The Quintessential Quintuplets
The Quintessential Quintuplets is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Negi Haruba. It was serialized in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine from August 2017 to February 2020, with its chapters collected in 14 volumes. The series follows the daily life of a high-school student Futaro Uesugi, who is hired as a private tutor for a group of identical quintuplets: Ichika, Nino, Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki Nakano. At the very beginning of the story, it is shown that the events are being told in a flashback, while an adult Futaro prepares to marry one of the Nakano Quintuplets whose identity is only revealed near the end of the series.
The series is published in English by Kodansha USA under their Kodansha Comics imprint. An anime television series adaptation produced by Tezuka Productions aired from January to March 2019 on TBS and other channels. A second season produced by Bibury Animation Studios aired from January to March 2021. The second season's sequel, The Quintessential Quintuplets Movie, was released as a film in May 2022. An anime television special produced by Shaft premiered in September 2023. A second anime television special produced by Bibury Animation Studios premiered in December 2024.
The series was a commercial success by December 2022. The manga has had over 20 million copies in circulation. In 2019, the manga won the award for the shōnen manga| category at the 43rd annual Kodansha Manga Awards.
Synopsis
High-school student Futaro Uesugi is an academically gifted student who leads a difficult life—his mother has died, he has no friends, and on top of all that, his father has incurred a large amount of debt.An opportunity presents itself when the rich Nakano family transfers to his school. Futaro is promptly hired as a highly-paid tutor. However, much to Futaro's dismay, he discovers that his five charges—identical quintuplet sisters of varied personalities—have no interest in studying at all and have abysmal grades. Some of the quintuplets are against having Futaro, whom they view as a stranger, in their apartment, but Futaro's diligent tenacity gradually convinces those girls to accept him and improve their grades.
Throughout the series, Futaro develops special relationships with each of the quintuplets. Although Futaro initially harbors no romantic feelings for any of the sisters at all, it is revealed through a flashback that he eventually marries one of them, but her true identity is only revealed near the end of the series.
Production
The outline for a story about "a group of quintuplets falling in love with the same person" existed even before the serialization of Haruba's previous work, Karma of Purgatory, but was rejected by his editor-in-charge. A year later, as Karma of Purgatory was finishing, Haruba pitched various ideas to the editor, and the "quintuplets" concept was accepted. This was not without some reservations, as it had been viewed negatively in two to three of the serialization committees, so it was decided to have a one-shot manga published first. Said concerns were ultimately unfounded as the one-shot received positive reviews, and so was approved to become a serial.Haruba finished drawing the last chapter on February 10, 2020.
Characters
From the beginning, the initial idea was for the protagonists to be quintuplets, and although there were suggestions for the idea of quadruplets and sextuplets raised, it was rejected very quickly. When designing each of the quintuplets, he was inspired by 15 to 20 of his favorite existing female characters, as "some slice-of-life works only with girls". As the characters were quintuplets, Haruba wanted a way to make them memorable to the reader with Ichika, Nino, Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki, and just as the design was almost confirmed he had the idea of adding numbers in their names.The hair colour of the Nakano quintuplets is different when being coloured, which was suggested by Haruba himself, such that they are more distinguishable from each other. The hair colour of the bride in the flash-forward is, therefore, a colour-in-between.
Story
The flashforward showing that Futaro will eventually marry only one of the Nakano quintuplets was added in order to eliminate the possibility of Futaro marrying all five of them. It was also decided that all quintuplets would have negative feelings towards Futaro from the beginning, because Haruba wanted to write how their relationships improved from hate to love in the story, except Yotsuba, who acts as Futaro's guide for the development of the story.While it is often the norm for harem romantic comedy manga to have sexualized depictions of characters, Haruba has said that he tried to avoid this to some extent after Vol. 1. In his opinion, showing panties which are being worn, i.e. panchira, makes characters less mysterious and then less interesting to the readers. To keep the characters interesting, the sexy scenes were intended by him to be ambiguous but not straightforward, leading to readers' imagination. The swimsuit appearance of the Nakanos was finally revealed in Ep. 92 as Haruba thought an episode of swimsuits should exist before finishing the story.
Media
Manga
The Quintessential Quintuplets is written and illustrated by Negi Haruba. Before the serialization, a one-shot manga of the same name had been published in 2017 issue 8 of Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine on August 9, 2017, and received positive comments. On December 4, 2019, Haruba announced that the series would end on its 14th volume. The series finished on February 19, 2020, with a total of 122 chapters.The series has been published in English by Kodansha USA under their Kodansha Comics imprint digitally since June 28, 2018, with a line of physical releases beginning publication on January 1, 2019. By August 2020 and July 2021 respectively, all fourteen volumes have been published digitally and physically.
The "all-color" version of the manga series began serialization in Kodansha's online manga platform MagaPoke on February 26, 2020.
Commercial
In October 2017, a television commercial for the manga was released where Ayane Sakura voiced all five girls.Anime
An anime television series adaptation was announced in the combined 36th and 37th issue of Weekly Shōnen Magazine on August 8, 2018. The series is directed by Satoshi Kuwabara and written by Keiichirō Ōchi, featuring animation by Tezuka Productions, character designs by Michinosuke Nakamura, and music by Natsumi Tabuchi, Hanae Nakamura, and Miki Sakurai. The series aired from January 10 to March 28, 2019, on the TBS, SUN, and BS-TBS channels. The series ran for 12 episodes. Crunchyroll streamed the series with Funimation providing the English dub as it airs. Although Tezuka Productions was the main animation studio behind the series, TBS producer Junichirou Tanaka stated that he asked for help from Shaft president Mitsutoshi Kubota for assistance in producing the series' 11th episode. That story may be exaggerated to some degree, as in another interview Tanaka said that Tezuka Productions hadn't received enough time to produce the series, so he tried phoning a number of production companies and eventually landed on Shaft and Kubota accepted the offer to contribute key animation only for the A-part of the episode. Later, Tanaka asked Kubota if Shaft could produce the entire episode, and since the two companies had history, and Kubota was on friendly terms with producer Hiroshi Oosawa form Tezuka Productions, Shaft eventually agreed to produce the entire episode save for the storyboards, which were drawn by series director Satoshi Kuwabara; however, all other animation, coloring, and compositing aspects of the episode were produced entirely at Shaft.A second season was announced in a special event for the first season on May 5, 2019. Kaori is replacing Satoshi Kuwabara as the director of the season, and Keiichirō Ōchi is returning to write the scripts. Bibury Animation Studios produced this season. It was originally scheduled to premiere in October 2020, but due to issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the anime aired from January 8 to March 26, 2021.
After the second season finished airing, a sequel was announced. On April 18, 2021, the sequel was revealed to be a film. Masato Jinbo directed the film, with the main staff of the second season returning to reprise their roles. It was released in Japan on May 20, 2022.
On April 1, 2023, during "The Quintessential Quintuplets Special Event 2023", a new anime project, titled The Quintessential Quintuplets ∽, was announced. The anime adapts stories that were previously not adapted. The project is a two-episode television special that aired on TBS and BS11 from September 2 to 9, 2023, following a three-week theatrical screening on July 14, 2023. The special is directed by Yukihiro Miyamoto and animated by Shaft, with Keiichirō Ōchi returning to write the scripts.
On April 28, 2024, during "The Quintessential Quintuplets 5th Anniversary Event" in Yokohama Arena, another new anime project, titled The Quintessential Quintuplets*, was announced. The anime is an original project with the story being drafted by Haruba, and recounts Futaro and the quintuplets' honeymoon trip. The project is a second television special that premiered on TBS on December 24, 2024, following a three-week theatrical screening on September 20, 2024. The special is directed by Masato Jinbo and animated by Bibury Animation Studios.
For the first season, Kana Hanazawa, Ayana Taketatsu, Miku Itō, Ayane Sakura, and Inori Minase performed the opening theme song "Quintuplet Feelings" as the group The Nakano Family's Quintuplets, while Aya Uchida performed the ending theme song "Sign".
For the second season, the Nakano Family's Quintuplets performed the opening theme song "Gotōbun no Katachi" and the ending theme song "Hatsukoi".
For the side-story special, The Nakano Family's Quintuplets performed the opening theme song "Gotōbun no Mirai" and the ending theme song "Takaramono".
For the honeymoon special, The Nakano Family's Quintuplets performed the opening theme song "Gotōbun no Egao" and the ending theme song "Memories".