Shimanami Tasogare, also known as Our Dreams at Dusk, is a seinen, slice of life genre manga series first published in March 2016. The plot is about a high school student, Tasuku Kaname, who has just moved to Onomichi, Hiroshima and fears that he’s been outed for being outed.
He’s convinced that his life is over after being outed and he’s on the verge of committing suicide when he sees a woman jumping out of window of a nearby house. He rushes to the house in an attempt to save the woman but to his surprise he finds the woman to be perfectly fine.
The house he saw her jumping out of turns out to be a public lounge owned by the very woman he ran to save in Shimanami Tasogare Manga. In an unexpected turn of events, he ends up telling the mysterious woman how he fears that he’s been outed and how it will ruin his life at his new school.
She listens to him in a calm and stoic manner and before leaving, she invites him to visit her lounge, saying that gay people also visit her lounge. The story starts getting interesting when Tasogare visits the lounge and meets and befriends people there.
A recurrent theme in this series is how gay and queer people struggle with their identity, sometimes even throught their entire lives and have to hide their true self from their family and loved ones fearing that it will drive them away.
It also talks about how same-sex marriage is not legal in Japan and creates problems for the LGBTQ community in Shimanami Tasogare. This series is a beautiful take on how a gay teenager finds out that he’s not the only one who feels this way and meets people who are struggling with similar issues.
The lounge serves as the primary place where the community can truly be themselves without the fear of judgement from their surroundings.
