A Lighthearted Story about Family, Loss and Love

There used to be a review here that summed up my thoughts on this manga super well, but seeing as though it's been removed for some reason I guess I need to put one up now.

So to give the quickest summary, Dad, the Beard Gorilla and I is a 4-koma slice of life comedy about a girl and her father moving in with her uncle after the death of her mother. Throughout the story, the characters have to deal with different struggles that arise due to their new condition, like learning to live with people you're not used to, learning to move past grief and into healing and learning to love other people. Now that's a great setup and all, but does it deliver?

So going first into the plot and pacing of the story, one thing you need to understand going into it is that this is a slice of life at its core. That means that there's no set start or end to the story or one singular narrative to follow. Instead, it basically splits its focus between the three main characters who each go through their own unique circumstances. With the daughter it's how to adjust to a new school and a new life without her mother there, as well as learning to get along with her uncle. For the father, it's mainly about learning how to move past the death of his wife while keeping her memory alive. For the uncle... well his story isn't as deep as the other two but it's full of nice and cute romance. And yes, while it is a slice of life, that's not to say that there is no progression to the story. I wanna say that this manga is one of the ones where you don't tend to notice people changing that much until you take a break to look at where they are at. It feels a little deceptive on how much the characters grow, which to me is a sign of organic pacing.

And moving on with that, we get to the characters in the story. And this is pretty much where this manga really shines. Like I said before, each of the main characters go through their own arcs which lead to a ton of great character development for each of them. If you take snapshots of the story at different points along the way you can see pretty clearly just how much each character grows in time. And while each of them individually are pretty great, one aspect that I find this manga does really well in is capturing the feeling of a family. A large portion of this manga is focused primarily on the three main characters going about their daily lives, joking around, having fun and getting to know one another. Both adults are very cognizant of the needs of the other two members of their family and will choose to sacrifice for them. The brothers' relationship feels genuine and the way the uncle interacts with the girl is just so sweet. Basically, I think that the main characters are pretty well done in this story.

The overall tone of this manga is a lighthearted one, with light comedy being the prevalent mood. There are strong emotional beats at times, especially in the parts of the story surrounding the deceased mother, but the manga never really dwells on that heaviness for long. To some this may come off as a bad thing since it may seem to trivialize the loss, but I think that the mood really fits the story well. By keeping it lighthearted overall, it allows for the sadder moments to feel weightier, but it never allows those moments to be overwhelming. Honestly it just comes down to a matter of taste in my opinion.

So then, what are some of the downsides to this manga? I'll be honest when I say that I personally don't think there are too many to find, but I think that some of the bigger problems lie with the side characters. There are some more important side characters, who are done decently in my opinion, and then there are the less important ones, who are uninteresting at best. I get why the author adds them in, as it adds flavor to the settings the main characters find themselves in, but they honestly aren't super interesting. The ending also introduces some new characters that don't really do too much (but I don't think they take away from the story so I'm fairly neutral on them). Besides that though, I feel like the only major issues people would have about this manga probably have more to do with the genre itself rather than this story in particular.

So to sum up, Dad, the Beard Gorilla and I is a great story that juggles a lot of different themes and story lines and does it well at that. The main characters are great both individually and as a group, the overall tone of the story is welcoming, the comedy is good enough to give some decent chuckles... overall a great work in my opinion. I'd definitely recommend this one to people who like sweet family stories or light comedies that have deeper messages to chew on.