放浪息子 1

Enjoyable manga, pacing may make it difficult to follow if not confident

So the big draw of this manga for me, as for many others, are the LGBT themes in the story. It takes a little bit to get started, but once I got into it I ended up binging most of the volume. Overall I think it does so well. I am a little conscious of the fact that it was published in 2003, so I'm sure attitudes towards LGBT matters have moved a little in Japan over the last 21 years, so it's possible some of the language may be a little dated (certainly would be the case for much English LGBT media) but I'm not up to date on Japanese terminology to confirm or deny that.

As a language learner, there are some parts of this manga that make it challenging. The big one is the author's tendency to let conversations drift across scenes and long periods of time. If you aren't sure in your reading, that can sometimes make you doubt your own understanding as you're left wondering if this was really a scene transition or not. Combine that with the fact that at other times the author does relatively hard cuts between scenes where conversations just stop, and it's one where it might make you second guess your understanding more than others with similar language content. I'm not sure if I just got more used to the style or if the second half of the volume is a bit less like this, but I noticed it more in the first few chapters than the later ones.