Working on the manga top 10 list, I feel lucky to take what I can get with Otoyomegatari.  I wish we got chapters more often, yes.  But we do get them at least, a few times a year anyway.  It’s been less than three months this go-around.  Mori Kaoru has had some health issues but nothing like Togashi, and she’s never been blocked with a series like Inoue.  A Bride’s Story is like a fully handmade artisan product – it’s just going to take a lot longer to make than a mass-produced model.

At least this chapter was full length, and that’s not a given with Otoyomegatari (especially recently).  We’re still with Mr. Smith and Talas, who’ve arrived back home in Blighty.  And unsurprisingly Henry’s fiancee has caused quite a stir.  The housemaids are all convinced she’s Indian and fret about what language she speaks and whether she can eat English food.  Henry’s father and older brother are more disapproving than surprised, but it’s his mother that’s really flipped out.  She’s against this marriage under any circumstances, and doesn’t care who knows it.

None of this is remotely surprising, given the time and place.  But the telling moment of the episode is when Henry’s dad tells him “I’m glad you’re not the oldest son”, and he rather than being insulted he replies “So am I”.  That’s the reality of aristocratic families in Europe at the time (and a lot of Japanese families even now).  As the second son Henry has the freedom to be an eccentric, a flake.  People snicker behind his back and his parents disapprove but in the end, he gets to live the life he wants – study the sciences, travel to Turkey, bring home a foreign bride.  His brother is a prisoner of his circumstances.

You sense that the father sort of approves, in a “to thine own self be true” sort of way.  Mom is a problem but as the father says, in the end it’s Henry’s decision to make.  That’s not to say this won’t be difficult.  Henry’s relations with his family could be strained or even broken.  Society will disapprove.  And Talas will have to adapt to life in a land hugely different from anything she’s known.  But in the end I suspect neither of them will be deterred by that, and in a way you have to consider Henry very lucky – born rich, but without all the responsibility of being an heir.