A review by maketeaa
Tales from the Café by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

"if you try to find happiness after this, then this child will have put those seventy days towards making you happy. in that case, its life has meaning."

i thought, at first, that maybe the rest of this series would just be a repetition of the original book, that it would just be a reiteration of the lesson that the past is something to make peace with rather than change, and while this story was an extension of that, it certainly wasn't a redunant collection of stories. in 'tales from the café', kawaguchi takes a closer look at death and bereavement, expanding on the final story from the café between kei and miki and the message of wishing happiness for miki beyond the grave. we meet a man wishing to meet his dead best friend, whose young daughter he adopted after his death, a son wishing to meet his dead mother while he himself considered suicide, a lover wishing to meet his old girlfriend after he passed away from cancer, and an old detective wishing to pass on a birthday present to his wife after she was murdered twenty-two years ago. throughout, we see miki, the widowed nagare's young daughter, bringing light and life into the café, symbolising new beginnings and rebirths through the excitement of a seven-year-old, in her songs about spring and her ever-changing phases, and kazu, who we learn is the daughter of the ghost in the chair. all the former characters share one thing in common -- a desire to hold onto the past, to punish oneself for their loved one's death, and an inability to dig themselves out of their bereavement. going back to the past, for them, means going back to make amends, to do what they believe will absolve them of their guilt -- for the man and his best friend, it is to take a video revealing to his daughter that he is not her real father,  for the son, it is to turn himself into a ghost after the death of his mother, for the lover, to make sure she is happy in the future, and for the husband, to pass on the present. but what each character learns that it is not necessary to make amends, to 'fix' anything to absolve them from their guilt -- the best way to give meaning to each death is to continue life in a way to make themselves happy. the time that the person they have lost spent in their lives is time that was spent with love, and thus, instead of using their legacy to live in sorrow, they should live with the memory of the joy they felt to experience being alive at the same time as them. a truly touching second installment to a very sweet series❤️