僕らの食卓

A wonderful, warm 癒し系 story

I'm not usually a huge fan of 癒し系 works; they feel cute, but don't generally leave any sort of lasting impression on me. 僕らの食卓 exceeded all of my modest expectations, however: this manga felt like the epitome of happiness on a sad day for me. It's sweet, warm, comfy, and manages to touch on a couple of different relationship topics in a satisfying way.

We follow 豊 (ゆたか), a young man who's been estranged with his family for some time. One day he bumps into little boy 種 (たね) and shares some food with him, only to be invited back to 種's house to do a small cooking lesson for 種 and his older brother, 穣 (みのる). The three start to spend more and more time together, and 豊 starts to find himself loving this family more and more.

The art has a kind of sketchy style to it, which I felt complemented the story well; the book is set during the winter, and I felt as comfy as the characters looked, bundled up in jackets or under blankets.

This was a pretty easy manga to read; there's a good bit of handwriting text on 種's part, usually him quibbling with his older brother, but otherwise the vocabulary generally falls into general day-to-day categories. I read the Kindle version, and at the time of this review felts that, while the quality was overall okay, furigana could be hard to read.

cheaper than therapy

Soft, heartwarming, and completely blissful, this manga is a story about family and what it means to eat together. There is a very sweet romance aspect, but that's not the primary focus, and mostly it's just an incredibly nice and cozy slice of life story (I would even use the term iyashikei). With lovable characters, adorable art, and all the catharsis and emotional vulnerability that the best of BL can offer, this is definitely a gem in the genre.

Difficulty wise, I think this rating is fairly accurate. The main detriment is there is a lot of "manga scribble", including a 2 page atogaki. I know a lot of people skip these, but I think they're really cute and add lots of good characterization, so it's kind of a shame that it's not so easy to read. That said, the vocab is overall extremely simple, with some domain-specific vocab (Japanese holidays and food). If you're familiar with some aspects of Japanese culture nothing here will be too out of the ordinary though, and in general I think everyone should learn these things since they pop up all the time in books. There's also no furigana, but the kanji is almost all fairly common kanji.