GENRE: BL: Shounen Ai, Slice of Life, Romance
MANGAKA: Mita Ori
PUBLISHER: Seven Seas Entertainment
1 Vol
Today I wanted to gush over a one-volume manga called Our Dining Table aka Bokura no Shokutaku. This is the perfect blend of cute and sad, so prepare your kleenex. In fact, I want this yaoi EVERYDAY FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. GIVE IT TO ME. Just look at the cheeks on that kid! So pure, so wonderful, so cheerful.
What Our Dining Table is about
The manga revolves around the budding relationship between Yutaka and Minari. Suffice to say that I cheered for them from the moment I saw them cooking together – which is the beginning.
And like most stories involving an adorable tiny kid brother, I thought that the older brother was his young dad since their dad is barely present or shown to interact with the baby bro. But I guess it’s because the story is about Yutaka and Minari – not so much the father.
What Our Dining Table says about family and raising kids
This manga shows the added responsibilities a child gets when a parent dies and the conflict that arises between being there for your kid brother or having the freedoms of a young man. It’s hard to choose to put your own plans on pause for the sake of a sibling, but when they’re this adorable, it’s less of a hardship. Minari handles well the duality of being a brother and being a pseudo parent to his brother. Though, if Minari had been younger, I don’t know if I would have liked this level of responsibility thrust on a child.
Speaking of siblings, the manga also shows how strained relationships between adopted children and biological children can be. And how deeply this strained relationship can affect the adopted child as an adult. Childhood trauma is real and people tend to minimize it when they really shouldn’t. Yutaka is a good example of that.
Our Dining Table rating?
Anyways, good reads give it a 4.5/5, my animalist gives it a 8.2/10. Insane. I’m going to agree with Goodreads, though it’s not perfect, them cheeks are.
If you’re looking for more great BL manga, check out these other reviews:
- Country Diaries by Isino Aya
- Feeding Lamb by Mado Fuchiya / Nishin MAsumi / Madobuchiya
- Pinky Swear with a Stray Cat aka Noraneko to Yubikiri by Aki Takatsu
- Sun’s Blood by Yang Seoghyeon (manhwa/webcomic)
- The Dragging Sound aka Hikizuru Oto by Harada
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