The Quintessential Quintuplets: Gotopazu Story (NSP, XCI) ROM

The Quintessential Quintuplets: Gotopazu Story 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 into fourteen tankōbon 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.

The anime series is licensed in North America under a Crunchyroll–Funimation partnership. 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. The series was a commercial success; by December 2022, the manga had over 20 million copies in circulation, making it one of the best-selling manga series. In 2019, the manga won the award for the shōnen category at the 43rd annual Kodansha Manga Awards.

SYNOPSIS AND PRODUCTION

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. Through a flashforward, it is revealed that he eventually marries one of them, but her true identity is only revealed near the end of the series. Thus Futaro and the quintuplet’s happy relationship will continue forever.

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 (2014–2015), 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.