Title: The Shiunji Family Children Vol. 2
Author: Reiji Miyajima, Reiji Yukino (art support)
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
Genre: Romance, Comedy, Harem
Publication Date: September 17, 2024
The Story
So, how do you follow up the bombshell that all of these brothers and sisters are adopted and not blood-related? Easy, you cycle through every girl and dedicate a chapter to them and how they all want to confess their love to their older brother Arata! It’s only natural, of course.
This is what the second volume of The Shiunji Family Children is all about. We get some episodic chapters with Arata having to deal with his sisters as they each try to make a subtle, yet, not-so-subtle move on him. In the middle of it all, there’s Kotona who is still the only one who has confessed her love… even though she’s only 15. Well, Arata is 16 so I guess it does skirt around the whole illegal/forbidden love thing I guess.
First, we get Minami. She pops into the gym while Arata is working out and claims that she’s there to do the same; however, she’s trying to gather information about what she witnessed at the end of the first volume which was Ouka telling Arata that she loved him; however, Arata mistook it as a professional familial love rather than a romantic confession. Still, Minami didn’t know that so she bumbles her way through a conversation and ends up going nowhere.
Next up we get a chapter or two with Banri. She barged into Arata’s room and just began invading his privacy. After some teasing, she asks him out on a date! She regretfully agrees and gets strung along as he takes him out to buy a phone when in reality, she was just using him as a pretend boyfriend so she could get a couples’ discount.
Next is Seiha who invites Arata to play a game of Twister which seems unlike her; however, she disguises the friendly game as a scientific observation to see how he would react to being entangled with her. She concludes and then leaves him alone. Finally, we circle back to Ouka who challenges Arata to a video game! Of course, this leads to some playful teasing and a certain trope-ish situation that you would find in any standard rom-com.
After everything that happens, Arata does a bit of reflecting on everything that happened and what each of his now former sisters means to him.
Characters
Hmm… thinking back on everything, there was some development but not much. Overall, every single one of our female characters has some romantic interest in Arata and if the stories in here were crafted to make you believe otherwise, they failed. It’s pretty obvious they all have some sort of romantic stake in Arata but they each have their roundabout ways of hinting at it.
As far as development in the form of nuances, we learned that Banri is afraid of ghosts or things that have no form. So supernatural things scare her. We also learned that Ouka is a gamer. Not even Arata pegged her as such but he also mentioned that she didn’t seem like the studious type either but she ended up with good grades.
Minami does something stupid and accidentally texts something to the group chat that all of the sisters are in; however, when she realizes her mistake, she deletes her message. Unfortunately, Kotona reads it and when she does, it sparks a bit of fear and jealousy inside of her… mainly fear. While it hasn’t escalated yet, she does spend the majority of the back half of the volume fearing that her sisters might make a move on Arata before she can! Is she developing a plan?
We barely see Sion in this volume but at the very beginning, he doesn’t seem interested in anything happening in the household. Besides, he has a girl already and her name is Yuu. Maybe we’ll see this mystery character in a future volume.
Final Thoughts
This was a pretty good follow-up and a slightly different take on the harem genre. In most harem comedies, the main character wouldn’t be aware that the girls are all crushing on him; however, Arata is keenly aware and he’s trying to do the right thing by keeping their relationships at the family level. There was even a comment that Arata seemed older and more mature for his age and it definitely shows in this volume.
The hijinks for the girls were unique and did a good job of separating them from each other. By that, I mean we got to see new nuances that make them dissimilar and interesting. Like Ouka being a gamer, Minami being into fitness, Seiha trying to be analytical, and Banri just being, well, very open and carefree. In fact, she’s the only one I’m not sold on as liking Arata. Sure, she took him out on a date but she only did so to try and scam a salesman into giving her a couple’s discount on a new phone. That’s kind of mischievous and evil. Maybe there is something more to it there and she used the scam as a ploy to cover up her real feelings. We’ll see in time, I suppose.
The only thing that worries me is how can this series keep this story fresh. Since we have already moved on to the “romance schemes” part of this tale, how many more episodic chapters are we going to get where each former sister tries their best to win over Arata’s heart before it becomes repetitive, stale, and uninteresting? I’m left wondering what this series can do to spice things up and do something unique. We’re only on the second volume but I can already see a predictable pattern. After a hot start and a good follow-up, I hope we don’t degenerate into something generic. Time will tell and I hope this series continues to surprise me!
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press
