[DeepL Translation - needs review] Volume 1: [Electronic Limited Edition] Includes newly drawn illustrations and color door. The popular series by Chara Bunko is finally being fully comicalized!
It is Naoto's tenth birthday. At the celebration, Naoto's older brother Masaki, whose pride and joy is the envy of everyone, and his kind parents and siblings are all present. The happy family life is instantly disrupted by the father's infidelity and running away from home... One day, Naoto, a junio...
Heavy themes and a heavy atmosphere
Content Warnings: incest, rape of a minor. This series contains mature content.
二重螺旋 starts off with the picture of a happy family: mom, dad, and their four children. Things quickly slide downhill, however, after dad walks out one day, the happy family completely shattered. Mom withdraws into her room, leaving the four children (three middle school age or below) to fend for themselves. This continues until the second-youngest child all but walks in on his eldest brother having sex with their mother.
Things, at least for this volume, continue to spiral downward; the protagonist brother isn't able to healthily cope with all of the changes in his family that have gone on around him, leaving him vulnerable to a pretty predatory older brother.
Despite the eyebrow-raising way this story seems to be going, I actually really enjoyed this volume. The artist did a great job expressing a very melancholy and lonely atmosphere; you can feel all the corners the protagonist is being pushed into due to his family situation. I can't say how well this is adapted from the light novel source material, having not read it at the time of writing, but if I hadn't known it was an adaption before going in I likely wouldn't have noticed it now.
Difficulty-wise this felt like really easy reading; full furigana combined with very few text-heavy pages and the text itself focused around domestic life led to a smooth reading experience.