Alright, let’s get the elephant out of the room, the only reason anyone even heard of The Yuzuki Family’s Four Sons is because of the fact that for some reason, when the first episode went up on Crunchyroll, it was saddled with the most absolutely abysmal English subtitles. No, I’m not kidding. The subtitles were not only extremely literal, with zero syntaxes, punctuations, and sentence structure, there are times when sentences are repeated for no reason, and they even went as far as to straight up translate some characters’ names. It was especially bad because other streaming sites in other regions had their own English subtitles for it, but they were nowhere near as bad as the ones Crunchyroll got. Luckily, the ensuing backlash convinced Crunchyroll to reach out to the original licensor to give it a newer, better translation, and the subtitles have since been updated. It is a shame this is how people had to get introduced to the series, because The Yuzuki Family’s Four Sons is honestly a very sweet, heartwarming, low-key drama that deserves more appreciation than it gets.
The Yuzuki family consists of four brothers: 23-year-old teacher Hayato, stoic middle schooler Mikoto, his younger, more rambunctious and hot-headed brother Minato, and six-year-old Gakuto. A couple years back, their parents died in an unspecified accident, and the loss completely upended their lives. This left Hayato to become the closest thing his three younger brothers have to a parent, with all the responsibilities that come with it: Cooking, cleaning, paying the bills, making sure the kids are in school, and so on, on top of his own teaching career. The younger three are also made to mentally grow up faster than they should, because as much as they want to ease the burden on Hayato, they’re still kids at heart. Through growing pains and emotional ups and downs, the four Yuzuki brothers stick together and try to make the best of things, with help from their neighbors the Kirishimas and their friends.
I haven’t read the original manga for this, though after seeing how good the anime is I kind of want to now, so I don’t know how the manga’s art translated into the animation medium here. For the most part, the animation can be rather stiff, with a lot of still shots, walking scenes are rather stiff at times, and bodies don’t always move naturally. Thankfully, what the show lacks in consistent animation at times, it manages to make up for with experimenting with different animation styles at times and creative storyboarding. You know how sometimes live-action footage or backgrounds were used in Bocchi The Rock to depict the main character’s mental state or for the sake of a joke? The Yuzuki Family’s Four Sons does the same thing, though primarily for the former. I don’t know if it was done just to save on the budget or a deliberate artistic choice, but if it’s the latter, I thought it was used pretty well. I did like one scene in episode 8 where Minato and Uta accidentally eavesdrop on Gakuto’s conversation with Waka and Kojiro and are so freaked out they run through town screaming their heads off, and they’re running through live-action scenery, which was pretty funny. The ending theme even shows the characters as tiny wooden figures in a lit up toy house, which is just cute as hell. The series also experiments with other animation styles at times: In episode 2, a young Mikoto’s simmering frustrations about being the middle child and resentment towards Minato getting all the attention are depicted as shaky child drawings, and Gakuto’s few memories of his parents are drawn in charcoal. While the animation for this show isn’t the best, it’s certainly not the worst, and good directing on the director’s part helped to keep it afloat. I don’t have as much to say on the soundtrack, but it was nice and did its job well.
But it’s really the show’s writing that helps it shine, especially around its characters. This is a quiet family drama at heart, and all four of the brothers have their own unique personalities, strengths, weaknesses, and ways of coping with the events that followed their parents’ untimely deaths. Every episode is told from a different brother’s point of view, rotating between the four of them depending on who’s the focus. As far as character development goes, Minato and Gakuto get the lion’s share of it since they tend to get more screen time compared to the other two, though that’s not to say Hayato and Mikoto don’t get anything to do. The series itself has a fairly small ensemble of characters and does an admirable job of getting you to care about all of them and be invested in them and their plight. I’ll admit, I absolutely love Kojiro and his friendship with Gakuto. As somebody who often befriended people outside my age range throughout my childhood, I could totally buy their chemistry. I do feel Mikoto got the short end of the stick when it comes to character development though, because not only is he completely defined by his love for his brothers, Minato in particular, other than in episode 2 (Which mostly consists of a flashback, mind you), he comes off as way too perfect and flawless a lot of the time, with the show itself even joking that he’s basically a little Buddha. One can argue that he fixates on his brothers as a coping mechanism for his grief around his parents’ deaths, but I don’t think that came through very well in the anime. This might have been remedied in the manga, but since the English scanlations haven’t gotten very far, I don’t know how true this is.
There are some other little things about the show that felt really off to me, though they didn’t hurt my enjoyment of it in any way. For one, something about the way Minato’s face is drawn just looks…off to me. I don’t know what it is, but his constantly squinty-looking eyes and his round face don’t feel like they go together. But I know it’s like that in the manga too. Second, this series seems to believe children between the ages of 3-6 are able to talk and think at a higher maturity level than they’re actually capable of doing. I don’t interact with children much in my daily life, but my cousin has a young daughter who’s turning 5 this year, and I’ve seen her enough to know that children around the ages of 3-6 don’t speak in perfect, full-on sentences that feel more in line with someone in the 8-12 range would say. This was present in episode 2 with the young versions of Minato and Mikoto, but it’s especially prominent with Gakuto, as he’s canonically six years old, but constantly talks like he’s a very well-spoken adult, with perfect sentences, complete with worrying about how his actions could cause trouble for others, which is completely unrealistic for a child his age. Don’t get me wrong, I love Gakuto, he’s a cutie and deserves all the love in the world, as do all the other characters in the show, but I almost feel like the series is idealizing him. I’m no expert on child development, but most kids that age tend to speak in short, slightly broken sentences that rely on dumb child logic. Just watch any video featuring a kid aged 3-6 on Facebook, YouTube, or whatever for further evidence on this. Hell, I myself didn’t start speaking verbally until age 6 because of being autistic. I honestly do have to question what Shizuki Fujisawa’s views on children are, because they really need to do a better job at portraying young children more accurately.
In all honesty though, these are just minor nitpicks in the grand scheme of things, because I do genuinely like this show and think it absolutely deserved better than the awful first impression the bad subtitles it was saddled with gave it. The Yuzuki Family’s Four Sons lives and dies by the strength of its writing and emotional honesty, and while it wasn’t able to give all its characters their due, it managed to make me feel for these dumb little goobers and get invested in their lives and want them to be happy. I also appreciate that their parents’ deaths aren’t simply used for one-off cheap angst but make it the driving force behind literally everything they do for both themselves, each other, and their peers, so it never feels like it’s used for melodrama or emotional manipulation. To me anyway, your mileage may vary. But yeah, if you’re hankering for a low key family drama that manages to tug at your heartstrings without the overwrought sentimentality that goes with it but still manages to make you feel warm and fuzzy, definitely give The Yuzuki Family’s Four Sons a try.
