Tsuma, Shogakusei Ni Naru (妻、小学生になる) is a 12 episode super natural drama based on the manga of the same name by Murata Yayu. The anime originally aired during the Fall of 2024.
Niijima Keisuke lost his wife Takae ten years earlier in a traffic accident. He was left to raise their daughter, Mai, by himself. Takae was everything to him and with her gone he sank into a deep despair, moving through life without any focus. Their house continued to be a dark and depressing place for the decade following her death, both daughter and father living in perpetual mourning. One evening as they sat to consume a miserable meal from the convenience store the door bell rings. Keisuke answers it to find a young girl who tells him she is his wife. Stunned he invites her inside at which point she goes through the process of convincing the two skeptical adults that she really is Takae reincarnated. She tells them that her old memories began returning recently and something triggered when she passed by their house one day. She felt it was time to approach them and not a moment too soon, looking at the state of them and their lives
Keisukei and Mai are overjoyed with this miraculous return of Takae, but she is more cautious. She is the daughter of a recently divorced single mother and doesn't have complete freedom to spend time with them as they would like. She starts by telling Keisuke that she will begin making lunches for him a few time during the week. Takae wants to make sure that her family can move on and live their best life, uncertain why she is back among the living and what it means. Aside from the strange reality of having the memories and personality of a middle aged mother while living as a ten year old girl, Takae has the difficult situation at her home to content with. Her mother, Chika, is often neglectful of her daughter, usually away from home, leaving the young girl to fend for herself. This allows Takae some freedom to spend time with her old family but when she becomes careless her mothers fury unleashes and the young girl finds her self in a precarious position between the old life as Takae and the current life as a girl named Marika.
Taking this title of this series at face value sets up very different expectations. "My Wife is a Grade School Student" has a significantly more comedic or potentially perverted quality to it, that absolutely hides the heavy soap opera like drama that the story really presents. The potential optics of the series is very likely the reason the Japanese name was kept when it was licensed in the west, officially shortened to TsumaSho. While at first uncertain about what the overall story would be, this became a quality drama with focused story telling and realistically motivated characters. There are moments where the melodrama becomex too think but the story is compelling and pushes through. It is both a study on the age old yearning for reconnecting with lost loved ones and a thought exercise of what such a situation would be like in reality. How do you hide this sort of reincarnation? It would be almost impossible to convince the authorities about what was going on. When a 50 year old widower is being overly familiar with a 10 year old girl that he should realistically have no interaction with, the authorities might be a bit...protective.
As with a lot of slice of life stories, the artwork isn't the focal point of the anime but that doesn't mean its terrible. The character designs are realistic and believable, something highly appreciated. The story doesn't dig into the mechanics of Takae's reincarnation until the back half of the story. As they begin to question why such a thing has happened a potential resolution to the situation begins to come into focus for them. This adds another layer of drama and tension to the story as the Niijima's face the very real possibility that Takae's reincarnation may not be permanent. What would you do if you could reconnect with a lost loved one again?
The series was simulcast on Crunchyroll. Hopefully the manga will get licensed at some point as well!
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