Tatsu “The Immortal Dragon” has a mission, to be the world’s best househusband to support his hard-working, office lady wife. Some may think that this legendary (former) yakuza member isn’t cut out for the task but it turns out that there are a lot more similarities to the work than you might expect!
I saw brief screenshots of The Way of the Househusband ages ago, before VIZ Media had licensed it, and I’m sad to say that if you also saw those screenshots that you’ve likely already seen all of the best gags from this first volume. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still really great jokes (and I could see why some of the other, less spectacular jokes didn’t get shared as much online) but I still felt vaguely cheated once I realized just how many of these gags I had already seen. And it didn’t help my case that the pacing of the story is so quick; there are nine chapters in this volume, all around 15 pages long, and it felt like everything flew by way too fast and like the volume was over in an instant! This is an on-going series, with four volumes out to date in Japan, so at least there are more gags coming down the line.
Although, for me I think I might be satisfied with just this one volume. I did like the jokes quite a bit, and I would read further volumes if I stumbled across them at the library or such, but I didn’t find myself immediately looking up the release date for volume 2 the way I would have with say the latest volume of Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun. Tatsu is practically the only important character in the story so far which does mean that the gags start feeling a little similar by the end of the volume since there’s only so much comedy you can do with one character. Sure Tatsu’s wife is a reoccurring character (but we haven’t even gotten her name yet) and Tatsu’s old underling Masa also appears a few times, but both of those characters only appear in order to directly interact with Tatsu and to create comedic situations with him, not on their own (outside of two of the bonus manga sections).
In other comedies with bigger casts, like the rom-com Horimiya, you’ll get scenes where characters run into funny situations on their own, times where something strange happens and they happen to be in a group with a few other characters, or when comedy happens specifically because of the characters involved. That last kind is basically the only comedy The Way of the Househusband engages in — it’s comedic specifically because it’s a situation Tatsu is involved in and sometimes other characters are also involved in the situation just to create a different issue. This isn’t necessarily bad per-say, but I prefer a greater variety of comedy. I hope that volume two of Househusband expands the cast or at least lets the side characters do a bit more of the heavy lifting in terms of comedy (there’s a ton of potential with the fact that Tatsu’s wife’s favorite show is a police-themed, magical girl property and he certainly has no warm feelings towards cops).
Regardless I’m sure there are still a surprising number of gags that Kousuke Oono can continue to milk from this comedy of opposites and I hope the series continues to have fun with them.