My Father is a Unicorn (rank 3.5)

Publisher: Seven Seas
Volumes: 1 (Complete), In Print
Shounen
Genre: Comedy, (Relationship) Father and Son

Summary: Issei’s mother has some surprising news for him: she remarried… a unicorn! And then she promptly leaves on a business trip, leaving him alone with his new step father. As a Unicorn, Masaru is completely at a loss when it comes to normal human city life. He can transform between human, centaur and unicorn but he can’t figure out how to separate the trash correctly. He doesn’t even know what humans eat! Can Masaru be accepted by Issei, his neighbors and others when he can barely remember to hide his unicorn form?

Review: This is a kind of an odd story. At its heart it’s a “fish out of water” type story about a foreign guy trying to adapt to a new life as a sort of house husband, staying home and looking after the teen-aged kid while the mother goes to work. And trying to do the shopping, cooking and the chores around the house.

In very traditional Japan a house husband is much rarer than it is in the west. So basically half the comedy is supposed to be because it’s a man trying to fill the wife's role, and then the other half of the comedy is a horse trying to fill a human’s role. But if you think it’s nothing particularly interesting to have the husband stay home, then you’re just left with a bunch of horse jokes. While it was decently entertaining, the comedy part really falls flat to a western audience, IMO.

That being said, I found how hard Masaru tries to be accepted by Issei and his neighbors, the other housewives, to be kind of an unexpectedly endearing story. But the unicorn part of the story really felt almost kind of unnecessary, just a sort of a running gag.

Recommended: If you’re looking for a story about a step father-son relationship, or house husbands, I think you might find something here.

Not Recommended: I have a hard time imagining Unicorn fans liking this, it’s not the sort of enchanted magical story I usually see that goes with Unicorns. If anything it seems too mundane.

Age Rating: PG13: there's a weird scene with Masaru and Issei's teen girl classmates feeling attraction for each other as unicorns are supposed to be drawn by pure maidens. It was a unicorn legend based joke that didn't work well at all.