#fujiyoshi hiromu

[moontheoretist]

He is suffering from a "I love my family very much" syndrome xD

[halliescomut]

Tadaima, Okaeri Ep 5

Sorry I was a bit late watching, and then I wanted to kind of digest the episode and organize my thoughts. And I gotta tell you I am still so fascinated by this show. This week...it's freaking anime Bluey. If you're not aware of what Bluey is, it's an Australian-made (and set) kids cartoon series about a family of Blue Heeler dogs that is syndicated by Disney. It's been creating a lot of really interesting conversations among parents regarding how the show portrays parenthood, and specifically about how often the lessons are for the parents watching with their kids, and not the kids themselves. (This is a good recent article about the show). While I have no children, I do have a niece and nephew at the prime age for enjoying the show and have seen all of the first two seasons multiple times (I'm still working through the recently released 3rd season).

I'm drawing the comparison here, because while Tadaima, Okaeri has up until this episode focused mainly on the adults of the Fujiyoshi household, with Hikari and Hinata being more cutesy side characters. This episode really centers around both Masaki and Hikari, with Hikari starting to fully start to recognize what being a big brother means. While ages are unclear in the show, it seems like Hikari is supposed to be somewhere around 4, an age where both his psychological development and the cultural standards would be encouraging him to become more independent.

But, in the end Hikari is still just a little kid, and in his very endearing way takes his big brother responsibilities a bit too seriously and kind of overextends himself.

From the Masaki side, we see him dealing with the struggle of watching Hikari growing up before his eyes. There's a saying that the days are long, but the years are short when it comes to kids, and that's sort of what Masaki is dealing with this episode. He's watching the contrast of Hikari, who it feels like was just a little baby like Hinata only days ago, now being so much more independent and driven. They're morning the 'loss' of that stage of Hikari's life, while also being so proud of how he's grown. His determination to be helpful, to help take care of the house, of his sister, to help Masaki, these behaviors they want to encourage, that will help Hikari learn how to be a good person as an adult. And they also recognize that tendency that all children have of sort of trying to grow up too fast, because they're to young to conceptualize that they shouldn't give up their childhood, because it is so fleeting in the long run.

Masaki struggling with the unique challenges of having a second child, and just the stress that comes with having to split your attention between multiple young children, they're feeling guilty over not being able to give everything they had before to Hikari, because Hinata requires more direct attention. And they can see the Hikari is struggling to adjust to no longer being an only child, not being able to climb in Ma-chan's lap whenever he wants, or be the sole focus of attention, but they also know it's one of those moments of growth that you just have to let kids go through. You can't really help, you can just be there.

But there's this pretty universal experience of good parents constantly being worried about whether they're good parents. And you may have heard that if you're worried about it, it means you are, because it means you are actively trying to be the best parent you know how to be. And that lesson is the one we kind of see Masaki learning over the course of the episode. I don't know that Masaki's accepted really that they are a good parent, and that doubt seems to be rooted in a lot of things we don't have knowledge of yet.

We don't know nearly as much about Masaki's family as we do about Hiromu and the Fujiyoshis, outside of the fact that Masaki's parents have passed. Though it seems next episode we might met their uncle, which I'm betting will give us a lot more insight. But there's a couple of possibilities, one being that Masaki's home life was a traumatic beyond just the loss of their parents, and that there's a bit of a 'breaking the cycle' storyline happening. Something supported by the behavior we've seen from the Fujiyoshi's and their valiant effort to reconnect with their son and forge a truer bond with Masaki as their son-in-law. I particularly enjoyed the interactions between Masaki and Grandma Fujiyoshi, because you could really feel the desire to connect from both sides. While I continue to have issues with the intentional feminization of Omega or bottoms in BL, I was touched by the symbolism of wanting to pass down the kimono to Masaki. Especially because it was clear that this wasn't a case of 'I want you to have this to pass on to Hinata', but very much intended to indicate acceptance into the family.

Overall this show and this episode is a lot of food for thought for a BL. The veneer of the show is quite fluffy, but they've shown every episode so far a commitment to telling an impactful story within the bounds of BL anime and the omegaverse, which I applaud.

[inahochi]

"the cuttest little interruption"

TADAIMA, OKAERI (2024)  ⋆ #03.

[lover-of-art-things]

[oddishblossom]

“And you and Masaki had better protect me.” “No!” “What!?”

— TADAIMA OKAERI - S1 EP1

(BONUS: Masaki Wakes Up)

[ianime0]

Tadaima Okaeri | Ep2 | Hi-kun's here! Oh? Where? He's having fun. Papa! Here! Huh? Where?

[ecargmura]

Anya 🤝 Hikari

Same voice actress (Atsumi Tanezaki)

Have parents with black and blond hair

Black hair parent cannot cook

[aceofwhump]

Tadaima Okaeri 1x02

[inbestigator]

Tadaima, Okaeri

[moontheoretist]

Overprotective husband contemplating murder of people who dared to hurt his beautiful, kind and cute malewife. We can't even fault him.

[halliescomut]

Tadaima, Okaeri Ep 4

Now that I'm fully caught up, I might start doing a weekly thing for this show because I am really enjoying it. This week I thought was really cute, but also very well-balanced in touching on Masaki's struggles. So much of the story is about Masaki, their past, their experiences, particularly as an omega in this world. And I was honestly kind of surprised at how surprisingly deep things got this episode.

Omegaverse has been regarded pretty often as a way to perpetuate heterosexual relationship stereotypes in a homosexual romance, and I kind of agree with that take. It's why if I ever partake in omegaverse stories, I don't care for the tropes of having omegas be extraordinarily feminized. I generally skew more towards reading stories where the omega is just as "masculine" as the alphas, and generally in those stories as well you'll see the alphas being very emotionally competent...if that makes sense. The way Tadaima, Okaeri has chosen to present their universe sets omegas as an 'inferior' race, and so in many ways it feels like Masaki's struggles more directly reflect racism and the struggles of an interracial couple, versus struggling against homophobia.

I can't personally tell if this is intentional, I don't have much information about the creators of the manga or the anime. I would hazard a guess that it is not, but I can't know for sure.

But where this all stems from is a scene early on in the episode where Masaki is still pregnant and Hikari is talking about the baby, and there's a conversation about how Hikari seemed to know about the pregnancy before anyone. Masaki contemplates if Hikari being so aware could mean that he might be able to tell if the baby is an alpha or omega even in the womb. Now they don't give a full biological rundown on how that works genetically. I always kind of processed being alpha or omega as something more like a secondary sex characteristic, or something that would present in puberty, but not be obvious at birth. In this universe it seems to be something almost like a recessive trait, or a gene that someone might carry, but would only be present/possible if both parents carry the gene. Because it seems like Masaki is an omega born to alpha parents based on the flashbacks we've seen.

But back to my point, Masaki in the moment wondering if Hikari could tell if the baby is an omega or not puts them in a place where they consider terminating the pregnancy, because he knows the struggles of being an omega in the world at large, but especially in the family that he has married into. While Hiromu's father seems to have had a change of heart, and is determined to reconnect with his son and his grandchildren, if that means that they will eventually have a more regular place in Papa Fujiyoshi's world, that increases chances of more direct bigotry. While Masaki has very much come into their own, very few people would choose to regularly have to deal with that type of behavior, and no good parent would want to subject their child to it.

But to why this particularly makes me think more of the struggles of an interracial relationship and mixed race family is because as an American, one of the things that is fairly widely known is that it is very common for African American people to have some percentage of white ancestry dating back generations prior to the legalization of interracial marriage. This is, as one could guess, not the result of starcrossed lovers, but the result of the subjugation and abuse suffered by black women during the time of legalized chattel slavery, as well as the immediate aftermath of the Civil War and emancipation. The presence of European based genetics in a portion of the African American population would occasionally lead to some African American people looking very 'white'. Due to the overt and horrific racism of the time, it was not uncommon then for 'white-passing' African Americans to separate themselves from their families, and basically pretend to be white to escape basically daily racism. (And who could blame them.) Colorism in the Black and Afro-Latino communities, and the prevalence of increased discrimination towards darker complected member of that community both from inside and outside of it, often leads to parents hoping their child will 'take after' a lighter complected parent, or even grandparent, as it will likely indicate a life of less discrimination.

That's kind of what Masaki's story feels like to me. It feels like Masaki is from a 'white' family (I know obviously all of the characters in the show are both ethnically and culturally Japanese), that perhaps had an ancestor who was not, and that those genes showed up as prominent in Masaki, leading for him to be discriminated against in his childhood and life overall. Now, as an adult and in his relationship with Hiromu, they present as essentially an interracial couple, with Hikari 'favoring his father' and appearing 'white'. This is further supported by the intentional character design of Hikari, to have dark hair like his father, the small mole by his mouth (something that generally would not be a genetic trait).

I honestly can't tell if I'm overthinking this, but I just feel like the parallels are so consistent. {Also, I know the gifs aren't really a perfect representation of my concept, but I suspect I am one of few who is more interested in the existential struggles of Masaki, then just allowing the show to be sweet, fun fluff.}

[meixx24]

What a great Couple! 🥰🩷

[inahochi]

˚₊ ˚ ‧₊ .:･˚₊ together ˚₊✩‧₊◜

TADAIMA, OKAERI (2024)  ⋆ #02.

[lover-of-art-things]

[oddishblossom]

TADAIMA OKAERI - S1 EP1 ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ

[ianime0]

Tadaima Okaeri | Ep2 | Hi-kun's in the group! So cute! He's an angel. Total angel... An angel...