One of the strongest points in favor of Okura's I Think Our Son Is Gay is how the focus isn't solely on Hiroki's potential sexuality. It's absolutely there, but unlike many LGBTQIA+ stories, it's not the driving force of the narrative. That's refreshing and important, because the overall message isn't “so-and-so is gay,” but instead “I love my child no matter what.” With so many “very special lesson”-style queer stories or ones that focus solely on the repercussions of coming out, having Okura's series approach the issue from the perspective of a loving mom who's just trying to figure her son out is important because it's more reassuring than such stories often are. It doesn't matter to Tomoko if Hiroki is gay or not, she just wants him to be happy.

That means that she's worried about how a heteronormative world will see or treat him. Although Tomoko is fine with whomever Hiroki crushes on, she's also aware that life won't always be easy for him because of it, and although she never says it, there's a sense that she thinks that may be why he hasn't told her yet and is trying so hard to cover up his interest in boys. (He's not good at it, but he's trying.) This concern appears fairly early on in the book, when a group of his middle school friends comes over to the house and she hears them asking Hiroki who he likes. Hiroki describes his high school friend Daigo (whom the middle school pals have never met) while letting them assume that Daigo's a girl, and this gives Tomoko pause. While she's glad that he can participate in the discussion to a degree, she also notes that none of his friends even entertain the idea that he might not be talking about a girl. She muses that he may not be as obvious to people who don't see him all the time, but that's tempered with an unspoken concern brought about by the phrase “they can't imagine the possibility of having a crush on another boy.” In context it's simply a remark about how they're oblivious, but when put into perspective with some of Tomoko's other observations, it's easy to read this as the start of her worries over how the world will end up treating her son.

This is a theme that's lightly present throughout the volume. Two short chapters later, we see her brought up short by her husband's remark that “guys don't scream and cry.” Although she doesn't say anything, the expression clearly bothers her, and she's pleased when Hiroki snaps back that “even guys get scared by scary things,” shocking his father. It's a sign that Hiroki isn't completely buying the old ideals of masculinity, not because of his sexual orientation, but because they're outdated and dumb. He promptly makes his dad try the horror game that started the whole mess and gets him to tacitly admit that he was wrong. It's a very nice way to show the family dynamic—Dad's clearly not as sensitive to the kids as Mom, but he's also not a bad person; he's just from a different time. That Hiroki doesn't start a fight about his dad's comments and instead gives him a demonstration of why said comments are wrong speaks volumes, and indicates that there's some hope that the whole family will be okay no matter what.

The more striking moments of Tomoko putting her suspicions about Hiroki into practice in the real world, however, are at the end of the volume, when one of her coworkers giddily tells her that she saw their unmarried boss at the mall with another man who he seemed awfully close to. The friend is a fan of a BL series and apparently never thought that gay men really truly existed in life. While she's more subtle than fujoshi characters often are in manga, she's still obnoxious in her delight, gleefully filling in other coworkers on her assumptions to the point where, when the boss' partner shows up at work to pick him up, they all feel perfectly allowed to make comments about his love life. While they at least know better than to do so when he's in the store, the whole situation is obnoxious and makes Tomoko very uncomfortable—especially when one woman calls it a “waste” that he's gay. What follows are a few pages of Tomoko trying to figure out what bothers her so much about the comment, thinking about her parental hopes for Hiroki before she realized that he may not be attracted to women and drawing a parallel between a situation with his new sneakers that he doesn't want to wear all the time. It's a wonderful moment of introspection as she works through her emotions, and her conclusion is heartwarming and positive: that the real waste would be being unhappy. Even if Hiroki turned out to be straight, Tomoko has really made a lot of progress in her thinking about people, happiness, and acceptance, and that's wonderful to see.

In his afterword, creator Okura comments that after the publication of this volume he came out to his own mother. He doesn't say much about her reaction (which seems more neutral than anything), but there's a sense that maybe Tomoko is the dream parent for him, one who gently observes, supports, and considers without judgement. The series could be read as a wish for all parents to be like Tomoko, who, while not without her flaws, is ultimately doing the best she can while being patient and respecting her son—and loving him no matter what.