TsumaSho – Episodes 1-2

Content Warning; grief, parental abuse

What’s it about? Niijima Keisuke and Takae lived many happy years together as husband and wife, until a tragic accident took Takae’s life. Keisuke and his adult daughter Mai have been frozen with grief for the decade since, until Takae reappears to them as a ten-year-old girl.

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INTERIOR, OFFICE — DAY

A Crunchyroll employee works at their desk, only slightly menaced by the Eye of Sony installed overhead. It is mostly hidden by the miniature glass-blown bonzai tree. A second employee enters.

EMPLOYEE 2: I got the assets for “Tsuma, Shōgakusei ni Naru”!

EMPLOYEE 1: Put it in pile 2.

They gesture to a folder labeled “Break glass in case of Kodomo no Jikan.”

EMPLOYEE 2: No, you don’t get it! It’s not weird!

I like to imagine that this mystery composite employee is sweaty, so sweaty, like he’s about to tell you about the technical definition of ephebophilia—and yet, he is sincere. He must be. Because it’s definitely not the title length that led this show away from being released in English as “If My Wife Becomes an Elementary School Student.” Any bargain basement Narou adaptation would look at that word count and laugh. No, it’s because TsumaSho is desperately hoping to sell you on its class. To impart the promise: “It’s not going to get weird, we swear.”

I might, tiptoeing across the world’s thinnest ice, believe them.

Part of that is the decision to take on Hirabayashi Sawako as series composer, whose biggest writing gigs prior to this season were Delicious Party Precure and the shoujo rom-com Wolf Girl & Black Prince. While the first episode is about what you’d expect, tagging along behind Keisuke through his ten minutes of Up and subsequently numb grief, episode 2 switches to treating Takae as the focal character and dialing in on how weird it would be to live as an adult woman in a child’s body.

That decision is easily the most interesting thing TsumaSho has going for it, so it’s good that the first two episodes dropped at the same time. Takae extremely does not exist just to Magic Pixie Dream Girl her grieving husband’s life back into shape. She’s been dropped into a random 10-year-old’s fully formed life. It feels weird to hang out with other grade schoolers, and her recently divorced mom is controlling and emotionally abusive.

I slightly question the latter decision – it’s a bigger problem than Takae can Quantum Leap her way into solving (at least in an emotionally satisfying way), for one. There’s also a lingering bad taste in going from a genuinely harrowing scene of New Mom tearing Takae’s bedroom apart to prove she’s hiding money, channeling her anger about abandonment into abuse of her daughter, into a subsequent scene of her giggling and making plans to go out with an unseen boyfriend while we pan across images of expensive, frivolous purchases. It’s a bit “good woman/bad woman, m I rite?”

What makes it stand out is how well-formed the other scenes in Takae’s perspective are, and determined to keep one foot grounded despite its premise. When we were hanging out with her, or when the opening sequence implies that an emotional conflict is looming about Takae “stealing” her body from the little girl she was before, I found myself compelled by the writing.

But then we have to go back to her husband, and holy fuck if every fiber of Keisuke’s character isn’t a contrivance bomb waiting to happen. He’s determined to be a vocal wifeguy in public places, even after Takae explains that this will make him look like a pedophile (something I’m willing to grant grace to here because it’s not so loudly winking for the audience). He meets her in front of a public park to pick up a bento she’s made for him, and tries to give her large bills for supplies that a 10-year-old would have no business having. Despite being married for over a decade to a woman whose primary form of affection was cooking, he has absolutely no idea what it could mean when his younger lady coworker starts asking to have lunch with him. And while “grief” and “shock” could be conceivable answers to most of these in at least some sense, the show absolutely does not sell that level of texture. This man’s vibe has the sheen of a freshly waxed baby, and I am incapable of sympathizing with his emotional struggle when the mere sight of his face makes me feel like my butt licked a lemon.

I cannot hear that gormless yawp and think, “nope, definitely not gonna get weird,” and I think that’s the tension TsumaSho will carry with it for better and worse. It definitely deserves more consideration than the initial title might presume, and I’m willing to lend it at least a little more rope to hang itself. But if I see Keisuke within fifty feet of a bathtub, I’m out.

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