I’m not at all sure what to make of Tsuma, Shougakusei ni Naru. after three episodes. There are some seemingly contradictory elements to it, and it mostly dances around the edgier aspects of the premise (for now). It does have something going for it, no question. Noriyuki Abe is a first-rate director and it shows, and the tone of the series is not puerile in any way. But I can’t say it plays as particularly grounded or realistic even within the context of that premise, at least so far.

Staging the drama around a fireworks festival is kind of low-hanging fruit for manga, but that is what it is. All I can is it’s a good thing Marika has such a terrible mother, because that gives her so much free time to hang out with her old family. Having Takae back in the picture has seemingly made Keisuke and Mai whole again (quite an indictment of his role as a father, which the story doesn’t gloss over). Mai is working at a real job again, still bad with people but trying to work her way through it. It says something that she calls Marika after a rough day in the field rather than her father, reflecting that he’s been almost as absent from her life for the past ten years as Takae has.

The long and the short of it is after reminiscing about the local fireworks festival they attended when Mai was a child, all three of them wind up going to it. Marika invites Mai along after her rough day at work (her mom is AWOL as usual), and Keisuke decides to stop by after work. As if that weren’t enough of a coincidence Kimura-san is headed there too, with a friend. They’ve obviously talked about Niijima-san before, because the friend invites him to come along with them. And you know everyone is going to bump into everyone else.

This is all pretty stock and trade stuff, to be brutally honest. But the upshot is some interesting emotional turmoil. I mean, one certainly understands why Mai would be upset to see her dad with Kimura-san under the circumstances (especially but not only because she’s awfully young for him). But I mean, one has to think upon her return Takae would have been happy on some level to have found her husband with someone new. Does she still feel that way, having spent time with her family? It’s a weird situation in every sense. It’s not like  the two of them can get remarried now, and even when Marika becomes an adult she’s still going to be 30+ years younger than he is. Folks will talk – it’d never be easy.

The other element in focus here is, again, how rotten Keisuke has been as a father to Mai. It’s understandable that this would wreck him, but as the adult he had a responsibility to be the one to smile through his tears and help his daughter move on. He didn’t, that’s clear. And that it took Takae being reincarnated to snap him to his senses is pretty damning, really. I still don’t have a grip on what the agenda is here, what the larger aims of the show are. But it is interesting and I’ll be sticking around for another week at least, as a viewer if nothing else. This one might have a ticket to the bubble with its name on it.