Sheltering Eaves is a captivating and deeply emotional josei manga that delivers an unforgettable blend of romance and social realism. Created by the visionary behind Perfect World, this manga explores the tender yet tumultuous lives of Yoru and Tenjaku, two teenagers navigating their final year in Japan's foster care system. It’s a story that doesn’t just pull at your heartstrings—it completely immerses you in its richly drawn world.

The manga’s greatest strength is its emotional depth. The bond between Yoru and Tenjaku is beautifully portrayed, and key moments like Tenjaku risking his life to save Yoru’s cherished Rubik’s Cube from a fire highlight the profound care they share for one another. It’s a simple, symbolic act, yet it captures the essence of their relationship—a mix of vulnerability, sacrifice, and unspoken love.

Equally heart-wrenching are Tenjaku’s struggles. His determination to save money for life after the foster home, only to be fired from his jobs after defending Yoru from a false shoplifting accusation, struck a powerful chord. These moments showcase not just his fierce loyalty but also the harsh realities faced by children aging out of the foster care system.

What sets Sheltering Eaves apart is its insightful portrayal of the Japanese foster care system, which feels very different from the Western systems many readers might be familiar with. The detailed and thoughtful translation notes provide a welcome layer of context, making the story even more accessible and impactful for international audiences.

The manga’s art style is another highlight. The expressive character designs and attention to detail perfectly complement the story’s emotional tone. Yoru and Tenjaku’s world feels alive, with each panel carefully constructed to evoke empathy and draw readers deeper into their journey.

In conclusion, Sheltering Eaves is a standout work that excels in storytelling, character development, and cultural insight. Its raw yet hopeful portrayal of love and resilience makes it a must-read for josei fans and anyone seeking a story that lingers in their heart long after they’ve turned the final page.

Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this ARC and to thank you to the publishers.

Yoru was sent to a group home at the age of ten and ends up making friends with Tenjaku who is the same age and he decides to take care of her. They go on a camping trip and one day when they come back they find the house on fire. Yoru realizes she left her rubix cube in the house and so Tenjaku who is scared of fire goes in to save it because he knows how precious it is to her.

Now they are in high school, Tenjaku has multiple jobs and is trying to do good in school so he can go to Uni. His dad messages him during the holidays because he wants him back and Tenjaku says no. It does mess with his head because it wasn’t the best growing up with his dad and that is why he ended up in a home. His dad decides to just show up one day out of the blue and the lady of the home tells them to go back to the house. Yoru feels that he wants to go back to his dad even though he is scared of the outcome but tells him that she will be there for him no matter what.

This was such a heartwarming manga that deals with real life problems. To me it kind of gave the vibes of Itasura na Kiss in the fact that she wanted to be around him all the time. I loved it. To see a friendship like that is always wonderful and I cannot wait to read volume 2.

This was cute. I would have loved this when I was 15 years old. Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the free eARC in exchange for my honest opinions.

I have to admit that I m struggling to get my thoughts together for this review. While I have not personally been brought up in foster care, I am a survivor of child abuse and found some of the children's experiences (memories) too relatable.

Having said this, I do feel that Rie Aruga does a great job with sharing how Yuka and Tenjaku's past of neglect, emotional, mental and physical abuse is shaping who they're becoming as people. We are also shown how precious the bonds are between not only Yuka and Tenjaku, but between all of the children and even the staff in the children's home but also how heart wrenching the reality of how navigating from the home into day-to-day society can be difficult to the point of overwhelming anxiety.

I cried throughout most of my time reading Sheltering Eaves not only because it made me think of my own trauma, but how so many are/have/will be experiencing such heartbreaking pain.

Yoru is a high schooler who has been in foster care since she was 10 after her mother abused her. Tenjaku is the same age, but he warmed up to her and has been watching her ever since they were children. As their birthday approaches, they’ll be able to leave the system and live on their own.

Sheltering Eaves is a manga that I will hold dear in my heart. Because it made a lasting impression on me. It crushed my heart. Put it back together, broke it again, slapped some tape on it, and called it a day. If you, like me, can’t see kids suffering, you’re probably going to cry while reading this!

You see, sometimes… life doesn’t grant us a loving home and family. Not everyone is so lucky and this series has a very subtle way of highlighting that. Despite not having a healthy family, sometimes, you can find that warmth elsewhere in the foster care system.

This series has this show, not tell way of showing you how deep the scars in these kids go. Not all scars are visible—there are emotional ones that never go away. It’s a realistic representation—although blended in fiction—of what children in foster care face. Prejudice in society, in school, amongst themselves.

It’s seeing parents reject their children while children long for their parents who avoid seeing them. It’s how an adult figure can harm a child and then come running back, pretending everything is forgiven and forgotten. It’s the demons these kids face when they’re still technically children. Forgive and forget? Or move on?

I loved this manga. And despite crying over it one too many times, I highly recommend it because it’s an unforgettable read. These are the kind of stories we take with us. The powerful, emotion and thought provoking story that a boy and a girl in foster care convey.

Even if shojo and josei aren’t your thing. If you’re looking for a series that’s bound to leave you thinking, this is one to read. Even if you can’t relate to the characters, but can still empathize with them.

It’s haunting.

Unforgettable.

High interest read that combines a young love story with the sometimes perilous position of vulnerable children in Japan's foster system. Looking forward to the next volume, and I already have patrons who I know will love this title.

Absolutely incredible start to a series. Sheltering Eaves is both heartwarming and sad, and I'm looking forward to continuing the series.

This is a great start to a series I look forward to continuing. I like that it starts with Yoru and Tenjaku first meeting at 10 years old and shows us a little bit of what life at the children's home was like for them at that age before jumping forward to present time when they are 16. It's a great fit for younger readers, around middle school/early high school age. It's well written and portrays the emotions and pasts of each of the main characters well. I do hope we see a bit more depth for some of the side characters as the story progresses. It's a quick read that touches on some difficult topics such as child neglect, abuse, and bullying, but I think those topics are handled well. If you like found family, this is likely a good fit.

Thank you Kodansha Comics for the DRC via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Yoru and Tenjaku are just kids when they meet as members of children's home. As they grow up, they're faced with the upcoming deadline of turning 18 and having to live apart from each other. While dealing with becoming independent they're also dealing with the love they have for each other.

If you're new to manga, interested in romance, and younger than 18 you'll really enjoy this. There's not too much culture shock, I think everything translates well to an American - or English speaking - culture. Which is sometimes a big barrier for new readers of manga. The plot isn't too dense, while still being interesting and dynamic.

If I read this in middle school I think I'd absolutely eat it up. That being said, as a 29 year old it's completely out of my demographic. But that doesn't stop me from seeing the appeal it might have for a younger audience.

This was a very heartwarming story. I love tragic pasts that help build into a sweet romance. The art was pretty good. The timeline skips could have been handled a bit better though, they were sometimes hard to follow.

I really enjoyed this graphic novel. It was my first time reading this author and I’m not disappointed. This book is beautifully written and full of emotions. It’s a story that needs to be told and it’s written from the point of view of the characters who are going through all the pain and hardships in their lives since they were very very young. A story that sometimes is full of hope and sometimes so heartbreaking.

The author manages to keep us interested in what’s happening to the MC as the world around her changes. That’s very important because it keeps us invested in the story.

I love the fact that at the end of the book there’s a list of organizations for us to have a clear understanding of the situation in Japan which is the main theme of the story.

I love the illustrations and the way the book is designed.

What kept this book from getting a five star rating for me is the fact that it could benefit from a slower pace for us to grasp when some of the changes occurred. Like for example, when time goes by and they grew up, or when they went into a flashback. Sometimes I got a little lost and had to re-read to make sense of it all.

I can’t wait to read the second part of the story and for it to develop and see where the author takes us. I’m hoping for a sense of belonging, for some hope and even a love interest somewhere along the way.

If you like reading contemporary stories full of emotions and realistic characters who will make your heart break when they are in need of a hug, then this one is for you.

Grab a copy!!
It’ll be released on November 12.

There's a fine line between emotional manipulation and a genuinely moving story. Rie Aruga generally lands on the right side of that line, but the Perfect World creator's newest work, Sheltering Eaves, is a little less clear with that distinction. Set in a group home for children in what we'd call “the system,” Sheltering Eaves is remarkably unsubtle, with lines musing why parents hurt or abandon their children and the culpability those children feel hitting with the force of a sledgehammer. Is it necessary for the story to develop in a way that makes sense? Maybe; it's a bit too early to really tell. But the bigger question is whether or not it's written this way assuming readers who grew up outside of the foster care system will never be able to understand what the protagonists are going through.

It might be clearer if the plot got a bit further off the ground in this volume. The story follows two kids at a medium-sized group home, Yoru and Tenjaku. Both were abused by their biological parents, albeit in different ways; Yoru emotionally and Tenjaku physically. We enter the story with Yoru at age ten, when she enters the home and becomes the target of another boy there, Yudai. Tenjaku stands up for Yoru, and the two form a close bond, one that's still there but interestingly tense when the story proper gets going, in their second year of high school. It's not fully clear whether their feelings have morphed into something more romantic or not, although one of the other boys plainly has a crush on Yoru. But both teens are trying to work through their impending exit from the foster care system, which will occur when they turn eighteen, no matter what.

It's all very heavy-handed, but there's still a very human core to the book. Yoru and Tenjaku have both lived through abandonment and abuse, and that makes the thought of being kicked out of the only stable home they've ever known alarming, if not downright terrifying. For Yoru, at least, leaving Tenjaku is the scariest part, but she also doesn't seem to feel like she has the right to say that, even to find out if he maybe feels the same. She muses a lot about how weird it is that the group home calls itself “her home” but is preparing to kick her out for the crime of turning eighteen, and it's painfully obvious that she feels that's a more egregious abandonment than anything her mother did. Yoru is desperate for a stability she's never known, and she wants Tenjaku to be that for her. But that's a lot to put on a teenage boy, and she knows it. As she says, she's always just one drop of water away from a flood washing everything away.

Sheltering Eaves is a lot in its first volume, and I don't see that changing. Aruga proved with Perfect World that she can dish out the angst and still bring things to a happy conclusion, so I do trust her as a creator. But the question is whether or not it will be worth the emotional turmoil to get to that point. I think this deserves at least one more volume to find out, but with the caveat that this could cross the fine line between emotionally manipulative and genuine.

The premise is so interesting... It's common for manga to have stories that are very similar to each other, but I've never seen one that takes place in a foster home. Definitely hooked, can't wait to read the sequel.

This was a lovely romance and I enjoyed the unique setting of the foster home. I'm looking forward to following this series and I would love to see more down-to-earth shojo manga like this one.

A touching story of two kids growing up in a home together is an interesting premise. I really like how its starting. You really feel for the kids. I really really want to know what happens next. The reason I only give 4 stars is it feeling like some details are missing. Maybe its on purpose?

I would like to thank Netgalley for sending me this ARC in return for an honest review.

I am so excited for when this is published!! I love the story, and it is right up with all the other mangas I love. This is heartwarming and also I can tell will make you cry as the series goes on.

Yoru and Tenjaku met when they were 10 years old at a children's home. Both abandoned and abused by their parents, they quickly became friends and started to really on each other. Now 16 years old, they deal with the anxiety of soon aging out of the system and making a life for themselves. But the return of Tenjaku's father might create a ripple effect on their future.

This volume covers difficult topics, including child abuse and abandonment. It's not a happy story, and that's why the reader can't help but hope and cheer for a happy ending for both Yoru and Tenjaku.

As much as I live breathe and love manga I just couldn't get into this story for some reason. Maybe it's that I can't relate to the story

Sheltering Eves is about a pair of soon to be adults living in a children's home struggling with the abandonment by their parents. The narrative follows late teen Yoru, who has a mutual devotional relationship with fellow orphan Tenjaku, a boy with burn scars on his back, jumping from the present back to their past as children and how their lives are emotionally intertwined. Facing the prospect of being kicked out when they turn 18, Tenjaku is working a part time job and saving up, while Yoru mostly frets about needing to start to make similar choices.

A great deal of the drama comes from memories of their trauma, abandonments, and later, the reappearance of parents into their lives. It's some heavy set-up that crowds the volume a little bit, and the storytelling feels entirely earnest in a way that could either be refreshing or grating, depending on your point of view.

Yoru and Tenjaku live in a Japanese children's home, a safer place to be than the abusive homes they grew up in. From the beginning, the two have been close, but now that they're nearing adulthood, soon, they might have to separate. Their story thus far has been soft and sweet despite their heavier pasts, and it clearly shows the the author's research and passion for these group homes and their children. Overall, it does make the reader more invested and willing to read the next volume in the series.