This is not how Tsugu Miikura intended to return to her old hometown. “This” entails living in a two bedroom apartment with her mom, sister, and two nieces. “This” means her dad is gone. And “this” is how her three childhood friends coming to greet her return but clearly having taken a turn for the worse since she left. In a case like this, is there even a reason for Tsugu to stick around in a town where she can’t even play her guitar?
Kaori Ozaki’s other English-published work, the gods lie, was a gut-punching one-shot that looked at two characters, both with unusual family situations, a deep friendship that grew between them, and problems where there was no way out of it. The Golden Sheep looks to be covering similar themes and emotional beats, although with even more characters and starting off on the very low note of one character attempting to commit suicide (so a content warning for attempted suicide and a more mild one for references to pedophilia).
Ozaki is quickly able to establish just what kinds of people Tsugu and her old friends are and how exactly they became this way (once again family situations are a huge factor). All four of them seemed to start off quite “normally,” as sensitive, sweet, gregarious children but by their junior year of high school Tsugu is essentially the only one who retains any of these qualities and the wounds her former friends carry, like jealously and arrogance, are largely self-afflicted as well.
While some folks may say that it’s a bit extreme for all of the characters in the series so far to have issues (like disappeared dads, scumbag dads, more missing dads etc) I honestly think it’s a bit more realistic for it; one of my biggest takeaways after high school was that during that period everyone either went through a big, life-changing event (like a divorce), had a terrible family to start with, or something similar. It felt too prevalent in the lives of people around me for us all to be outliers I felt and I’m always skeptical of “realistic” stories in every medium where I don’t see that complexity of human life replicated.
I’m sure some folks will disagree but, like it or not, the central parts of The Golden Sheep so far seem to be about relationships and the tangled ways they shape our lives. I’m curious if all three of Tsugu’s friends will continue to be important players in her life, since there’s a bit of an abrupt setting change at the end of volume 1 which I don’t think will be temporary, but I’m certainly interested in seeing what even more complex scenarios Ozaki sets her characters up in next.