Kiwotsukenayo, Onee-san (translated as "Be Careful, Onee-san"; henceforth "Onee-san") is the series that kicked off my current manga-binging period, and... it's good! I enjoyed it quite a bit. And it also gave me a number of things to think about, so I figured I'd talk about them.
Onee-san has a very straightforward premise, as befits its origins as a Twitter manga. One fine day, 149 150cm-tall office worker Honda Tae is saved from drowning at the local pool by the stunningly handsome Igarashi Mai, who she promptly falls in love at first sight with. Just as she's appreciating this long-awaited change in her luck with relationships, however, Tae discovers the problem: Mai is actually 10 years old and in elementary school (and this doesn't even impede her ability to reduce Tae to a blushing wreck). It's a good setup for a role-reversal romcom, and indeed the first handful of chapters follow the same formula: Tae vows that this time, she'll be the cool adult in the room and not get embarrassed, only to completely fail to do so because Mai is a natural イケメン女.
Now, even if you can accept a premise where adult falls in love with an elementary schooler, the fact the story speeds right past the "getting to know each other" part can make it hard to swallow early on. Tae's love at first sight comes across as rather ridiculous, and I also can't help but think that Mai takes a liking to her far too quickly, especially considering she is as romantically innocent as her age would imply and truly doesn't have any ulterior motives with her behavior. I think this simply speaks to the series' priorities, though. It wants to be a story about these two already being close and Tae navigating having feelings for someone 13 years younger than her, sooo let's skip to the part where it can be about that instead of wasting time building up to it, yeah? If this is too much of a strain on one's suspension of disbelief, consider that the subject of Tae and Mai both being girls is likewise never brought up — because we're not here to go "but we're both girls...", but "but she's an elementary schooler..."!
Really, Mai having only just started puberty is exactly what sets Onee-san apart from other age gap yuri works. While the early chapters are fairly one-note, the story soon begins to explore the themes surrounding its premise more seriously and in greater detail; Yuki's introductory arc in volume 2 revolves around her alienation from the adults in her life and how Tae is the first one to not infantilize her, and her joining the main cast in volume 3 (along with minor appearances by other characters, like Midori) serves to establish a spectrum of emotional maturity each of the girls can be placed on.
Her awareness of romance is what leads to her being such a tsundere, so it's not too difficult to imagine that, in a similar fashion, Mai only manages to be so suave because she doesn't have that awareness just yet. Maybe she'll become more self-aware a few years down the line...?
If you ask me, though, the biggest indicator of the series' ambitions is a line from when Tae meets Mai's mother, on chapter 25 (the beginning of volume 4). Over the course of their conversation, one thing the latter brings up is Mai's curfew, which would normally not mean much, or could be interpreted as merely a reasonable excuse to keep her from going to the Christmas party for narrative purposes... but then you remember that Mai looks the way she does (emphasized by the panel with the curfew line only having her in it), and it becomes clear that her mother has some very understandable reasons for it. The problem with the girls being out late at night had been brought up multiple times in the series before, but this moment put such an emphasis on it that I can't help but see it as a display of a willingness to not shy away from the more real aspects of the premise. Not that Onee-san hadn't been taking the girls' ages seriously up until this point, but it feels as if it was here that it finally realized all the most interesting directions it could go in.
...so it really sucks that volume 4 is the last one! The last arc feels extremely rushed, only barely managing to accomplish enough for it to be considered an "ending", leaving much unresolved and even more unexplored. That the final chapter was as good a conclusion for Tae and Mai as it was is a testament to Sasuke's skill as an author, but it's obvious that none of the finale had been planned for. Did the series get cancelled? I don't know for sure, but that's definitely what it smells like, and man, what the fuck? Right when it was getting revolutionarily good?! I really can't overstate how much potential it had, how many things that are almost never mentioned in commercial popular media it could've gone on to explore! I mean — a romance where one of the two is actively going through puberty!! It could've touched on what it's like to have your first period or to begin thinking about sex, or in Mai's particular case, having her become more aware of how others (especially Tae) see her due to her body... not to mention all the other things that age gap romances already deal with. The only works I can think of that come close to exploring themes such as these are Watayuri (chapter 21) and Onimai (episode 2), but the main priorities of both lie elsewhere, so they're not fully dedicated to this... ah, well. Maybe I'll be the one who'll have to write fanfiction of the bottom pedophile OL and her ~12-year-old top girlfriend.
Oh, by the way, Sasuke already has a new series going, and 偽りのマリィゴールド (Itsuwari no Marigold) makes such a striking first impression that part of me wonders whether they knew to get to the main point right off the bat this time around. It's significantly different from Onee-san in almost every regard, but that only makes me more excited to see what they'll be cooking with it.
Well, that's it from me for today. While Onee-san might not have been my favorite age gap yuri work, I was still quite sad to see it cut short, but thankfully the other forward-thinking yuri manga I read over the past few weeks have helped me get over it. But what are those manga? And what is my favorite age gap yuri work...? These questions, and more, will be answered... whenever I get around to writing the next post.