A Smart and Courageous Child
Writer: Miki Yamamoto
Publisher: TOKYOPOP
Publication Date: November 19, 2024
Rating: 13-and-up
Mangaka and assistant professor at Tsukuba University, Faculty of Art and Design, Miki Yamamoto‘s work isn’t what most people in the West think of when they think of Japanese manga. She has a freer style of expression, regularly eschewing typical genre style elements (e.g, page layout, book structure, art style, and color schemes) to bring women’s stories to life in ways other manga creators don’t. While Yamamoto has spoken openly about the fact that her work is often received as not being typical of most manga works, she has also discussed how she hopes her first full English-language release from TOKYOPOP, A Smart and Courageous Child, will introduce Western manga fans to a whole world of artists in Japan who draw diverse manga. While Yamamoto has had some of her work partially translated into English in the past, A Smart and Courageous Child is her first work to get a full English-language adaptation.
Winner of the 24th Manga Division Excellence Award at the 2020 Japan Media Arts Festival and nominated for Best One-Shot at the 2025 American Manga Awards, A Smart and Courageous Child follows a young couple, Sara and Kouta Takano, who are preparing to have their first child. In the early months of the pregnancy, Sara and Kouta discuss the type of person that they hope their child will become—they hope they will have a smart and courageous child. And, like most new parents I know, they spend a lot of time researching how to best set up their child to develop these qualities, including buying a number of books.
In Yamamoto’s story, these books symbolize the expectations and desires that parents have for their children. While some of the books seem to help Sara and Kouta, teaching them basic childcare skills and offering them ways to encourage their child’s development. Other times, the amount of information available seems to overwhelm them. And I think this is a problem many can relate to, new parents or not—a constant bombardment of information that feels more like contradictory mandates than helpful advice.
In an interview with Anime News Network, Yamamoto spoke to this, saying, “As depicted in the story, I think what parents expect from picture books overlaps with what parents expect from their children. Such excessive expectations can be a bit of a nuisance for children, and Sara and her husband adjust their naive expectations and desires in the second half of the story. However, the issue I was thinking about while drawing was if you can’t have sweet expectations about having a child, it’s difficult to even think about having a child in the first place.”
However, as the birth date approaches, Sara starts to obsess about who her child will become. Glued to current events after learning about education rights activist Malala Yousafzai, who was targeted by the Taliban when she was 15 years old, she starts to obsessively read books about smart and courageous children who are at risk because of these qualities—some of whom, like Anne Frank, are even murdered—and these fears start to consume Sara, to the point that it seems like her pregnancy is delayed due to her stress about her ability to be a perfect mother and safely raise her and Kouta’s smart and courageous child.
“Like Sara, the main character, I learned on the news that Malala had been shot and the perpetrator had asked, ‘Who is Malala?’” Yamamoto told ANN. “The shooter tried to shoot a little girl because she didn’t listen to him. On the other hand, because of the rules they impose on women, such as ‘not standing out’ and ‘covering their faces,’ the gunman didn’t know which girl was ‘Malala.’ I felt it wasn’t just her who was targeted, but women, us. When Sara started reading books about Anne Frank, Iqbal Masih, and other children who had been killed, it was because I wanted to show this wasn’t a new event, but something that repeatedly happens.”
Thus, like much of Yamamoto’s other work, A Smart and Courageous Child is a story of womanhood and the place that AFAB people occupy in the world. While I didn’t relate to most of this story, what I did find to be a universal message in this manga was the feeling of being weighed down by societal pressures to conform to expected gender roles. Sara wants to regain control over her own body, and she experiences some overwhelming emotions near the end of the story related to the pressure to behave in an appropriate “motherly” manner.
As someone who cannot be a parent, this was a complicated story for me to read because I wanted Sara to show more appreciation for the gift she has been given. While I can appreciate the raw emotion of the story, as someone who is infertile and doesn’t have the privilege of being able to give birth, I wanted more from Sara as a new mother (but also recognize that this is my axe to grind). However, that is not how the story plays out.
Overall, it was hard to separate my own trauma from the story that was being told. I kept thinking about the expectations that parents put on kids to be smart and courageous, to change the world, and how their high expectations often set up a child for feelings of failure when they’re not able to live up to the expectations of what those qualities should look like, especially if that child has challenges (intellectual, mental, or physical disabilities) that get in the way of traditional notions of bravery and success. In my experience, parents struggle to separate what they want from their child and who their child actually is.
What I appreciated most about A Smart and Courageous Child is how the manga used the creator’s nontraditional style to appeal to a female audience, incorporating soft colors and rounder lines, which are typically considered more popular with female readers. “I have mixed feelings about this, but I arrived at this art style because of negotiation between my ideal illustrations and the actual real world,” Yamamoto has said. “I planned to draw with a limited number of colors, with a base of black, gray, and beige, so red was convenient because it would be the focal point. Red gives a sense of energy and passion, but it also has a sense of danger.”
A Smart and Courageous Child can be purchased directly from the publisher here.
