AKA: 妻、小学生になる。(The English title is a contraction of the Japanese title, Tsuma, Shogakusei ni Naru, "My Wife Will Become an Elementary School Student", per Wiki)

Genre: Fantasy/Drama

Length: Television series, 12 episodes, 24 minutes each

Distributor: Currently available streaming on crunchyroll.

Content Rating: TV-14 (Adult themes, suggestive dialogue)

Related Series: N/A

Also Recommended: The Boy and the Heron

Notes: Based on manga by Yayu Murata, published by Houbunsha

Rating:

TsumaSho

Synopsis

Decade-deceased wife and mother Takae Niijima is apparently reincarnated- in the body of a 10-year old girl known to her mother as Marika Shiraishi. This event has profound consequences for TWO households- but is it exactly as it seems?

Review

The first impulse one has when told the general scenario of this show is that it must be some adult-in-a-child's-body pedophile trash like, say, Recorder and Randsell or (God help us) Mujaki no Rakuen.

But it's NOT that. And while Keisuke Niijima might gush over the return of his wife (and start to indulge in PDAs with her, which are of course frowned on in Japan even with normal couples), Takae/Marika (we'll call her that) shuts him down pretty quickly- she's very conscious that this makes him look like a child molester, whatever the reality of the situation. The show may indeed involve the exploitation of a child, but it's not... THAT kind of exploitation, at all.

I got the impression that Takae was/is a much more pragmatic person than the idealized protrait of her Keisuke seems to carry around in his head. Keisuke in fact initially comes across as a bit of an idiot. In a flashback at the beginning of the show (and the beginning of their relationship), Takae bails him out of nearly losing a sale due to inadequate preparation of his sales pitch (which is almost a capital crime in Japan). He and their (now grown) daughter Mai NOW live a nearly hikikomori existence in their apartment. (He works, but that's about as social as either of them are.) As noted, he rhapsodizes over his "returned" Takae without giving much thought to either propriety or the realities of the situation. Both Keisuke and Mai quickly realize that this little girl IS Takae, when she tells them details only they would know. Takae/Marika says that she's "recovered her memories" of her previous life, but a Buddhist priest suggests it might be something other than "ordinary" (?) reincarnation. To his credit (finally!), Keisuke might be the one who puts two and two together here, and realizes that miracles don't always last forever- in fact, sometimes they shouldn't.

In the meantime, the heart of the show's story is the salutary effect Mom's reappearance has on both members of her family, but on Mai in particular. It seems the instant Mai (with Mom's encouragement) gets a job, it leads to a romantic relationship with a young fisherman named Renji Aikawa. (This all seemed to progress awfully quickly, but we're told the show's events cover a year.) While I initially liked Mai more than I liked her dad, my views kind of did a 180 later. A young woman in Keisuke's office, named Konomi Moriya, eventually strikes up a relationship ("bento buddies") with Keisuke, and while I thought her a bit young for a serious relationship with a middle-aged man, she at least IS of age, and could be a companion for him; but Mai sees this as a betrayal of Mom, even though Mom can no longer BE his companion in some senses, being in a body that's only 10 years old, you know, and being that this is, again, NOT a pedophile show.

I was wondering what the show's attitude would be toward remarriage. The cultural ideal of course is that you find your destined companion (the "Red String of Fate" in Japan), and when you lose them, that's it, no one can replace them. But we live in a real world rather than an "ideal" one, and real empty hearts sometimes need to be filled. (Poe's short story "Eleonora" arose out of his working out of his OWN feelings about it.) Takae/Marika herself seems more generous about this than Mai is. I won't say how the show resolves- or DOESN'T resolve- this question, though if it DIDN'T I'd say it was taking the coward's way out.

Oh, and then there's Chika, the biological mother of Marika. She seems cruel to her, but Takae's personality understands that Chika's anger comes from the stress of being a single mother trying to get by in a low-wage job. When Chika finally understands that her child is no longer the Marika she knew, she experiences guilt over her treatment of, and grief at the loss of, her "real" daughter. Guilt and grief can sometimes make people kinder, I guess.

The show's closing ballad, titled "Hidamari", is absolutely gorgeous.

Oh, and one more thing I'm noting- when trying to explain to Takae/Marika's elementary-school classmates why her personality seems to change, she says she's been possessed by a "fairy". I thought it was SOP in Japan to attribute this sort of thing to a fox spirit.

The Rec might seem a little strange, but it's ALSO about someone who meets their deceased mom (in other guise.)

I'd heard the show's source manga was very popular in Japan, and if this show WERE pedophilia-friendly, I'd be very concerned about that. But it's not about that at all; it IS about some very important questions about the perils of retreat from the world, AND also about the perils of refusing to let go, when the time comes to do so. NOBODY here is without blame- even Takae, for all her love and wisdom, becomes a threat to someone else's very existence. Its treatment of some important issues of the basic concerns of humanity (i.e., love and death) is earnest (if maybe a little superficial, and, toward the end, melodramatic); but this is ENTERTAINMENT, not a treatise. — Allen Moody

Recommended Audience: Well, let's see what Crunchy says: "Adult themes (yes); drug/alcohol use (also yes- Chika's got some issues); smoking (can't remember if that was Chika or one of her boyfriends); Suggestive Dialogue (Chika's got some poor taste in boyfriends, so yes to that too. It seems they betray her a lot, too, which ALSO doesn't help her attitude.) Crunchy forgot domestic violence (I think this was verbal rather than physical, but poor Marika was a pretty cowed little girl.) Let's say it's mainly Mature Themes here. 14+, according to Crunchy.