#slowness

This manga is about a 29-year-old man named Hiroto Ikuta, who basically goes through life in a carefree manner. He was once an aspiring actor who quit and spends his time working part-time at a fishing pond. Hiroto would somehow inherit a house from a old lady named Hanae Wada, a close friend of his. Hiroto's younger cousin who's fresh out of high school, Natsumi Kobayashi, moves in with him months later and the two begin journeys to see what life has to offer for them.

The best thing about Hirayasumi is its focus on living a slower, more deliberate life. Hiroto is the total antithesis of a "normal" human being. He takes a stand against how fast-paced life has become. His way of thinking is at odds with almost all the other characters in the series, but it's that mentality that makes him beloved.

Whenever I see Hiroto in deep thought, I see myself in him. I am trying very hard to live life in a way that values my time with people I care about compared to being productive and always having to look perfect to fit in. While being competitive is a normal feeling to have, it's pushed so much and I've seen how it has hurt people or slowly burn them out.

This is the case with one character (and the love interest), Yomogi Tachibana. She is a real estate agent who struggles to find herself despite having a successful career. Her work envelops most of her life with little time to think about her personal life. Yomogi wonders if she can settle down and find someone who loves her. She runs into Hiroto in various situations to a hilarious degree. Yomogi dislikes Hiroto at first due to his laidback nature, but she slowly begins to see his good qualities and appreciates what he's all about.

Another case is Hiroto's best friend, Hideki Noguchi. The two of them go way back since high school. However, Hideki has a wife and a child. So his life is much busier than Hiroto's. It causes some tension, which greatly builds up in a later part of the manga. Hideki blocks Hiroto on his messaging app due to constant stress at his job. He thinks he's a failure at everything (including fatherhood) for not being as great at work compared to a coworker. But Hiroto snaps Hideki out of it and has the latter making a big decision to quit his job because he was showing signs of burnout.

I'll move on to our secondary main character, Natsuki. She moves in with Hiroto to attend art school in his area. In her spare time, Natsuki draws manga. She aspires to be a mangaka and it gets the attention of a big manga publisher. However, Natsuki's editor gives her a lot of criticism about her work and it leads Natsuki to thinking that she needs more life experiences to further her worldview. At the same time, she has to balance a close friendship with Akari Yokoyama, a fellow art school student who's praised in school for her work. They both have had moments throughout the series where the friendship was tested due to both comparing each other's artistic achievements. Natsuki definitely benefits from Hiroto's presence because young people are pressured to grow up and find success fast. There are moments between the two where readers see how Natsuki slowly appreciates Hiroto's way of life.

What I appreciate most about Hirayasumi is how it encourages the idea that the change you really want to see and/or be can be found via slowing down. There's a incident in the manga where Hiroto finds that his home's water heater is broken. After realizing how much money it will cost to fix it, Hiroto runs around his area in a panic. Yet that moment de-stresses him (it allowed him to calm his racing thoughts) and he decides to take on more work by working at a bathhouse for the time being. He felt that things had to change a bit in order to keep his way of life sustainable.

This is why Hirayasumi is a wonderful manga and one of the very best in the game right now. It has a grand message centered on moving one step back to take two steps forward. But I think the most important theme is that no one's truly alone in struggling to keep up with modern life. There's many moments in the manga of all the characters hanging out together every chance they get. Everyone experiences the full range of emotions around one another, which allows them to cope and be resilient in life. Modern life has deprived many people of stable, family-like systems that truly help them thrive via meaningful connections.