A review by ricarda_reads
Stardust Family by Aki Poroyama

4.0

Super interesting concept about a world where people need permission to become parents, and while the execution was not what I expected, I still liked it a lot. It's about this caregiver inspector – a child basically – who gets send to people and lives with them for two weeks to evaluate if they are fit to become parents. Taking care of children is seen as the definition of happiness in this society and getting a license for parenting is considered a blessing, so the inspectors make life altering decisions in their job. The world building didn't go much deeper than that and left some open questions for me, but it was ok. The manga focused on a single evaluation and explored both the feelings of the inspector and the potential parents. From the cover I thought that this might go in the horror direction, but it was more of an emotional story. And by emotional I mean a whole range of emotions, because it was wholesome and sweet, but also sad and kinda unsettling at times. Some aspects of the story could have been a little more fleshed out, though. It didn't really explore what it means to be a good parent, and every time people were denied that privilege it was always because they physically abused the inspectors. And come on, a good parent has to check more criteria than just not hitting a child. Aspects like health, money or living standards were never discussed. I did like that it was mentioned that some people are perfectly happy without children, but I wish it had played an even bigger role. Overall it's a character focused story and it really succeeded there. All three of the main characters were explored well, and all had complex backstories that unfolded as the story went on and finally painted a coherent family picture. And that's a great accomplishment for a single volume of manga.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Yen Press for providing a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.