and a student of a prestigious school. This is the story of their daily lives as new brothers.
The Good

There are way too many manga that has a story involving step-brothers resulting something related to the shounen ai or yaoi genre. It’s not a bad thing, but something different like what this story is offering is something nice for the male characters in slice-of-life/family genre. Here we have a nice and simple and story that has a pretty cute set-up going on so far. There are some general tropes to be found with the characters but for the most part they have some solid potential going on for them.

Other than this the art is rather cute and surprisingly works well even when Youichi gets into a fight. A personal favorite moment so far, though there may be two chapters is at the end of the second chapter when the two of them look through photo albums of when they were young. There’s just something charming about the scene that bodes well for the series.

The Bad

For one thing, the chapters are rather short and while it may be the point of the series, there is clearly going be more focus on the developing relationship between Youichi and Chikage. However, there is always a chance of the series doing some exploration on their individual characters or add some drama so that can be put aside. With only two chapters, the only real issue that this writer can find with the work so far is the design of Chikage.

The idea of a character being designed to look older or younger than they actually are, but Chikage’s design is a bit on the fence for this writer to put it simply. Other than this, the issues so far aren’t really what you would call issues.

Conclusion

There is a whole lot of potential to be found with the series in terms of charm. It’s not often that we see sweet stories where the characters are step-brothers where there’s no sprinkling of either deep drama or shounen ai/yaoi. Nothing against these aspects but this is a nice change of pace for once. The characters’ design could have been done better but the way that their general tropes were handled was pretty good.

Rating: 7/10