On Wednesday night, it was very, very slow on my shift at the library. I was on “the machine” (a book sorting automated thing) that requires enough attention that it can’t be left while you go off, say, shelving books or something. So I looked around the backroom for any manga that had a first volume…
And I found this:
Bunny Drop / Usagi Drop. The back cover copy reads thusly: “Going home for his grandfather’s funeral, thirty-year-old bachelor Daikichi is floored to discover that the old man had an illegitimate child with a younger lover! The rest of his family is equally shocked and embarrassed by this surprise development, and not one of them wants anything to do with the silent little girl, Rin. In a fit of angry spontaneity, Daikichi decides to take her in himself!”
SPOILERS
.
.
.
I’m a sucker for stories like this–the ones that are sort of fish-out-of water fatherhood tales. Kind of literally nothing much of consequence happens in the first volume, though. Our hero, Daikichi, gets to know Rin and does a lot of fretting about daycare. It’s only by the very end of the volume does there seem to be a mystery brewing about the identity and whereabouts of Rin’s mother.
Even so, I enjoyed it in the same way I love all slice-of-life manga. Daikichi’s worries about taking on a job that doesn’t require so much overtime just underscored how different Japanese office culture is from American.
Speaking of work, the lights are hardly even all the way flicked off before most of us library workers have bolted out the backdoor and are in our cars, revving the engines. I can’t imagine living somewhere where I was not only expected to work after hours, but also hang out drinking and socializing with my co-workers. Sounds a bit like hell, to me. (Maybe this is why the office ladies in these manga always quit when they get married and have babies? I think I would FAKE pregnancy to get out.)
Daikichi is likable in that he seems to take his new role as caretaker very seriously, even though little girls clearly baffle him.
I give it a thumbs up. If you want to read Bunny Drop / Usagi Drop, MangaFreak has it. If you get super into it, there appears to not only be an anime, but a live-action film, as well.
