The Fall 2024 Manga Guide

Sheltering Eaves

What's It About? 

High schooler Yoru was sent to a group home at the age of ten after her mother abused her. Tenjaku, a boy the same age, took her under his wing. Now, as teenagers, Yoru and Tenjaku only have a year left before they are legally required to leave the home, and they must pack a lot of growing up into a short period of time. The foremost decision in Yoru's mind: what to do about the feelings for Tenjaku that she's sheltered in her heart during their years together...

Sheltering Eaves has a story and art by Rie Aruga, with English translation by Sawa Matsueda Savage. This volume was lettered by Dietrich Premier. Published by Kodansha Comics (November 12, 2024).

Content Warning: child abandonment and abuse

Is It Worth Reading?

There's a fine line between emotional manipulation and a genuinely moving story. Rie Aruga generally lands on the right side of that line, but the Perfect World creator's newest work, Sheltering Eaves, is a little less clear with that distinction. Set in a group home for children in what we'd call “the system,” Sheltering Eaves is remarkably unsubtle, with lines musing why parents hurt or abandon their children and the culpability those children feel hitting with the force of a sledgehammer. Is it necessary for the story to develop in a way that makes sense? Maybe; it's a bit too early to really tell. But the bigger question is whether or not it's written this way assuming readers who grew up outside of the foster care system will never be able to understand what the protagonists are going through.

It might be clearer if the plot got a bit further off the ground in this volume. The story follows two kids at a medium-sized group home, Yoru and Tenjaku. Both were abused by their biological parents, albeit in different ways; Yoru emotionally and Tenjaku physically. We enter the story with Yoru at age ten, when she enters the home and becomes the target of another boy there, Yudai. Tenjaku stands up for Yoru, and the two form a close bond, one that's still there but interestingly tense when the story proper gets going, in their second year of high school. It's not fully clear whether their feelings have morphed into something more romantic or not, although one of the other boys plainly has a crush on Yoru. But both teens are trying to work through their impending exit from the foster care system, which will occur when they turn eighteen, no matter what.

It's all very heavy-handed, but there's still a very human core to the book. Yoru and Tenjaku have both lived through abandonment and abuse, and that makes the thought of being kicked out of the only stable home they've ever known alarming, if not downright terrifying. For Yoru, at least, leaving Tenjaku is the scariest part, but she also doesn't seem to feel like she has the right to say that, even to find out if he maybe feels the same. She muses a lot about how weird it is that the group home calls itself “her home” but is preparing to kick her out for the crime of turning eighteen, and it's painfully obvious that she feels that's a more egregious abandonment than anything her mother did. Yoru is desperate for a stability she's never known, and she wants Tenjaku to be that for her. But that's a lot to put on a teenage boy, and she knows it. As she says, she's always just one drop of water away from a flood washing everything away.

Sheltering Eaves is a lot in its first volume, and I don't see that changing. Aruga proved with Perfect World that she can dish out the angst and still bring things to a happy conclusion, so I do trust her as a creator. But the question is whether or not it will be worth the emotional turmoil to get to that point. I think this deserves at least one more volume to find out, but with the caveat that this could cross the fine line between emotionally manipulative and genuine.

First and foremost: Sheltering Eaves requires a big content warning for child abuse. The story revolves around Yoru and Tenjaku, two youths facing their future after spending much of their childhoods at a temporary custody center (think a foster family). The difficult questions teenagers normally face are replaced with harder questions: “Who will love me if even my parents won't? What hope do we have in a world that looks down upon us for not having had normal childhoods? What's the point of maintaining links to people that don't love us?”

Yoru and Tenjaku's relationship is at the center of these difficult questions they both ask each other. Their dependence upon each other is as romantic as it is tragic. Tenjaku doesn't want Yoru to stay dependent upon him, but he finds himself needing her as much as she needs him. And Yoru doesn't know where to go once she ages out of the system. It's emotionally harrowing, seeing two youths who should be enjoying their days having to dread their future—more so when problems from their past keep trying to edge into their lives.

Being that Sheltering Eaves deals so much with children in temporary custody, the series offers a few important notes about the system—notably, that the system has changed such that you are no longer cut off at 18. But it doesn't quite become didactic. This is a story about people in a different walk of life, who have a different path they have to take on the way to self-actualization. Some days, it's easier. Some days, it's not.

If there was one major flaw with Sheltering Eaves, the art is a little plain for the story. And again, the content warnings are there—this story deals with heavy subject matter. But I strongly recommend Sheltering Eaves either way. I hope these kids come out alright.