There are a lot of lose strings to tie up here at Shimura Takako’s Otona ni Nattemo, Volume 10 (おとなになっても). And, while the final bow is a bit messy, everything is tied up even if it means tucking in the aglets wherever there is space.

The story began with Ayano and Wataru married. Here they will, maybe for the first and only time in their lives, speak to each other like equal adults unencumbered by expectations. They can move on freely. Wataru’s mother has a long-needed awakening. There’s no way to know if it will be good or bad for her in the long run, but as a narrative choice, it was crucial. Eri’s story goes slightly pear-shaped, but it leaves Eri out of it. She deserves an epilogue of her own.

Ayano and Akari are fine. They move through this volume lightly, almost as second thought, meeting up with other characters, collecting and tying up all those loose ends.

I don’t know how to talk about the most interesting and weirdest piece of this volume without spoilers, so consider this a warning. Our three middle-schoolers have finally, fully resolved their concerns. When it turns out one of them has written a story about all the characters in the story, the other two jump in to help. What happens is a weird bending of the story itself as they narrate the various pieces of the story…even bits they could not know. 

Was all of this always a narrative told by these three girls? I actually hope so.

I have said this very often, but Shimura’s work is always a little problematic for me. Even beyond the specific kinks/fetishes/issues/whatever,  Shimura mines queer lives for drama, but does not identify as a gender or sexual minority. Does that make the work exploitative? It kind of does, but also, there is clearly a sense of telling genuine stories that heal and promote queer joy, so maybe exploitation is not the right word. Maybe Shimura is closeted, maybe something else, but the body of Shimura-sensei’s work is pretty neck deep in queerness, which seems odd for a person who is not queer. I always want to assume the best, and just hope that this is all a desire to find interesting characters and tell uplifting stories that include queer folk.

This story is queer in a real way. Akari continues to be a lesbian role model, Ayano becomes more comfortable talking about being bisexual, or perhaps always lesbian, but sucked into societal norms. And in the end, pretty much everyone gets the ending they deserve. Whatever the motivation, in both art and story, Otona ni Nattemo has been the best work I’ve seen from Shimura-sensei and the ending being a little bendy at the end, did not disappoint.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Service – 0
LGBTQ+ – 10

Overall – 8