Baby & Me is the slice-of-life story of elementary school student, Takuya Enoki, and his younger brother, Minoru. Their mother died in a car accident so it’s up to Takuya to take care of Minoru while his dad works. Becoming your brother’s nanny while still dealing with your mother’s death is not easy for Takuya. He knows he’s missing out on the carefree life his classmates have and Minoru isn’t always an easy kid to take care of. Takuya is a good child but the stress of dealing with this responsibility is told very well. He gets mad, frustrated—it’s nice to have a main character who isn’t unrealistically positive. It’s a bad situation but he does his best to handle it, for better or worse.
What makes Baby & Me so good is the variety of stories and characters. We start with the conflict between Takuya and Minoru, but slowly, the story pans out to different relationships with different characters. Takuya’s classmates and their younger siblings, Takuya’s dad, The Enoki’s neighbors, we’re introduced more and more to people in the Enoki brothers’ community and each are intriguing—having their own struggles, big and small, while handling them in different ways. I love reading a chapter about Takuya then having the next chapter focused on a different character with Takuya in a supporting role. We even get one-off stories about certain characters that appear only once or are usually background characters and their individual situations are just as interesting as the main characters. This keeps the series fresh. You never get bored because anyone can be the main character in a particular chapter.
Don’t get the wrong idea. Baby & Me has drama but is not afraid to be fun and funny too. Many slice-of-life mangaka have a hard time balancing the good and bad moments in their characters lives but Baby & Me excels at it. Most characters get funny moments. The Kimuras (Enoki’s neighbors), especially, are a hoot and Minoru’s daycare principle had me cracking up. With Baby & Me you really don’t know if a chapter will make you laugh or cry.
If you like slice-of-life stories give Baby & Me a read. One of the best in its genre. Highly recommended!
Sidenote: I just love the Hawaii chapter didn’t have every character they met somehow able to speak Japanese. The mangaka used that element of the story very well.
Mammoth Base Opera Castle 