Everyone deserves a second chance.
Just because you find yourself in a bit of a slump one day doesn’t mean you’ll be stuck forever. It just means you need to find a way to pull yourself out. Thankfully for the shut-in Kamakura, the mysterious Katsuyoshi quite literally jumps through his window to help him get back on his feet.
You can check out this series for yourself below!
What happens?
After messing up at work and swearing at his supervisor by accident, our main character Kamakura finds himself out of a job. He seems to have been in a depression for a while, with the job being a leading cause of his negativity, but even after losing the job, he’s struggling.
Now at home, he has trouble even stepping out his front door. This has caused him to rot in bed, letting his garbage pile up to a rather disgusting degree. The garbage is the catalyst for a new start in his life, as his landlady comes by, worried about the smell. She requests one of the other residents go in and check on him, and he hops in through his recently broken window.
Kamakura is rather embarrassed about having strangers in his apartment, but his landlady couldn’t care less about his feelings. She threatens to kick him out for treating the apartment like a dump, and even when the other man promises to help clean up, she is still rather adamant that he get out.
Kamakura really doesn’t want to accept help from this man, Katsuyoshi, but he doesn’t have much of a choice. Katsuyoshi whisks him down to his own apartment, and forces him to shower until he doesn’t smell like garbage anymore.
Katsuyoshi insists that Kamakura stay with him at his apartment until they can clean the garbage-filled apartment, and Kamakura reluctantly agrees. At first, during the day, as he is currently jobless, Kamakura would just hang out at Katsuyoshi’s while he went to work. Once he returned home, the two would go up to Kamakura’s apartment together and clean. And it’s through this cleaning that the two men slowly get to know each other bit by bit.
Through their bonding, Kamakura slowly begins to gain his confidence back and is eventually able to go up to clean by himself while Katsuyoshi is at work. This had been going well until Kamakura overheard the landlady talking poorly about him to Katsuyoshi. While Katsuyoshi did defend him, her words were rather pointed. She talked about how people with mental health problems really can’t be helped, and clearly struck a nerve with both men, though only Kamakura outwardly showed it.
We soon learn that it’s not just Kamakura that is gripling with things, as Katsuyoshi eventually opens up about his history with his younger brother. He explains that when he was a bit younger, his brother was similar to Kamakura in that he had a poor experience at school, leading to him locking himself in his room. Katsuyoshi didn’t know how to properly deal with him at the time, so instead he blamed his brother for causing his life to become stressful.
He cites this as the reason he first reached out to help Kamakura. After making this confession, the two of them continue slowly helping each other grow and heal from their past traumas.
My thoughts about this volume
I really enjoyed the focus on character growth that this story had! Typically, I find one-shots tend to focus moreso on romance rather than plot, but I was pleasantly surprised by this one. Kamakura’s outburst at the beginning of the series was so absolutely relatable, and I can also see it as the reason he begins having difficulties leaving his house.
I found the pacing also to be rather believable (to a certain degree, you have to suspend your belief a little bit with manga), with both Kamakura and Katsuyoshi clearly healing come the end of the volume.
In terms of characters, I found both Kamakura and Katsuyoshi to be rather likable, but I personally enjoyed Kamakura’s character a little bit more. At times, it felt like Katsuyoshi’s character was only there as a convenient way to help Kamakura continue to grow, but this only happened a few times. I do wish we could have seen a little more of Katsuyoshi – maybe a spin-off where we see his family?
What I liked most about this volume
❤️ Katsuyoshi literally forcing Kamakura to shower until he didn’t smell like garbage anymore – I can only imagine how bad he smelt, living in that apartment.
🧡 Kamakura actually staying in Katsuyoshi’s apartment the first time he was left alone. I feel like if he instead returned to his own apartment, the manga would have had a very different story.
💛 Katsuyoshi being given a backstory. I was happy to be given an explanation as to why he was so casual about bringing a total stranger into his house.
💚 The landlady’s character. While she absolutely sucked, she did feel like a real, intolerant person.
Maddies Manga 
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