My Brother the Shut-in

tl;dr: A manga about solid character growth that’s realistic to the point of being kind of dull. This story is one focused on normal people living their lives the best they can, dealing with various relationships and growing in the process. There aren't any extreme situations or larger than life events. There aren’t any extreme coincidences or exaggerated melodrama. Characters don’t have ridiculous back stories or crazy character quirks. And things come to a reasonably happy but not extremely so end. It’s all very believable and realistic. I don’t inherently think that that’s a good thing though, as just reading about normal people being normal isn’tall that interesting. This story isn’t that bad, in that it does start with a pretty interesting concept of a shut in trying to turn his life around. Still, as it goes on and he seems to get over his initial hump, he begins acting like a pretty normal person that’s socially anxious so it didn’t really feel all that unique at that point. Just the story of a brother and sister trying to live normal lives. Both of them very much do grow over the course of the story and that is satisfying to a degree, but it's pretty normal growth, the type that everyone goes through one way or another and so it doesn’t feel all that inspirational. I suppose part of this is the framing for the manga, wherein it doesn’t seem to be trying to make the story stand out all that much in that even moments that were really important and seemed to be trying to be impactful felt subdued. If told well enough, even stories about minor problems can still seem major if told in such a fashion, but the way this story was told felt like it didn’t really try to do that in that it never really felt all that mysterious, suspenseful, or engaging. There was never really all that much tension. It’s a solid enough story in terms of the general plot and characters involved, but it’s just lacking oomph in a lot of ways. The art was solid enough.