Yuki Fumino is a mangaka I’d known about for a long time due to I Hear the Sunspot, but I never got into her work until I watched the live-action adaptation of the aforementioned work in 2024. Well, I did have the Sunspot manga at that point, but it was in the backlog still… Anyway, this week I finally pulled out ユア・マイ・サン from the backlog (where it has also sat since 2024) and was surprised to find it’s another Yuki Fumino work, just under the penname Yuki Akaneda (which she uses for non-BL works). And what a delight it turned out to be! Certainly one of those hidden treasures that has been waiting for the right moment to surface out of the many piles of books.
Our story primarily follows Yousuke, a man who was scorned by his family from a young age and constantly bullied for his pointed ears. Whenever he’s found some semblance of happiness, it has always been snatched away from him. Then there’s Natsuki, a young woman raising her late sister’s son, Kenji. Like Yousuke, Natsuki has been through her fair share of hardships and family issues.
And while it sounds like this should offer a happy ending on paper, the situation is complicated. The book opens by showing us a grown-up Kenji with Yousuke who are visiting Natsuki’s grave, and then it flashes back to the past where Natsuki is already gone and Yousuke has found himself in the position of adoptive father to a young Kenji. It shows us the hardships the two face as they try to go on in a world without Natsuki, as well as Yousuke’s past and how he came to meet Natsuki and Kenji in the first place.
It’s the kind of nuanced storytelling you’d expect if you’ve read the mangaka’s work before, although I do feel there’s quite a bit more drama here than in Sunspot (especially when it comes to the awful parents). However, it does feel a bit confused about the story it wants to tell at points. Perhaps because there are so many characters and so much to get through! The first chapter gives you the impression that Kenji is perhaps in love with Yousuke or at least doesn’t view him as a father figure the way Yousuke sees himself. But even by the end the narrative hasn’t put enough focus on that to come to a conclusion because it spends far more time fleshing out Yousuke (and later Natsuki), which is necessary and is satisfying in its own right, but there’s a sense that Kenji got the short end of the stick.
When Akaneda started serialising this in 2016, Can You Hear the Sunspot was already ongoing too, so perhaps it’s not too surprising that ユア・マイ・サン was released slowly at the pace of more or less a single chapter a year between 2016 and 2021. I would wager that’s one of the reasons it has this disconnect in places, as Akaneda probably wanted to focus on different things or readjust over time (although I suppose we do loop back to the beginning by the end).
Still, although I do have quibbles with it, I still think this is a fantastic found family story. It’s a dense read with 255~ pages in the finished volume, but it’s engaging and keeps you flipping through all the way to the end and leaves you feeling satisfied. It’s dramatic, but not silly. It roots itself in realism and tries to keep the overall atmosphere warm with the slice-of-life and happier moments in Yousuke’s life. That’s not to deny any of the hardships, but to show life always has its ups and downs. I’m quite surprised, given the single-volume nature of this and the general popularity of Sunspot that this hasn’t been picked up for an English release by anyone. Hopefully someday…