TsumaSho (Japanese: 妻、小学生になる。, Hepburn: Tsuma, Shōgakusei ni Naru, lit.'My Wife Will Become an Elementary School Student') is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yayū Murata. It was originally a one-shot published in Houbunsha's seinen manga magazine Weekly Manga Times in April 2018, before being serialized in the same magazine from July 2018 to December 2022. The series has been collected into fourteen tankōbon volumes. A television drama adaptation aired from January to March 2022. An anime television series adaptation produced by Studio Signpost premiered in October 2024.
Plot
After his wife Takae Niijima's untimely death in a car accident, Keisuke Niijima, an honest, loving but overly dependent family man, becomes despondent and a shell of his former self. He closes himself off, wallowing in his own despair, not paying any attention to his now adult daughter, Mai. One night, while having store-bought dinners, they answer the door to an elementary school student named Marika Shiraishi, who claims to be a reincarnation of Takae. Keisuke dismisses her, only for Marika to tell him such facts that only Takae would have known, proving that she is in fact, Takae Niijima in an elementary school student's body. Takae immediately scolds both of them for living such unfulfilling, sad lives and helps them get back on track by helping Mai get more confident and pursue a more social job, through which Mai meets a seemingly rude and blunt, but actually kind man named Renji Aikawa, whom she ultimately gets close with and decides to marry. Takae, through Marika, also helps Keisuke regain his old cheery but rash self by meeting with him often to give him handmade bentos.
Throughout the first half of the story, the Niijimas (with Marika) enjoy traveling to many different places and making memories along the way. Marika's mother, Chika Shiraishi is also introduced as a mostly absent mother who shows little to no love towards her daughter's kindness and who also skips out over her annual sports day to go spend it with her lover named Hiroki, who is revealed to have been two-timing with her.
After some time meeting with Marika in secret, Keisuke finds out about Chika's reputation as an absent mother and confronts her for it, after which the Niijimas come out about their secret to Chika regarding Takae's "reincarnation". Chika, although very skeptical at first, begins to believe after seeing how Marika/Takae acts with the Niijimas. Although happy that Marika is occupied when she is busy, it is revealed that she has developed an irritable personality after having her ex-husband leave her due to a gambling addiction and not having caring parents herself. She does regret her past actions and is shown to truly care for her daughter as Marika discovers a photo from long back, consisting of her and Chika smiling at an amusement park inside a box named "Treasure".
Throughout the story, Chika tries to get her act back together for Marika as she quits her part-time job for a more stable paying one. She also shifts to an apartment near the Niijimas so that Takae can get closer to them as well as for her new sales job. After a meeting with Renji's family who lives far away, Takae feels very content with her former family's situation, which inadvertently causes her to temporarily switch with the original Marika Shiraishi, a middle schooler now, who has no recollection of the past year she spent with the Niijimas as Takae or how her mother has started to soften around her.
After a while, Takae comes back. Due to this experience, Takae begins to question if her coming back is really a reincarnation, as Takae does not have any recollection of the time that she was not in control of Marika's body. Concerned with this, she decides to go meet the young author of a best-selling book, Izumo Rion, whose book shares an eerily similar plot and setting to that of Takae and who also had a freakout on television like her own. After meeting up with him, she discovers that Izumo is in fact, a 30-year-old man who has possessed the body of the 15-year-old Izumo Rion after having the regret of not being able to pursue his dream of becoming a successful novelist. Izumo also mentions that after he felt content with what he had achieved after publishing the book, Izumo's soul came back, shocked to see himself in the middle of all that attention out of nowhere. Takae, after hearing this, connects the dots and realizes that Takae had possessed Marika's body after regretting dying and worrying about her family and that Marika came back to her body after Takae felt content with how her family was feeling and living, but came back after thinking about Keisuke's reaction to her leaving forever.
After a long conversation with Chika, Takae feels sorry for her as she is inadvertently, taking Marika's time on Earth from her while using her body, while also not allowing Chika to have a chance to be with her daughter as a changed woman. She finally decides that she has to leave this body for the better of everyone else but knows that she would have to convince Keisuke and Mai to learn to let go of their sorrows.
After an emotional conversation during an onsen trip with the Niijimas, Takae convinces Keisuke to begin to let go of his former spouse and learn to live life with no regrets and live like the parent that Mai truly deserves. Slowly but surely, with the help of his colleague, Konomi Moriya, he begins to have a more positive outlook on life and starts to become more self-dependent by making his own bentos, learning to live without meeting Takae/Marika often and not being as rash as before. After a long, heated and emotional conversation with Mai, he manages to convince her to begin to let go of her mother as well. Although it is tough for Mai to lose her mother again in a sense, she decides to listen to her father as she knows Keisuke is hurting more so than she ever could, having to make the conscious choice to lose his loving wife again.
They finally decide to stage a fake proposal between Keisuke and Konomi to convince Takae that they have moved on from her demise, which leads to Takae's soul finally having no regrets and for her to leave Marika's body, leaving for her heavenly abode to rest in peace, urging her daughter to "be strong and live a good life".
Finally, the story ends with everyone having changed as people from this entire experience, with Izumo's other soul moving on as well after confessing to the partner he wasn't able to in the past, with Marika's and Chika's relationship improving, and with the Niijimas finally having learned to live their life with no regrets, Mai having a daughter with Renji and Keisuke shown to be living with happiness with his own now happy family.
Written and illustrated by Yayū Murata, TsumaSho was initially a one-shot published in Houbunsha's seinen manga magazine Weekly Manga Times on April 27, 2018.[1] It was serialized in the same magazine from July 27, 2018,[10] to December 2, 2022.[11] Fourteen tankōbon volumes were published from April 2019 to March 2023.[12][13]
A spin-off manga titled Hatsukoi Aite no Kimi wa Dare? (初恋相手の君は誰？, lit.'Who Are You, My First Love?') was serialized in the same magazine from March 8 to May 10, 2024.[14][15][16] It was published in a single tankōbon volume on October 16 of the same year.[17]
A television drama adaptation was announced on September 17, 2021.[30] It was directed by Toshio Tsuboi, Takeyoshi Yamamoto, Maiko Ōuchi, and Naoki Katō, based on a screenplay by Satomi Ōshima [ja], and the music was composed by the instrumental band Pascals.[31][32] Yoshihiko Nakai and Chie Masuda served as the producers.[31] The series aired on TBS from January 21 to March 25, 2022.[33][34]Yuga [ja] performed the theme song "Tomoshibi" (灯火).[33]Netflix is streaming the series.[35]
Yako, Shōgakusei ni Naru, a spin-off series featuring an original story, was released on the Japanese streaming service Paravi from February 11 to March 25, 2022. Hidetaka Sakamoto, Hiroyuki Tamekawa, and Saya Hirosawa directed the series from a screenplay by Masashi Suwa.[36][37]
Anime
An anime adaptation was announced on March 16, 2023.[38] It was later confirmed to be a television series produced by Studio Signpost and directed by Noriyuki Abe, with scripts supervised and written by Sawako Hirabayashi [ja], characters designed by Narihito Sekikawa, and music composed by Hiroko Yamasaki [ja].[39] It premiered on October 6, 2024, on Tokyo MX and other networks.[3][40] The opening theme song is "Ai no Reunion" (アイノリユニオン, lit.'Reunion of Love') performed by Pachae, while the ending theme song is "Hidamari" performed by Ms. Ooja.[7][41]Crunchyroll licensed the series.[42]Medialink licensed the series in South and Southeast Asia for streaming on Ani-One Asia's YouTube channel.[43]
"Mother and Family" Transliteration: "Haha to, Kazoku" (Japanese: 母と、家族。)
Masayuki Matsumoto
Sawako Hirabayashi
Hiroyuki Fukushima
November 3, 2024 (2024-11-03)
6
"Memories, Creaking" Transliteration: "Omoi, Kishin de" (Japanese: 想い、きしんで。)
Takeru Ogiwara
Sawako Hirabayashi
Takeru Ogiwara
November 10, 2024 (2024-11-10)
7
"A Sign of Happiness" Transliteration: "Shiawase no, Kizashi" (Japanese: しあわせの、兆し。)
Nene Nimura
Sawako Hirabayashi
Noriyuki Abe
November 17, 2024 (2024-11-17)
8
"Who Are You?" Transliteration: "Anata, Dare?" (Japanese: あなた、誰？)
Ema Saitō & Mitsutoshi Satō
Sawako Hirabayashi
Ema Saitō
November 24, 2024 (2024-11-24)
9
"I Want to Share How I Feel" Transliteration: "Tsutaetai, Kono Kimochi" (Japanese: 伝えたい、この気持ち。)
Nozomi Fukui
Sawako Hirabayashi
Nozomi Fukui
December 1, 2024 (2024-12-01)
Reception
In 2019, TsumaSho ranked 11th at the fifth Next Manga Awards in the print category.[46] By March 2024, the manga had over 3 million copies in circulation.[2]
Notes
^ abcProduction staff information is taken from the ending credits of each episode.
^From Episode 2, episodes were released on U-Next, Anime Hōdai [ja], Crunchyroll, and Ani-One Asia one week before their televised airings.[44]
