Creative Staff
Story/Art: Namiki Nazu
What They Say:
Thawed, sober face for you alone… ♥
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Originally serialized in Comic Bavel from the May 2024 installment, Get Excited, Dorm Mother is a twenty-four-page story from creator Namiki Nazu, who has just nine other works on the service. This marked my latest experience with this creator and I’ll admit that their first work is my third thing of theirs. I wanted to check out more of their stuff after starting with later material and the premise and artwork made it an appealing thing to try. And it never hurts to get in early on a possible creator that you may enjoy and eagerly await new works from them. And that pays off with some good new things like this one where the whole dorm experience comes to life in an amusing way.
The premise for this introduces us to college student Daiki who is living in one of the off-campus apartment buildings where there’s a dorm mother. Yukino does a great job of keeping the place going but she’s got a sullen look about her all the time and is basically called a robot by the students who live there as she doesn’t show much emotion. It took some time, but one of the freshmen named Daiki ended up in a situation where he got intimate with Yukino and has been quietly sleeping with her ever since. They’re not dating per se as they don’t go anywhere together and nobody else knows about this, but he does his best to spend time with her by helping out with some of the chores and occasionally playing video games with her. She’s not significantly older than him but she’s got a few years on him and is completely out of school herself.
Daiki’s concerned about losing her because even when they’re intimate she has this bland look to her face and never seems to show any emotion, making him question if she even likes him. So, he takes the opportunity to take the lead, something he’s not tried before, and to guide their latest encounter. She’s not exactly keen on this but lets him try while hiding all kinds of emotion. But there are just enough cracks in the facade that Daiki keeps trying new things to get to the real person here, which leads to a moment where she finally does break. It’s then that we learn that we get the usual thing about being embarrassed by how she looks in situations like this but it extends to how she views herself in general, hence going for a robot-like expression. But that first break is all Daiki needs to keep going and we see her being fully expressive for the first time – and getting a mutual confession here – that shows her that she can be loved in this way that she’s always felt awkward about.
In Summary
The story for this works pretty well as it plays out since it’s a familiar dorm kind of thing that we’ve seen in romance manga and anime since forever. While it’s usually the dorm mother resisting anything happening, here it’s all-in on it but she’s not showing any emotion about it. The layouts and setup works well as it’s given time to play out so that we get invested in the characters and that Daiki is more than just a horny college student. You could see a prequel chapter for this easily or the turnabout that’s plotted at the end as another work, but what we get here is pretty fun in seeing Daiki trying to get Yukino to relax and actually show her enjoyment of the situations. It’s cute but it takes a bit to connect with since Yukino is so stone-faced that it may not work for some people because of that. It’s a familiar subgenre but one that doesn’t always work in this genre.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 18+
Released By: FAKKU
Release Date: May 2024
MSRP: FAKKU Subscription
