Happy Monday everybody! With a new Monday comes a new general thread. Feel free to tell us about what you have been reading, ask about something you want to read, or try to find some recommendations to read next.
Like normal, please be careful with spoilers. I wrote a guide about spoilers in case you need a refresher on how to handle them (also linked in the sidebar).
tl;dr - Go read “Love’s in Sight!” It is extremely good.
Alright, here is the deal. Over the past week, I haven’t posted as much as I normally would, but it’s not because I haven’t been reading manga. Instead, I found a manga that I binged the heck out of this past week and sucked up almost all my manga time instead. This might be a long post, so I put a tl;dr at the top. Ok, story time…
On the recent updates feed for mangadex this past week, I saw a chapter get posted that was marked as the end of the series. Out of curiosity, I click through to the page for the series and read the synopsis. The synopsis was just one, short sentence, but mentioned that one of the leads was partially blind. This caught my attention, so I thought I would check out some chapters. That was five days ago. As of writing this, I just finished the series with chapter 125. I couldn’t put the series down once I got into it. I wanted to talk a bit about what I thought made the series good since that tiny little synopsis on mangadex doesn’t really do it justice.
First, a bit of a more thorough synopsis while still remaining spoiler-free. This series centers around a delinquent, yankee, gang-leader named Morio and a mostly blind girl named Yukiko. Morio, due to his appearance, including a prominent facial scar from his younger days, is typically treated as a fearsome ruffian to be avoided and finds himself outcast from society unable to find a job and eventually dropping out of school. Yukiko, mostly blind, uses a cane to get around the city and literally runs into Morio. She scolds him for standing in the way on the braille blocks built into the sidewalk. Not used to being treated this way, Morio finds himself interested in Yukiko and her boldness in dealing with him when most others are cowed by fear.
In general, this series focuses on characters that are different from the societal norm in some way. Our leads are different in that they are a scarred delinquent and visually impaired. However, other characters that feature heavily in later story arcs are different in other ways; social anxiety, sexuality, etc. Each of these is handled with a lot of care and respect. The cast of characters grows as the series goes on and each of them feel unique and like real people. We get to see how people face the challenges of everyday life while bearing the burden of their own circumstances. What looks like a small step for one person can be an impossibly high hurdle for another and this series does a great job of depicting this.
The thing that caught my eye about this series to start was the partially blind female lead. In my professional life, I work in pharmaceutical R&D, typically working on medications before reaching and while undergoing clinical trials. Some of the projects I have worked on in the past were for eye conditions including Choroideremia and Retinitis Pigmentosa. Both of these diseases are genetic and result in a decay in your vision as you age, starting in childhood. Essentially, young adults are basically told they will go blind (or mostly blind) and to start practicing being blind now so that they can more easily transition. What follows is a years-long gradual decline in their vision as their retinal cells atrophy due to these genetic diseases. I have had the chance to speak with patients going through this process and their family members. So, I was curious to see how visual impairment was depicted in this manga.
I am thrilled to say that the types of challenges that Yukiko and her friends from the School for the Blind experience are extremely realistic and the same types of things I heard about. Things that many of us don’t think twice about like self-checkouts (and touch screens in general), untextured sidewalks/crosswalks, muffled speakers announcing stops on the bus/subway, become huge challenges when you can’t see. They also depicted three different types of blindness, which is something many people don’t realize. Often, my younger self included, people think that being blind means you can’t see anything. However, in reality, there are many different types and degrees of blindness that result from different underlying causes.
I also want to mention that, despite covering all of the above subject matter, the romance in this series is very good. Our main pair of leads are open and communicative and work through issues that arise in a refreshingly open manner. It’s just a really well written romance that also happens to have all this other stuff in it as well.
I cannot recommend the series enough. I spent most of the last week reading it, and have enjoyed every minute of it. There are chapters that are hilarious, some are heartbreaking, and then some are incredibly touching. I have only known about this series for the past couple days, but I already miss it.
Hey - that is a good manga.
It’s funny right off that Morio is generally the meek one and Yukiko is generally the forceful one. And Yukiko blushes adorably.
I like the detail that the panels from her POV have the background that she sees - just hazy, low-contrast blobs and rough outlines. It makes it just that much more her POV.
So, another title for my TBR…
Edit to add: I went back to where I’d left off before posting this - the beginning of chapter 11. I have it on my follows, so I almost just closed the tab, but I figured, “What the hell - maybe I’ll just read one more chapter.”
It’s the chapter in which Morio goes to the video store, starts thinking about the issues Yukiko would likely have with self-checkout, then discovers that Shishio is the manager. I closed the tab right then, because I could just tell that if I didn’t, there was no telling how much more time it would suck up. ;)
This was me all last week.
That chapter is about how far I got with my first dive into the series and it is where I realized that the author must have done their homework or knew somebody that was visually impaired personally. In my conversations with patients, the trend toward more self-checkouts specifically (and touchscreen interfaces generally) was brought up a lot. Many of them will have some kind of audio option that you can enable, but that is often done so either by an on-screen button (not helpful), or by finding a tiny little headphone jack to plug into (difficult). Additionally, without an attendant (or a helpful fellow shopper) to call out when another customer finishes, they have no way of knowing when they can proceed to the checkout.
One of the reasons I connected with the series so much is because, like Morio, after I spoke with patients like that, my perspective on what were previously mundane things around me changed a lot. On the subway system for the city I work in, it is a running joke that the speakers announcing stops never work right and the sound is just jumbled. After a decade of joking about it with friends, I came to realize after my patient interviews, that those speakers serve an incredibly important role to people that can’t look out the window of the subway car and see all the signs to figure out which stop the train is at. Instead, they essentially have to memorize the number of stops they need to ride for, and then count as they go (or rely on the goodwill of others to answer if asked).
It’s just really well done and has a lot of attention to details like that.
And…
After I posted that last one, I ended up going back to it anyway, and am currently on chapter 23, so just wrapped up Morio and Yukiko’s first “date.” They were predictably adorkable.
Onee-chan is awesome. I already love the depth of her character. She was easily my favorite part of those chapters.
I really enjoyed the details surrounding the clerk at the clothing store. That was unexpected, and sweet.
The thing about touchscreens was a revelation. I generally dislike them already, but I had never stopped to think that to a vision-impaired person, they’re completely and entirely useless - not just less than optimal but utterly useless.
Broadly, the manga is indeed impressive. I especially like that it’s sort of unfocused. There are obvious things that are central to the story, but it doesn’t feel like it’s a forced narrative. It’s more like a broad “slice-of-life,” and the things that are notably important just organically are. Even Morio’s and Yukiko’s budding romance isn’t really the focus - it’s just a particularly significant thing that’s happening, alongside a bunch of other things, all of which are interesting or touching or funny or whatever.
This kind of thing happens a lot. A background or side character is suddenly very fleshed out and you care about their little story. Occasionally, I felt this missed, like some character I just didn’t care that much about, but it was usually really well done. Also, sometimes these characters will pop back up in the story randomly and it is fun.
Indeed, I related to her a lot through this. At the risk of being too personal, my wife is unable to drive due to a medical condition, so I sympathized a lot with Onee-chan and how she felt like she had to restructure a lot of her life around Yukiko’s needs. It felt just like how I have to constantly take both mine and my wife’s schedules into account before committing to anything and it is what drove me to seek out a new job that I can more flexibly split time between working from home vs. working in the lab back when we moved out of the city (where public transit was a thing).
Yeah, the actual relationship part is often just so casual and develops so naturally, that it doesn’t feel like the focus most of the time. To me, it felt like an instance in which two people in a friend group start dating but never really mention it to anybody, it just kind of becomes clear from the way they act.
Hope you enjoy the ride!
Taking a break… I’m currently on chapter 62.
Onee-chan meeting Shishio was so perfect, but then there’s the slowly unfolding complications there. I just read the bit where Shishio tells her the whole truth, and it was very good. Though I’m not sure how I feel about all of that. I sort of want to cheer them on, since they’re obviously good for each other, but at the same time…
Sora-chan is terrific. I didn’t expect someone who’s even more stubborn than Yukiko.
Yukiko testing temperature with her lips…
Hachiko was a revelation. It took a while early on before it was even clearly indicated that she’s a girl. And it’s sort of amusing that it then played through her whole jealousy issue with Yukiko and then them coming to terms, and as far as I can tell, Morio is still oblivious. And she was beautiful in a dress. And we got to see the clothing shop clerk again.
Good stuff…